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Video: Bhutanese Refugees In The US
When people are forced to flee their native countries, they become refugees. This concept seems simple, but it's not one with which most citizens of the U.S. are familiar. This video on Bhutanese refugees originally ran on The Seattle Channel's program, City Stream. The video follows in the footsteps of one Bhutanese family that was forced out of Bhutan at gunpoint 18 years ago. The family lived in Nepal in a refugee camp before being welcomed into Seattle. As the number of Bhutanese immigrants is rising in the U.S., this video offers important insight.
Filed under: Activism, Arts and Culture, History, Learning, Asia, North America, Bhutan, United States, Video, News
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bob Aug 25th 2012 1:12PM
By accepting the refugees, the US and the western nations are basically paying the price for the sin of India. The political backdrop of Bhutan purging the residents of Hindu Nepali origin is to avoid the fate of Sikkim, its fellow Himalayan kingdom that India invaded and annexed in 1975 using the guise of democracy (and the Western nations turning a blind eye on it). India has worked for years to use residents of Sikkim of Hindu Nepali origin to 'vote' Sikkim into India. Bhutan does not want to go down the way of Sikkim, hence we have the refugees today.
Here are links of what happened to Sikkim in 1975:
http://www.nepalitimes.com.np/issue/35/Nation/9621
http://toptravelleads.com/2009/08/22/sikkim-once-an-independent-himalayan-kingdom/comment-page-1/#comment-524
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913029,00.html
Bob Aug 25th 2012 1:49PM
By the way India attempted to do a repeat what it did to Sikkim to Bhutan in the early 1990s. Fortunately this occurred during the first Bush administration and this alarmed the worldly George Bush Sr. and he told India to back off Bhutan. Here is a link from the New York times during this period.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/07/world/india-based-groups-seek-to-disrupt-bhutan.html?src=pm