Ayusha Subba
It’s no secret that North Hill Akron has one of the biggest refugee populations in Ohio, I mean every corner you turn here, there's another Nepali market or Karen restaurant, but what you might actually not know is the story of each of these refugees. More importantly not even the refugees might know about each other’s story and how they got to where they are today. I, a refugee myself, had no idea of what story each person in my community had until just last year. What I believe is that even if we come from all different corners of the world we all ended up here and we are a community now. The first step of being an impactful community of refugees is learning about each other’s struggles and downfalls that led us here in the first place. So let's take a look at one of these groups first for today.
Bhutanese Nepalis
One of the most populated refugees is for sure Nepalis but what many don’t know is that they aren’t just Nepalis they are Bhutanese Nepalis who were stripped of their rights from Bhutan and forced to flee to Nepal. These people are still considered Nepalis due to their ethnicity but they believe they have the right to be Bhutanese citizens because of the unfair revocation of their citizenship. This conflict had truly begun in 1985 but by that time ethnically Nepali people had lived in the Southernmost part of Bhutan for close to a century. According to the website called Bhutaneserefugees.com run by international volunteers, in the 1890s, many Nepalis were brought into Bhutan by government contractors to clear forests and make a steady farming supply for the country. Because these people were such a big part of Bhutan, a citizen act was finally passed to grant them citizenship, and later on many policies were placed in favor of them; such as intermarriage, letting children pursue further education, building temples of all different religions, and more. Many Southerners had now made Bhutan their permanent home. This was true until the year 1985, almost a century after the first Nepali had immigrated, when a stricter citizenship act was passed that was targeted towards ethically Nepali people. The king had announced that if any disloyalty was detected towards him, the country or the Bhutanese people their citizenship would be revoked. 3 years later Bhutan opened a census operation only in southern Bhutan to show evidence of them being a Bhutan citizen. It stated that they needed to show land tax receipts explicitly from the year 1958. By that time over 15 years had passed since then and many Southerners could not adhere to the officials and were forcefully removed from their homes and country. Many Southerners now began to flee the country for fear of endangering their safety, others who stayed faced a tremendous amount of discrimination. By the early 1990s People were being thrown in jail, getting raped, and having their houses burnt for the sole reason they were ethnically Nepali. In terms, this was an ethnic cleansing of Bhutan and when Southern citizens were caught by the officials they were forced to leave and sign “voluntary migration forms” that also said that they would never return to Bhutan. Fear and torture were placed over the Southern Citizens of Bhutan so many of them agreed to sign these forms for their safety. These people were moved to Nepal’s refugee camps and it has been estimated that at one point it held over 100,000 refugees.
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