Human Rights Center and the migrant worker shelter Cheongju Nepal Shelter, Shrestha met with company management staff twice last week.“I want to change workplaces. If that won’t work, I’d like to go to Nepal first for treatment and then come back and work for a different company,” he said.
In response, the management staff proposed “moving the team.” When Shrestha refused, the staff told him he should go back to Nepal and instructed him to get a plane ticket there as part of procedure.On Aug. 7, Shrestha talked until three in the morning with colleagues, complaining he felt “no meaning in life” and had “no choices.” When he failed to show up for morning calisthenics, his dormitory roommate went looking for him and found his cold body. Toward the end of his note, Shrestha mentioned the family he was leaving behind in Nepal.
“There’s 3.2 million won [US$2,800] in my bank account. Please give that money to my wife and sister,” he wrote.
News of Shrestha’s death spread to the outside when Sunita Pandey, the 40-year-old manager of Cheongju Nepal Shelter in North Chungcheong Province, translated the note into Korean and shared it on the Facebook page for Nepal with Safe, a Cheongju youth migrant worker human rights organization.