(TibetanReview.net, Aug09’26) – The police in Nepal have put the number of Tibetan refugees living in the country at over 3,500, the second largest group after Bhutanese refugees, with the total being over 10,000, reported myrepublica.nagariknetwork.com Aug 7. The report said the police made the figures public after misleading comments and discussions about refugees began circulating on social media.
The report cited police spokesperson Abi Narayan Kafle as saying 6,272 Bhutanese refugees were currently living in Nepal.
Kafle has put the number of Tibetan refugees living in the country, per police data, at 3,527, followed by 527 Rohingya refugees.
The vast majority of Tibetan refugees living in the country remain unregistered and therefore uncounted. Nepal stopped registering Tibetan refugees decades ago due to pressure from China which insists they are illegal migrants.
The refugees from Bhutan are ethnically Nepali (known as Lhotshampas) and the vast majority of their original total of over 1,00,000 – expelled between 1988 and 1993 – have been resettled in the West, starting in 2007. They were mostly taken in by the United States (85,000 individuals). The other counties included Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Denmark, and The Netherlands.
The Himalayan kingdom threw them out as illegal migrants and, reportedly, in a political crackdown.