Would they answer the protracted issue of Tibetan resettlement from Nepal to USA?
By Tenzin Choephel
Phayul Correspondent
Kathmandu, April 24 – Two officials of the US State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) visited the Tibetan Reception Center in Kathmandu this morning. Mr. Lawrence Bartlett, Deputy Director for Asia and Near East and Ms. Janice Belz, Deputy Director for admissions are here for a six days visit to initiate the resettlement process of Bhutanese Refugees. The US Embassy issued a press release two days back that they are here to review the situation of refugees including Tibetans and are scheduled to meet some leaders of the Nepali Government. It is not yet known whether they would also talk about resettlement of Tibetans to the US along with Bhutanese Refugees. The US has already agreed to resettle some 5000 Tibetans from Nepal to the US since September 2005 but the actual process has not begun due to alleged non co-operation from the Government of Nepal to issue exit permit for those Tibetans who would resettle in the US.
Mr. Lawrence Bartlett while talking to the Tibetan press said, “it is one of the important projects that we support here in Nepal, the US Government gave money to build extra facility here at the Reception Center, the activities here are in good order, we talked with some of the refugees who are coming across and hear their stories”. Ms. Chrystal Kaplan of the US Embassy added that, “we have expressed our appreciation to the Government of Nepal and to UNHCR for continuing to allow Tibetans who would like to visit India and to live in India to transit smoothly and we understand that the past year has been very successful and the operation has been very smooth and we are very appreciative of that”.
However, they declined to comment on the Tibetan resettlement issue at the moment and said they would rather address those questions on Thursday afternoon during a scheduled press conference. They also met with some important Tibetan officials this morning but it is not yet known what they talked about.
In September 2005, the Tibetan Government announced about the plan to resettle Tibetans from Nepal to USA. In March 2006, the Tibetan Prime Minister mentioned that the criteria for the selection of candidates would be formulated by December 2005 and in January 2006 a committee in charge of the selection would be established in Nepal. But due to non co-operation from Nepal Government, the plan is delayed and the future of this plan is uncertain, however, the plan would not be withdrawn since it was approved by the US Congress.
All the Tibetans are still eagerly waiting for any announcement from the Tibetan Government and know the selection process. We would have wait and see how the Tibetans in Nepal would react and accept the selection process. It could be speculated that the selection process would start in 2007 along with selection of about 60,000 Bhutanese refugees by the US government. We would have to see if these visiting US officials could resolve the problem of resettlement of Tibetans from Nepal to USA, literally speaking, would they be able to convince leaders of the Nepali Government to issue exit permit for Tibetans.
