Be a human, listen to the agonies

By Ram Karki

Today is 20 June – another World Refugee Day that compels me to revive the vivid memories of lonely struggle from being a citizen to stateless to refugee and again back as a citizen of a country. In my experience, becoming a refugee is an opportunity for a person to undergo rigorous struggle of a lifetime. Survival through these struggles, I believe, is the best art of living. The revived dignity is the highest honour you ever achieve. 

You will understand pain, hunger, thirst, malnourishment, discrimination, hatred, suppression, inferiority complex, depression, abuse, allegation, fear, addiction and all the evils that you can imagine of. Fighting and winning these evils eventually help you shape your personality that helps to fit under any circumstances. The enthusiasm and energy that you gain through this survival saga empowers you for constructive contribution for progress and prosperity of your new community – in a multi-disciplinary sphere. 

I dedicate this year’s World Refugee Day to those Bhutanese Refugees such as Mrs. Damber Kumari Adhikari from Beldangi Refugee Camp in Nepal, Mr. Prem Bahadur Rai now resettled in Australia, Mrs. Ran Maya Gautam now resettled in Canada and many other elderly parents who not only suffered for being forcefully evicted from Bhutan but whose only sons were being snatched from them and are serving life sentences in Chemgang prisons since decades. For them confiscation of personal properties & citizenship and forcing to become refugee would be secondary pain. It is extremely difficult to explain in words the pain they endure to see their beloved children being snatched away and thrown into a dungeon. 

My eyes turned watery as I listened the desperate appeals of those elderly parents seeking freedom of their children. Wives have left them losing hope of getting reunited with their imprisoned husbands even after a decade. Many of their elderly parents have died – theiry dying wish was to see their sons free and reunited. Their children have now become grown up and have never seen their father for which they have been longing for decades. 

Any person with human heart cannot stop tears rolling down the cheeks while listening to these families’ agonies. There is no inhumanity than restricting parents see their children and children see their parents.

Article 1 of 1951 UN Convention on Refugee defines a refugee as a person who is outside his/her country of nationality or habitual residence; has a well-founded fear of persecution because of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion; and is unable or unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country, or to return there, for fear of persecution. But, unfortunately, it failed to define such refugee with additional human agonies. 

Today on World Refugee Day, I make an appeal the concerned authorities in Bhutan to kindly have mercy on those unfortunate human beings and let them get freedom so they could go for family reunion to spend rest of their precious lives with beloved parents, wives and children.

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