A reminder of the still unresolved and evolving predicament of Nepal’s Bhutanese refugees
A. ANGELO D’SILVA
BBC doc The Forgotten Refugees, is an admirably succinct summary of the Bhutanese refugee situation in Nepal and captures the complex human calculations of the resettlement solution.
BBC correspondent and director Amanda Burrell begins by following Chandra, a refugee and midwife, whose narrative describing camp life intersects nicely with a sequence of the impressively efficient food operations, representative of the humanitarian aid work honed over the 20 years of the camps’ existence. More importantly, it allows us to appreciate the trauma of Chandra’s and her elderly parents’ expulsion from Bhutan and their current plight, illustrative of the experience of many of her peers.
For the middle portion of the film Burrell shifts to Bhutan, where the crew is allowed a brief day visit to that gorgeous and tightly restricted country. It is here that she garners some of the most intriguing interviews, interspersed as it is with weak Lonely Planet-esque cultural relativisms. There are chilling comments by Michael Rutland, an apologist for the Bhutanese position, that gives a frightening double-edge to the response to human rights activists protesting the citizenships act of 1988: “Because harmony was so much part of the way of life? it was very difficult to know how to deal with this sudden promotion of disharmony? I think measures were taken to try to promote harmony.”
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