For the first time in the US Congress, the Bhutanese American Advocacy Day has been celebrated.
There are around 80,000 Bhutanese refugees in the US.
Organised by the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) early this week on November 17, the first-of-its-kind event featured a congressional briefing along with meetings with the State Department and several House and Senate offices, the foundation said in a statement.
The members of HAF met Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, the only Hindu lawmaker in the US House of Representatives.
The briefing, titled "Casualties of Gross National Happiness", was held in conjunction with the Congressional Nepal Caucus co-chairs Congressmen Ander Crenshaw and Jared Polis.
The Bhutanese delegation also asked the State Department and members of Congress to assist in applying multilateral diplomatic pressure on Bhutan to repatriate refugees remaining in the camps of Nepal as well as those resettled in other countries who long to return to their ancestral homeland.
Panelists sought to educate policy makers on the challenges endured by Bhutanese Hindus resettling here in the US, as well as the ongoing human rights concerns in Bhutan.
Bhutanese Hindu refugees living in major cities throughout the US are facing a number of challenges, including a high incidence of mental illness and suicide, trouble obtaining employment and difficulty in retaining their cultural and religious traditions.
"Although Bhutan has long been celebrated for its 'Gross National Happiness' index, little is known about the brutal ethnic cleansing campaign it carried out in the early 1990's, when more than 100,000 mostly Bhutanese of Nepali descent were stripped of their citizenship and expelled from the country under the 'One Nation, One People' policy," said Dr Chhabi Lal Sharma, a psychiatrist and community leader, who spoke at the briefing.
