Britain opens its doors to all Gurkha veterans

LONDON (Associated Press) – The storied Nepalese warriors who have served in the British military for nearly two centuries were given the automatic right Thursday to settle in Britain, gaining a hard-won victory after years of lawsuits and lobbying.

The Gurkhas’ fierceness has carried them through wars in the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan. But their latest triumph owes much to an aristocratic television star who used her passion and popularity to wring concessions from politicians.

Actress Joanna Lumley, whose articulate advocacy for Gurkhas made her the public face of the campaign, said the decision made it “a fantastic day for my brothers and sisters.”

She joined Gurkhas gathered outside Parliament in screams of “Ayo Gurkhali!” – the soldiers’ famous battle cry.

Lumley told the AP last year that she was drawn to the campaign after hearing her father’s stories of fighting alongside the Gurkhas during World War II.

The Gurkhas have served Britain with distinction since 1815, through the conflagrations of the 20th century and into the 21st. More than 100,000 enlisted in World War I, and similar numbers in WWII. Thirteen have been awarded Britain’s highest military honor, the Victoria Cross.

    

The intense competition for places within Britain’s Gurkha Brigade – now only 3,800 strong – produces “extremely committed” soldiers who are lauded for their heroism and ferocity, said Briton Alex Northcott, who served as a captain with the Gurkhas in the early 1990s and was saved by one from drowning in a swamp during an exercise in Borneo.

    

“To watch them in action is absolutely petrifying,” Northcott said.

Nevertheless, British officials have long resisted the Gurkhas’ campaign for more rights, and in 2004 allowed only those who had retired after July 1, 1997, to settle in the country. It had argued that those who retired before 1997 – when the Gurkha base was in Hong Kong – had weak links with Britain.

    

Other Gurkhas had to apply on a case-by-case basis, which campaigners said left out thousands of Nepalese veterans because the requirements were too stringent. The government had said lifting the restrictions would lead to a flood of up to 100,000 Nepalese migrants that could cost the British taxpayer 1.4 billion pounds ($2.2 billion).

    

That argument was thrown out this week, when a committee of lawmakers wrote the prime minister a letter saying the projected immigration figures had been “greatly overblown.”

    

One analyst said the government had no choice but to reverse its stance, hoping to win back some support before next year’s elections after being rocked by an unrelated scandal over lawmakers’ expenses.

“A government that’s involved with an election just on the horizon is going to be reluctant to take on an extremely well-organized and apparently quite popular movement,” said Steven Fielding, the director of the Center for British Politics at Nottingham University.

    

“The British public have a massive sense of gratitude and affection to the Gurkhas,” he said.

In Nepal, former Gurkha soldiers said they were planning to celebrate.

“We have struggled and fought for years to get these rights, and finally we have achieved it,” said Capt. Kul Prasad Pun, who served 24 years before retiring in 1994.

But he noted the new rules only allowed veterans’ children to settle in Britain if they are under 18 – which would make it difficult for elderly veterans to come to the U.K.

“In our society we parents and children live together as joint families, so barring family members over 18 is not suitable for us,” Pun said.

    

A dispute over Gurkhas’ pension rights is still outstanding. Gurkhas who retired before 1997 receive less than those who retired later. Home Office Secretary Jacqui Smith said Thursday the government’s position was unchanged.

Britain’s experience with the Gurkhas echoes that of its one-time imperial rival, France, which in 2006 agreed to pay full pensions to veterans from its former colonies. Previously, colonial veterans were paid less than a third of the money given to their French counterparts.

Lumley set to win Gurkha campaign

Joanna Lumley's Gurkha campaign was poised for victory today amid reports that Gordon Brown is to allow all the regiment's veterans to settle in the UK

In a major retreat, the Prime Minister is expected to announce as early as tomorrow that the 36,000 former Gurkhas who retired before 1997 will be given the right to live in this country.

The veterans' families are also likely to be given the same entitlement despite earlier Government claims that the reform could cost taxpayers £1.4 billion.

In a decision which infuriated Ms Lumley and other Gurkha supporters, ministers had previously cited the potential expense as justification for new rules which would have severely limited the right of the pre-1997 veterans to move to the UK.

The Prime Minister was forced to order a re-think after suffering a damaging Commons defeat, which also triggered a face to face meeting between him and Ms Lumley and a subsequent extraordinary impromptu press conference in which the actress appeared to be dictating policy to Home Office immigration minister Phil Woolas.

Reports today suggested that Mr Brown has now decided to scrap all restrictions and to give all Gurkha veterans an entitlement to live in this country.

That could open the door to as many as 36,000 veterans, plus roughly twice as many of their family members, although campaigners say that the overall number of arrivals is likely to be no more than 10,000 because many of the retired soldiers will still prefer to stay in their home country of Nepal.

Gurkha supporters will, however, be studying the detail of the looming announcement closely to ensure that the fine print matches any promises that are made by ministers so that all veterans are genuinely covered by any new right to settle.

The original row over the Gurkhas' fate was triggered by a court ruling last year which declared unlawful the Government's previous policy of denying Gurkha veterans who retired before 1997 the right to settle in the UK.

That raised hopes among campaigners that all those who had retired before this date would be allowed to move to this country, but ministers responded instead by announcing more limited reforms.

At the time, the Home Office said these changes would have allowed up to 10,000 veterans and family members to come to this country, although Ms Lumley condemned their decision as shameful as campaigners suggested that the true total would be as few as 400.

The Government's surprise Commons defeat and Ms Lumley's high profile campaign forced Mr Brown to order a review of the new rules and to promise to announce revised regulations by the end of July.

With his political authority weakened by the controversy over Parliamentary expenses, it appears, however, that the Prime Minister has now decided that to bow to popular demand and to abandon any effort to limit the Gurkhas' rights to settle here.

Gurkha veterans who retired after 1997 are already entitled to live in Britain following an earlier decision by the Government.

London Evening Standard

Britain falls short of handing ex-Gurkhas full settlement rights

LONDON, April 24, 2009 (AFP) - Britain will only give 4,300 ex-Gurkhas settlement rights, the Home Office said Friday, falling short of campaigners’ demands that they be given to all Nepalese ex-soldiers who retired before 1997.

“Over 4,000 ex Gurkhas and around 6,000 spouses and children will qualify for settlement rights in the UK,” the Home Office said in a statement. It confirmed separately that the figure would likely be about 4,300.

The ministry outlined a string of conditions, one of which must be met to secure settlement, including 20 or more years’ service or awards for bravery.

At the moment, only Gurkha soldiers who retired after 1997 – when their base was moved from Hong Kong to Britain – have the automatic right to settle permanently.

All other foreign soldiers in the British army can settle in Britain after four years’ service.

Martin Howe, a lawyer representing the campaigners, called the decision “nothing short of scandalous” and an “insult” and pledged they would continue their legal battle.

“We are disgusted with what we see today,” he said at a protest outside the Houses of Parliament following the decision.

Less than 100 Gurkhas would actually meet the criteria set by the government, campaigners said.

The Nepalese former soldiers have staged repeated protests seeking an injunction obliging ministers to implement a High Court ruling last September that approved extending the right to stay in Britain permanently to all Gurkha veterans.

Around 3,500 Gurkhas currently serve in the British Army, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 45,000 in total have died serving Britain.

Officials say that since 2004, over 6,000 former Gurkhas and family members have been granted settlement in the UK under immigration rules.

The Talk of Nepal: The Future of Its Gurkhas

By Anuj Chopra for Time in Kathmandu

The kukri strapped to Mekhman Tamang's hip belt is more than an ordinary family heirloom. When his father bequeathed the traditional knife to him 10 years ago, Tamang, a third-generation Gurkha soldier, also inherited the stout-hearted reputation tethered to thousands of Nepalese men who fought for foreign countries before him. Recruited by the British army in 1999, the 30-year-old soldier has braved hails of Taliban bullets during two recent stints in Afghanistan. But he is uncertain whether he will be able to pass down his kukri — or the Gurkha legacy — to his son.

For nearly two centuries, hundreds of thousands of Gurkhas have been plucked from the foothills of the Himalayas to serve primarily in the British and Indian armies. They have often been given dangerous front-line duties in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Borneo, the Falklands, Kososo, Afghanistan and Iraq. The British army has awarded more than a dozen Victoria Crosses to Nepalese soldiers over the years, but despite the job's prestige at home, Gurkhas have long complained of being treated differently from native soldiers. For decades, Gurkhas have struggled with the British government for parity of pay, pension, and perks, and more recently, with British immigration officials over their right to settle in the U.K.

But the toughest battle ahead for the Gurkha tradition may lie in Kathmandu. In the augury of events since the Maoists seized power in Nepal last year, marking an end to a decade-long armed struggle, rebel-leader turned prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has openly expressed his antipathy for the practice of young Nepalese men serving in foreign armies as mercenaries for hire. Once in office, he announced that he would discontinue Gurkha recruitments, an undignified and degrading legacy in his eyes.

It was an unpopular opinion. The job is a popular and lucrative post in a country where unemployment hovers around 42%, and his announcement spurred vehement street protests late last year from old, new and future Gurkha recruits. Dahal promptly reneged, announcing in a February meeting with a visiting delegation of British parliamentarians that the recruitment of Nepali men into their forces had bolstered ties between the two nations, and that he was not in favor of stopping recruitments. But behind closed doors, Nepalese officials still squirm at the thought of Nepalese men being paid for fighting another nation's war. "This is an obnoxious practice," said one official from Nepal's foreign ministry, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press. "Nepal will find ways provide employment within our country."

In its small office in Kathmandu, Gurkha Army Ex-Servicemen's Organization, which has been campaigning for pension parity between retired Gurkha and British soldiers, says it is ready "to declare war" with the government should the prime minister change his mind again. About 3500 Gurkha soldiers are now serving Queen Elizabeth II, but tens of thousands apply to serve each year from Nepal's poverty-stricken Himalayan hills. Candidates, scrambling for a few hundred spots, have been known to try to fake their way; in 2008, nearly 500 false applications were detected, and dozens of candidates — required to be between 17 and 21 — fibbed about their age.

Their enthusiasm, however misguided, is understandable. Nepal's decade-long insurgency hollowed the country's development, leaving nearly half of its population living below the poverty line and an average Nepali farmer earning roughly $300 a year. By contrast, Gurkha privates in the British army take home $28,000 a year. "Becoming a Gurkha soldier is a burning ambition for every hill boy," said Tamang's father, Saharman Tamang, 50, who served the British army for 12 years. "Those who make it are hailed as the 'lucky ones.' Money is not the only draw. Those recruited are whisked away to be educated, trained, shown the world and provided with a decent life."

Tamang, who worked as a farmer before he was became a soldier, doubts Nepal will ever achieve a total ban on Gurkha recruitment. If Gurkha recruitment is stopped, Nepal's flailing economy will take a hit; each year, the country receives $1.1 billion in remittances — nearly 18% of the national GDP — from the Gurkhas and other two million Nepalis serving abroad. Even with its new democratically elected government, there is no guarantee how long peace will last in a still fractious Nepalese society. "If Nepal was politically stable and there were enough jobs," says Saharman Tamang, "Our young men would not go to the frontlines fighting another country's war."