Twenty-four-year-old Ganga Neupane has lived in a refugee camp for the past 11 years. She has no guarantee of a way home. She tells her story to iVillage…

Background in brief
Ganga is one of nearly 100,000 Bhutanese refugees currently living in seven camps in eastern Nepal. The influx of Bhutanese refugees into Nepal began in late 1991 following a crackdown on citizenship laws by the Bhutanese authorities. Under that rule, tens of thousands of the mainly Nepali-speaking Hindu people in southern Bhutan - who had no proof of identity - were forced to leave. At the same time, the ruling government adopted a new policy known as 'one nation, one people' trying to impose one culture, religion and language on a country that was previously multicultural and multilingual.

Bhutan, the world's only Buddhist kingdom, is perched in the eastern Himalayas in Southern Asia, surrounded by India to the south, east and west and Tibet to the north.

Ganga's story
'I was 11 years old,' says Ganga. 'I had no idea about democracy at that age but I knew that a lot of people were very unhappy with 'one nation, one people'. It meant that all the people in the country had to wear the same clothes and speak the same language. The Nepalese language, taught in many schools in southern Bhutan, was suddenly taken off the curriculum. If Nepalese people were found wearing the wrong clothes, they could be fined or punished.'

Not surprisingly, many Nepalese villagers revolted against the policy, organising pro-democracy demonstrations. The government retaliated by branding anyone taking part 'anti-national', for which they were punished.

'Following the demonstrations, the schools in Southern Bhutan were closed and there was nowhere for the students to go,' says Ganga. 'My school became a detention centre. The Army started arresting the heads of households who were involved, they were tortured in detention centres. At the same time, the women were used; in essence, they were raped. Some of the women even gave birth. It was very easy for the Army to misuse their power. For many of these women, their husbands were either in prison or had left the country.

A family torn apart
'At this time my parents sent me to India to study,' says Ganga. 'But there was another reason - even though I was just 11 years old, the army officers used to ask for girls. My parents were scared.'

Ganga's father was one of those arrested on suspicion of helping the pro-democracy movement. 'They accused him of giving money to the movement and sent him to prison for 13-and-a-half months. When they couldn't find any proof, he was finally released but he was in very poor health. And because of the activities inside the prison, he had almost lost his mind.'

Ganga's parents then fled to Nepal when it became clear that life in Bhutan would be intolerable. At that time Ganga was still studying in India. 'The first that I knew they had left the country was a month later when there was no-one to send me money for my schooling. My parents had left the country with nothing aside from the jewellery around my mother's neck. I met them in Nepal where she sold her jewellery to rent a house. The money she raised from that gave us enough rent for two to three months.'

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