Bhutanese refugees are Lhotshampas ("southerners"), a group of Nepali language-speaking Bhutanese people. These refugees registered in refugee camps in eastern Nepal during the 1990s as Bhutanese citizens who fled or were deported from Bhutan during the protest against the Bhutanese government by some of the Lhotshampas demanding human rights and democracy in Bhutan. As Nepal and Bhutan have yet to implement an agreement on repatriation, most Bhutanese refugees have since resettled to North America, Oceania and Europe under the auspices of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Many Lhotshampa also migrated to areas of West Bengal and Assam in India independently of the UNHCR.
Historical background
The earliest surviving records of Bhutan's history show that Tibetan influence already existed from the 6th century. King Songtsen Gampo, who ruled Tibet from 627 to 649, was responsible for the construction of Bhutan's oldest surviving Buddhist temples, the Kyichu Lhakhang in Paro and the Jambay Lhakhang in Bumthang. Settlement in Bhutan by people of Tibetan origin happened by this time.
The first reports of people of Nepalese origin in Bhutan was during 8th century when Padmashambhawa visited Bhutan with Nepali sculptures, architectural engineers and many workers brought by Bhrikuti Devi the Queen of Emperor Songs-ten Gampo. Also during the rule of King Ram Saha around 1620 and 1624 when Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal commissioned a few Newar craftsmen from the Kathmandu valley in Nepal to make a silver stupa to contain the ashes of his father Tempa Nima. Since then, people of Nepalese origin started to settle in uninhabited areas of southern Bhutan. The south soon became the country's main supplier of food. Bhutanese of Nepalese origin, Lhotshampas, were flourishing along with the economy of Bhutan. By 1930, according to British colonial officials, much of the south was under cultivation by a population of Nepali origin that amounted to some 60,000 people.
Settlement in Bhutan of a large number of people from Nepal happened in the early 20th century. This settlement was encouraged by the Bhutan House in Kalimpong for the purpose of collecting taxes for the government. In the 1930s, the Bhutan House settled 5,000 families of Nepali workers in Tsirang alone. In the 1940s, the British Political Officer Sir Basil Gould was quoted as saying that when he warned Sir Raja Sonam Topgay Dorji of Bhutan House of the potential danger of allowing so many ethnic Nepalese to settle in southern Bhutan, he replied that "since they were not registered subjects they could be evicted whenever the need arose." Furthermore, Lhotshampa were forbidden from settling north of the subtropical foothills.
Expatriate Nepalese who resettled in West Bengal and Assam after leaving Bhutan formed the Bhutan State Congress in 1952 to represent the interests of other expatriates in India as well as the communities they had left behind. An effort to expand their operations into Bhutan with a satyagraha (non-violent resistance) movement in 1954 failed in the face of the mobilization of Bhutan's militia and a lack of enthusiasm among those Nepalese in Bhutan, who did not want to risk their already tenuous status. The Bhutanese government further diffused the Bhutan State Congress movement by granting concessions to the minority and allowing Nepalese representation in the National Assembly. The Bhutan State Congress continued to operate in exile until its decline and gradual disappearance in the early 1960s. The leaders in exile were pardoned in 1969 and permitted to return.
Bhutan's Citizenship Act of 1958
Toward the end of the reign of the second King Jigme Wangchuck in the 1950s, the numbers of new immigrants had swelled causing tension between the King and the Dorji family in the Bhutan House. Amnesty was given through the Citizenship Act of 1958 for all those who could prove their presence in Bhutan for at least 10 years prior to 1958. On the other hand, the government also banned further immigration in 1958.