A Bhutanese refugee was shot dead by police trying to control riots in a camp run by the United Nations in eastern Nepal, officials said Sunday, according to DPA. Police said they opened fired to bring the situation under control after two groups of refugees clashed in Beldangi camps housing Bhutanese of Nepalese origin. Police fired several rounds into the air and into the crowd. At least four other refugees sustained bullet injuries. The refugees also hurled stones at the riot police injuring four officers. Police said the clash erupted after a camp manager accused "some individuals" of possessing weapons and creating terror in the camp. The camp manager was attacked by the accused refugee, with other refugees coming to his rescue. The mob then set fire to a building housing the camp management office, the police said. The clashes came days after the New York-based rights group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), said refugees in favour of resettlement in the United States were being threaten with violence by those who saw repatriation back to Bhutan as the solution. HRW said such threats were causing tensions among the refugee groups. According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, there are just over 104,000 Bhutanese refugees, mostly ethnic Nepalese, living in seven UN-run camps in eastern Nepal. The refugees began to arrive in Nepal in the early 1990s during alleged acts of persecution by the Bhutanese government based on cultural, lingual and religious differences. In April, the United States formally announced that it was willing to resettle over 60,000 refugees. Some other countries including Norway and Canada have also said they would resettle refugees but have not made public the numbers they are willing to take in.
