Bhutan comes to Adelaide Central Market

Adelaide is the new home for our new Bhutanese community. 100 people forced to leave Bhutan and wait 17 years in refugee camps in Nepal, have been living in Adelaide for about 1 year. 15 of those came on a market tour today...a fantastic sharing of food culture and I cant wait to try some Bhutanese cuisine. Lots of rice that  is boiled (or steamed) and can be white polished rice (called ja chum)or a unique variety of Bhutanese rice which is pink in color (called eue chum).  mustard oil, curries, in Dzongkha those dishes are called tshoem and using very little fish. For detailed info on Bhutanese cuisine ..with recipes visit http://thinley.tripod.com/recipe/Foodintro.html




 Below is an article from the Amnesty website dated back 2008


Bhutanese refugees finally resettle
17 March 2008, 12:28PM


After spending 15 years in limbo, 17 Bhutanese families are the first Bhutanese refugees to leave Nepal. More than 100 000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees have been in refugee camps in Nepal since the early 1990’s. Most of them are Hindu and were forced out of Bhutan.

The 17 Bhutanese families first flew on Sunday 9th March from eastern Nepal to Kathmandu. They flew then to the United States and to New Zealand where they are going to be resettled.

In the 1990’s, measures to stress the majority Buddhist culture had threatened the ethnic Nepalese community in the South of Bhutan. Violence erupted and tens of thousands of Nepali speakers fled to refugee camps in Nepal. Until now, the Bhutanese refugees were kept in UN supervised camps without any resolution in sight.

A few months ago, the United States and a number of other countries included Australia agreed to take tens of thousands of the refugees. This does not mean that each case of the Bhutanese refugees has been solved.

While some Bhutanese refugees are leaving Nepal, the tension is increasing in the camps. Those left behind are experiencing violence and intimidation.

Some refugee leaders claim that the only true solution is complete repatriation to Bhutan and those who want to be resettled in another western country have been harassed and threatened.

Previously, the situation in the camps has been very disquieting. Earlier this month a fire destroyed the homes of 8000 refugees at Goldhap Camp in eastern Nepal.
www.amnesty.org.au/refugees/comments/10628/