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Basu: Refugees search for home, hope [DesMoinesRegister.com]

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Sorrow can feel overwhelming if you’ve lost someone, can’t find a job or pay your bills. But imagine also being uprooted from all that’s familiar, not speaking the language or understanding the customs, and being home-bound. Then, to round out the challenges, you have to fight evil spirits, satisfy the lurking souls of the ancestors, and contend with preordained karma.

Bhutan is a small kingdom in the Asian Himalayan mountains, known ironically for the happiness index it introduced in the 1970s to replace the gross national product. But its actions, beginning the following decade, brought suffering and sadness to those Bhutan expelled for not dressing and speaking in conformity with the ethnic majority. Most of the evicted were Hindus of Nepali heritage, with roots in Bhutan dating to the 1860s. They spent two decades in Nepal’s refugee camps, until the U.N. High Commission for Refugees in 2007 began relocating them on a permanent basis. America has taken in 75,000 Bhutanese refugees since then. But with 20 self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people,they have the highest suicide rate in the country.

 

[For more of this story, written by Rekha Basu, go to http://www.desmoinesregister.c...-home-hope/30815971/]

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