Its near dusk at the United Nations refugee screening centre at Kakarbhitta, eastern Nepal. Another day, another family has arrived.
Woman: We didn't bring anything. These things are all we have.
Man: We feel very sad. I really dont understand why we had to leave. I feel like I have no future. My life is over but I hope I can find some future for my child.
Just before nightfall, some new arrivals. A husband and wife carrying their baby son and all they possess.
Woman:All our family is here now - our parents and our brothers. We hope we'll be allowed to stay.
UN Interviewer:When exactly did you leave Bhutan?
Inside its cement and thatched compound, the United Nations determines their fate.
UN Interviewer:Why did you leave Bhutan actually in the afternoon?
Refugee:I didnt want to leave my country but if I stayed back they would set fire to the house, locking me inside, and the family. So I got scared. So I had to leave the very next day.
By nightfall their fate is sealed. Refugee status granted. They begin the final leg of their unwanted journey to a strange new home.
This is the Timai refugee camp in eastern Nepal. As one of eight camps in this area, it is now home to 85,000 refugees. They've come here over the past 4 years from the neighbouring kingdom of Bhutan. They're the victims of one of the most intense campaigns of ethnic persecution in the world.
Mangala Sharma and her family have lived here for the past two years, since they were evicted from the country which had been their home for five generations.
Mangala: My daughter is the fifth generation born in Bhutan, like my great grandmother was born in Bhutan, then my grandmother whos in front of me, she was born in Bhutan, then my mother, then myself, and my daughter. I brought her when she was one month old. Now all of us we are living in Timai refugee camp.
The camps of Eastern Nepal are now home to one in seven of the population of the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. 100 thousand people have been forced out or fled their country in fear.
Mangala: Worst time was the beginning of 1992 to mid-August when 10,000 people per month were coming and they had trucks and trucks of people coming from the time they were evicted.
Mangala and the others here are southern Bhutanese. Nepalese-speaking citizens of Bhutan. Theyre the victims of what appears to be a deliberate campaign by the Bhutanese government to wipe out its ethnic Nepalese community, which makes up almost half the countrys population.
Mangala: Five years ago the town was like a paradise for all of us and everything was fine there, but say about three years from now I don't know what happened but the government started evicting people.
It began Mangala says with a census, which the government claimed was to identify illegal immigrants. But when they began evicting Bhutanese citizens, there was strong and sometimes violent opposition. It was then the authorities unleashed a campaign of terror against the ethnic Nepalese.
Mangala: People were taken into custody. They were threatened, raped, young girls were raped, and many young boys were forced into forced labour.
Mangala: All the schools were closed and all the schools were turned into local prisons and hospitals were banned for the local people.
Like many men, Mangalas brother, formerly a village leader, tells of being imprisoned, beaten and tortured.
Brother: My hands were tied at the back. They put food on the floor and made us eat like that..Everyday I was beaten and put in clamps by my jailers. They pressed from this side and this side. They made me say things that weren't true. If I said no, they'd tighten the clamps until I said yes. That went on for seven months.
Eventually he was freed, but only after his family and their entire village signed, what the authorities called, voluntary leaving certificates, stating that they would permanently leave Bhutan.
Grandmother: Our house was destroyed. Most of the big houses in the village were destroyed. All our property was taken - our cows and everything. We left at night with only what we were wearing. I couldnt even see - I had to use a stick. I didnt bring anything.
The story of Mangala Sharmas family is typical of the stories told by the 85,000 refugees. Everyone has harrowing tales to tell. But none of them can tell you why theyre here. Why they were forced out of Bhutan. And so we travelled to the remote and isolated mountain kingdom to try to find out why._
Its a journey that few people make. Bhutan is one of the most closed countries in the world. The brochures call it the last Shangri-La. But tourism is not encouraged. Fewer than 3,000 tourists visit each year. The government keeps them out by charging $300 a day. Journalists arent encouraged either. TV crews are charged a minimum of $12,000, which ensures most stay away. We went as tourists instead and filmed with a tourist video camera._
Like all tourists, we were met on arrival by an official guide, who would accompany us everywhere we went.
They are certainly right about Bhutan being blissfully untouched by the rest of the world. It's like being in a different time. The tour brochures say its the mighty Himalayas that have kept Bhutan protected from the outside.. But the government has played a major role too. It was only in the 1960's that roads and communications links with Bhutans neighbours were opened up. Television and satellite dishes are still banned. In the governments own words, Bhutan has chosen to remain deeply shrouded in its jealously guarded isolation
The Bhutanese capital, Thimpu - population 20,000 - is as bustling as it gets. Its from here that the king of Bhutan rules his subjects and the royal government pursues its policies of sovereignty, self-reliance and cultural preservation. Our guide explained.
Guide: We dont want Westernisation - just modernisation.
Reporter: Not westernisation?
Guide: Usually all the developing countries as they get modernised, they become Westernised so our government is trying to check that.
Reporter: How are the government protecting the culture of Bhutan?
Guide: First of all they have the rule of the language - the Dzongka language. It is compulsory in the schools.
Reporter: So the language of the ruling ethnic group is actually compulsory?
Guide: Yeah. And secondly the dress - we have to wear this.
Reporter: So this is compulsory?
Guide: Compulsory. At home you don't - its up to you - but once you step out the house its compulsory; you have to wear this dress.
To a foreign eye the compulsory wearing of the national dress seems just a part of Bhutans charm, like the colourful mountain festivals, where the people turn out in their finery to celebrate an ancient Buddhist culture.
Cultural preservation is the governments catchphrase. But what its preserving is the culture of a small ruling elite of the Drukpa people, descendants of Tibetans, whove ruled Bhutan for 300 years.
Reporter: What does the government think are the dangers to the culture? Why do they have to try so hard to preserve it?
Guide: The feel that if they dont put any restrictions the people will not - theyll discard their traditional clothes and wear Western clothes and slowly, slowly itll just become a museum piece.
Reporter: So does the government encourage festivals like this?
Guide: Yes, it does. You see the dresses theyre wearing and the white clothes they are wearing? - All these are provided by the government.
Reporter: Theyre provided by the government?
Guide: Yes. And the government also provides separate funds for these kinds of festivals.
But the truth is preserving the culture has become a euphemism for staying in power. The ruling Drupkas make up only 20% of the population. The Nepalese-speaking southern Bhutanese, on the other hand, make up almost half, and their numbers are growing. The rest are native Bhutanese. The governments greatest fear is not westernisation but losing its stranglehold on power.
And so in the name of preserving the culture, the king and his government launched a campaign to cleanse Bhutan. They called the policy One Nation, One People. A draconian system of ethnic classification was introduced. Tens of thousands of citizens of Nepalese descent were stripped of their citizenship. Many of them came from families whod been in Bhutan for generations. In the crackdown that followed, 100,000 people fled the country; most are still living in the refugee camps across the border in Napal. The Nepalese-speaking community in Bhutan, which still makes up 40% of the population now lives in an atmosphere of fear.
The 200,000 ethnic Nepalese in Bhutan no longer dare celebrate their culture. Their language is now banned. Their religion Hindu - forced behind closed doors. We managed to lose our guide long enough to go in search of a Nepalese speaker willing to talk. Those still in Bhutan fear that any wrong step will have them too thrown out of the country.
Reporter: This man agreed to the interview only on the condition that we totally disguise his identity.
Man: My family was stripped of their citizenship and they had to move out of Bhutan. They just had to go because they received a lot of threatening from the police and even the village head. You know, he was telling my parents to move as soon as possible, so they had to go.
Reporter: What's it like here for the Nepalese speaking communities still in Bhutan?
Man: It's very difficult, very difficult.
Nepalese-speaking Bhutanese now need a special certificate from the government to get a job to get training or even to enrole their children into school: all designed, it seems, to force those remaining to leave.
Man: We are afraid because we might end up behind bars. At the same time, nobody is happy. Everyone is staying here because they were born, brought up here. Once we go out of the country, we lose everything. You lose your citizenship, you lose your land and you are homeless
Man: This is Mr Prime Minister.
Reporter: Hello Prime Minister.
Prime Minister: Glad to meet you.
Reporter: Glad to meet you too.
Back in Nepal its clear that the refugee crisis has strained relations between the governments of Nepal and Bhutan. Three rounds of talks have made virtually no progress towards finding a solution.
Reporter: Prime Minister, what is your governments view of Bhutanese policy of literally forcing out citizens of Nepalese descent?
PM: Those Bhutanese refugees, most of them are Bhutanese nationals and they are being evicted forcefully.
Reporter: Do you find Bhutans policy shocking?
PM: Yes, of course. Shocking. As a matter of fact I am committed, my government is committed to human rights also. So on the grounds of humanitarian grounds, we have to look to the Bhutanese problem very sincerely.
Reporter: So far there appears to have been really no progress towards solving this issue. Do you think the government of Bhutan is really genuine about finding a solution?
PM: Because the progress is slow, the attitude, you can just conclude that what is the attitude of the Bhutanese government. They dont want to solve it very quickly. So they want to just go very slow.
Reporter: What solution does Nepal want to this problem?
PM: I think the solution is very, very simple. Let us identify who are the Bhutanese citizens and who are not. Those Bhutanese citizens they should be taken back to Bhutan. That should be the only solution to the problem.
Bhutanese unwanted citizens can only pray that one day their government will agree to take them home. For now, there doesnt seem to be much hope. Neither peaceful resistance nor a campaign of violent attacks by some dissident groups has shaken Bhutanese resolve. The campaign of evictions is still going on.
The government of Bhutan justifies its policy by recalling the fate of its old neighbour - the former kingdom of Sakim. There an uprising by a Nepalese majority led against Sakim being taken over by India in 1975. Bhutan claims that it could meet a similar fate. And so the systematic removal of Bhutans Nepalese-speaking community continues. At present another census is being undertaken. People with relatives here in the refugee camps are being told that they too must leave Bhutan. Everyday new refugee families arrive.
[chanting]
Mangala: They are giving thanks for everything for food that god has done for me
Reporter: Do you think they feel that God has forgotten them?
Mangala; No I don't think they feel that because they are very strong believers. When they are refugees, the culture and religion are more important; you feel all alone and you feel like you have lost everything.
Its pure faith that keeps the people here believing that one day theyll return home. For Mangalas grandmother, its her final wish.
Grandma: I want to go home. I want to go and sleep in my own house. I want to die in my own bed.
Woman: We didn't bring anything. These things are all we have.
Man: We feel very sad. I really dont understand why we had to leave. I feel like I have no future. My life is over but I hope I can find some future for my child.
Just before nightfall, some new arrivals. A husband and wife carrying their baby son and all they possess.
Woman:All our family is here now - our parents and our brothers. We hope we'll be allowed to stay.
UN Interviewer:When exactly did you leave Bhutan?
Inside its cement and thatched compound, the United Nations determines their fate.
UN Interviewer:Why did you leave Bhutan actually in the afternoon?
Refugee:I didnt want to leave my country but if I stayed back they would set fire to the house, locking me inside, and the family. So I got scared. So I had to leave the very next day.
By nightfall their fate is sealed. Refugee status granted. They begin the final leg of their unwanted journey to a strange new home.
This is the Timai refugee camp in eastern Nepal. As one of eight camps in this area, it is now home to 85,000 refugees. They've come here over the past 4 years from the neighbouring kingdom of Bhutan. They're the victims of one of the most intense campaigns of ethnic persecution in the world.
Mangala Sharma and her family have lived here for the past two years, since they were evicted from the country which had been their home for five generations.
Mangala: My daughter is the fifth generation born in Bhutan, like my great grandmother was born in Bhutan, then my grandmother whos in front of me, she was born in Bhutan, then my mother, then myself, and my daughter. I brought her when she was one month old. Now all of us we are living in Timai refugee camp.
The camps of Eastern Nepal are now home to one in seven of the population of the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. 100 thousand people have been forced out or fled their country in fear.
Mangala: Worst time was the beginning of 1992 to mid-August when 10,000 people per month were coming and they had trucks and trucks of people coming from the time they were evicted.
Mangala and the others here are southern Bhutanese. Nepalese-speaking citizens of Bhutan. Theyre the victims of what appears to be a deliberate campaign by the Bhutanese government to wipe out its ethnic Nepalese community, which makes up almost half the countrys population.
Mangala: Five years ago the town was like a paradise for all of us and everything was fine there, but say about three years from now I don't know what happened but the government started evicting people.
It began Mangala says with a census, which the government claimed was to identify illegal immigrants. But when they began evicting Bhutanese citizens, there was strong and sometimes violent opposition. It was then the authorities unleashed a campaign of terror against the ethnic Nepalese.
Mangala: People were taken into custody. They were threatened, raped, young girls were raped, and many young boys were forced into forced labour.
Mangala: All the schools were closed and all the schools were turned into local prisons and hospitals were banned for the local people.
Like many men, Mangalas brother, formerly a village leader, tells of being imprisoned, beaten and tortured.
Brother: My hands were tied at the back. They put food on the floor and made us eat like that..Everyday I was beaten and put in clamps by my jailers. They pressed from this side and this side. They made me say things that weren't true. If I said no, they'd tighten the clamps until I said yes. That went on for seven months.
Eventually he was freed, but only after his family and their entire village signed, what the authorities called, voluntary leaving certificates, stating that they would permanently leave Bhutan.
Grandmother: Our house was destroyed. Most of the big houses in the village were destroyed. All our property was taken - our cows and everything. We left at night with only what we were wearing. I couldnt even see - I had to use a stick. I didnt bring anything.
The story of Mangala Sharmas family is typical of the stories told by the 85,000 refugees. Everyone has harrowing tales to tell. But none of them can tell you why theyre here. Why they were forced out of Bhutan. And so we travelled to the remote and isolated mountain kingdom to try to find out why._
Its a journey that few people make. Bhutan is one of the most closed countries in the world. The brochures call it the last Shangri-La. But tourism is not encouraged. Fewer than 3,000 tourists visit each year. The government keeps them out by charging $300 a day. Journalists arent encouraged either. TV crews are charged a minimum of $12,000, which ensures most stay away. We went as tourists instead and filmed with a tourist video camera._
Like all tourists, we were met on arrival by an official guide, who would accompany us everywhere we went.
They are certainly right about Bhutan being blissfully untouched by the rest of the world. It's like being in a different time. The tour brochures say its the mighty Himalayas that have kept Bhutan protected from the outside.. But the government has played a major role too. It was only in the 1960's that roads and communications links with Bhutans neighbours were opened up. Television and satellite dishes are still banned. In the governments own words, Bhutan has chosen to remain deeply shrouded in its jealously guarded isolation
The Bhutanese capital, Thimpu - population 20,000 - is as bustling as it gets. Its from here that the king of Bhutan rules his subjects and the royal government pursues its policies of sovereignty, self-reliance and cultural preservation. Our guide explained.
Guide: We dont want Westernisation - just modernisation.
Reporter: Not westernisation?
Guide: Usually all the developing countries as they get modernised, they become Westernised so our government is trying to check that.
Reporter: How are the government protecting the culture of Bhutan?
Guide: First of all they have the rule of the language - the Dzongka language. It is compulsory in the schools.
Reporter: So the language of the ruling ethnic group is actually compulsory?
Guide: Yeah. And secondly the dress - we have to wear this.
Reporter: So this is compulsory?
Guide: Compulsory. At home you don't - its up to you - but once you step out the house its compulsory; you have to wear this dress.
To a foreign eye the compulsory wearing of the national dress seems just a part of Bhutans charm, like the colourful mountain festivals, where the people turn out in their finery to celebrate an ancient Buddhist culture.
Cultural preservation is the governments catchphrase. But what its preserving is the culture of a small ruling elite of the Drukpa people, descendants of Tibetans, whove ruled Bhutan for 300 years.
Reporter: What does the government think are the dangers to the culture? Why do they have to try so hard to preserve it?
Guide: The feel that if they dont put any restrictions the people will not - theyll discard their traditional clothes and wear Western clothes and slowly, slowly itll just become a museum piece.
Reporter: So does the government encourage festivals like this?
Guide: Yes, it does. You see the dresses theyre wearing and the white clothes they are wearing? - All these are provided by the government.
Reporter: Theyre provided by the government?
Guide: Yes. And the government also provides separate funds for these kinds of festivals.
But the truth is preserving the culture has become a euphemism for staying in power. The ruling Drupkas make up only 20% of the population. The Nepalese-speaking southern Bhutanese, on the other hand, make up almost half, and their numbers are growing. The rest are native Bhutanese. The governments greatest fear is not westernisation but losing its stranglehold on power.
And so in the name of preserving the culture, the king and his government launched a campaign to cleanse Bhutan. They called the policy One Nation, One People. A draconian system of ethnic classification was introduced. Tens of thousands of citizens of Nepalese descent were stripped of their citizenship. Many of them came from families whod been in Bhutan for generations. In the crackdown that followed, 100,000 people fled the country; most are still living in the refugee camps across the border in Napal. The Nepalese-speaking community in Bhutan, which still makes up 40% of the population now lives in an atmosphere of fear.
The 200,000 ethnic Nepalese in Bhutan no longer dare celebrate their culture. Their language is now banned. Their religion Hindu - forced behind closed doors. We managed to lose our guide long enough to go in search of a Nepalese speaker willing to talk. Those still in Bhutan fear that any wrong step will have them too thrown out of the country.
Reporter: This man agreed to the interview only on the condition that we totally disguise his identity.
Man: My family was stripped of their citizenship and they had to move out of Bhutan. They just had to go because they received a lot of threatening from the police and even the village head. You know, he was telling my parents to move as soon as possible, so they had to go.
Reporter: What's it like here for the Nepalese speaking communities still in Bhutan?
Man: It's very difficult, very difficult.
Nepalese-speaking Bhutanese now need a special certificate from the government to get a job to get training or even to enrole their children into school: all designed, it seems, to force those remaining to leave.
Man: We are afraid because we might end up behind bars. At the same time, nobody is happy. Everyone is staying here because they were born, brought up here. Once we go out of the country, we lose everything. You lose your citizenship, you lose your land and you are homeless
Man: This is Mr Prime Minister.
Reporter: Hello Prime Minister.
Prime Minister: Glad to meet you.
Reporter: Glad to meet you too.
Back in Nepal its clear that the refugee crisis has strained relations between the governments of Nepal and Bhutan. Three rounds of talks have made virtually no progress towards finding a solution.
Reporter: Prime Minister, what is your governments view of Bhutanese policy of literally forcing out citizens of Nepalese descent?
PM: Those Bhutanese refugees, most of them are Bhutanese nationals and they are being evicted forcefully.
Reporter: Do you find Bhutans policy shocking?
PM: Yes, of course. Shocking. As a matter of fact I am committed, my government is committed to human rights also. So on the grounds of humanitarian grounds, we have to look to the Bhutanese problem very sincerely.
Reporter: So far there appears to have been really no progress towards solving this issue. Do you think the government of Bhutan is really genuine about finding a solution?
PM: Because the progress is slow, the attitude, you can just conclude that what is the attitude of the Bhutanese government. They dont want to solve it very quickly. So they want to just go very slow.
Reporter: What solution does Nepal want to this problem?
PM: I think the solution is very, very simple. Let us identify who are the Bhutanese citizens and who are not. Those Bhutanese citizens they should be taken back to Bhutan. That should be the only solution to the problem.
Bhutanese unwanted citizens can only pray that one day their government will agree to take them home. For now, there doesnt seem to be much hope. Neither peaceful resistance nor a campaign of violent attacks by some dissident groups has shaken Bhutanese resolve. The campaign of evictions is still going on.
The government of Bhutan justifies its policy by recalling the fate of its old neighbour - the former kingdom of Sakim. There an uprising by a Nepalese majority led against Sakim being taken over by India in 1975. Bhutan claims that it could meet a similar fate. And so the systematic removal of Bhutans Nepalese-speaking community continues. At present another census is being undertaken. People with relatives here in the refugee camps are being told that they too must leave Bhutan. Everyday new refugee families arrive.
[chanting]
Mangala: They are giving thanks for everything for food that god has done for me
Reporter: Do you think they feel that God has forgotten them?
Mangala; No I don't think they feel that because they are very strong believers. When they are refugees, the culture and religion are more important; you feel all alone and you feel like you have lost everything.
Its pure faith that keeps the people here believing that one day theyll return home. For Mangalas grandmother, its her final wish.
Grandma: I want to go home. I want to go and sleep in my own house. I want to die in my own bed.