to BURMA from CANADA
David Townsend SJ
tells us of the plight of a refugee who managed to ‘escape’ to Canada- with your help
There is one Karen - an ethnic minority refugee from Burma - who has been much in my thoughts at this time. Yesterday he phoned me from Canada, where he has started his new life in freedom, as a person with legal papers, as an immigrant refugee. The Burmese Karen people first started to spill over the border into Thailand as refugees in 1984.
The actual process of getting him into a programme (and keeping him in it!) began twenty months ago. However, it was about four years ago that I first raised the question of his future in Thailand; there is no future here for such a person, either as a refugee or as an illegal migrant. Shwe Bo, not his real name, was working in an NGO (non-governmental organisation) assisting people from Burma, and he was adamant that he wanted to stay to continue doing this. But he had no easily verifiable academic qualifications. The one certificate, a Diploma in Business Studies, he had received was in another name - one he was using at that time to safeguard his personal security. Eventually I was able to convince him that he would be left behind; that those he was helping would overtake him, be better qualified, making him redundant, older and still without recognised academic qualifications. This convincing took a good two years, so strong was his determination to help others fleeing Burma, who were worse off than he.
With Shwe Bo’s agreement, I was able to start the process with the Canadian authorities. However, first we had to find sponsors in Canada. For this I was able to use my former Jesuit Refugee Service contacts. Unfortunately, the Canadian group was sponsoring so many people from Burma that they were short of funds. This is where you and my other friends in the UK and elsewhere come in. I was able, because of your generosity, to pledge the 2,000 $US needed by the Canadian group for his sponsorship. This money has gone with him to Canada. The Canadian side of the process took the best part of a year to achieve. Eventually all was cleared in Canada and Shwe Bo was called to be interviewed by the officials of the Canadian Embassy in Bangkok, and was given a medical check by the IOM (International Organisation for Migration).
Matters went well, if slowly; Shwe Bo’s migration to Canada was not a high priority on the scale of world events. During this time I worked with him to improve his English language skills and his general knowledge. Shwe Bo’s comprehension of spoken English was excellent, so we focussed on his reading ability and his written English. An early test at the British Council showed that he was ‘upper intermediate’ in spoken English and ‘lower intermediate’ in other areas. After an intensive course he later obtained a great score of 540. Shwe Bo is a voracious reader.
There were some hiccups in verifying that he was a genuine refugee registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). These difficulties had to be addressed and they slowed down progress. Eventually it was decided that the quickest, and probably the only way, he could be verified would be for him to go to live in the Thai-Burma border jungle refugee camp in which his parents had registered him (if they had not registered him he would have been in some serious trouble getting clearance to leave Thailand for anywhere).
So a week after Easter, in April this year, I drove him to the small Thai town on the border with Burma nearest to his refugee camp. It was at the height of the hottest part of the year, with temperatures in excess of 40C, just before the rains come. It is a 400km round trip through the mountains, alongside winding, boulder-strewn, mountain rivers that had all but dried up since the last rains in early November the previous year. All was burnt a dry brown. Many trees had shed their leaves, and those remaining drooped, limp and exhausted. Signs warned of the danger of fires.
I could not take him further. He had to make the three hour journey through the jungle himself. Or rather he had to find someone to drive him on the jungle tracks, past the various security checkpoints to the camp itself. I would probably not be allowed through the checkpoints, and would, in any case, draw unwanted attention. Of course he had to pay his way through these. I gave him money for this and also to ease the progress of any necessary business with the Karen refugee officials inside the camp.
Once in the camp he would receive no information about anything. There is no phone and no electricity. The minimum necessities for survival and medical care are provided by various NGOs. He had a way of sending and receiving letters and he managed to receive all the letters I sent, bar two which went missing. He was worried about malaria - which has a very vicious drug-resistant strain on the Thai-Burma border. However, it was another mosquito-borne disease, elephantiasis, which was on the increase in the camp whilst he was there. All he suffered was a skin complaint due to the water. So for four months he had to endure the enforced boredom of endless days with no occupation - he had always been very active in some service or other in various NGOs helping people like himself. Shwe Bo was anxious that nothing was happening and that he would rot in the camp for ever.
Then suddenly I received a phone call from him, barely six days before he eventually left Thailand. He had received the call from UNHCR to make his own way out of the camp to the nearby Thai town. He was phoning from there. UNCHR was to pick him up, together with some others who were being resettled overseas, to go to the nearest airport. The next day he flew from the extreme north-west corner of the Thai-Burma border to Bangkok, and from there by British Airways to London, onward to Toronto, and so to Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Before he departed I made the same 400km trip I had made with him in April to wish him ‘Godspeed’, through the now rain-sodden mountains, alongside the same mountain rivers now surging with the monsoon run-off, all now lively green, with the teak trees bedecked with their whitish-yellowish-green blossoms. What a contrast this journey to freedom was, to the earlier trip into isolated confinement of the refugee camp.
May God bless Shwe Bo and all those who will assist him to orientate and establish himself in the totally new and alien culture of Canada. May he continue to grow in his concern and ability to help those less fortunate than himself.
tells us of the plight of a refugee who managed to ‘escape’ to Canada- with your help
There is one Karen - an ethnic minority refugee from Burma - who has been much in my thoughts at this time. Yesterday he phoned me from Canada, where he has started his new life in freedom, as a person with legal papers, as an immigrant refugee. The Burmese Karen people first started to spill over the border into Thailand as refugees in 1984.
The actual process of getting him into a programme (and keeping him in it!) began twenty months ago. However, it was about four years ago that I first raised the question of his future in Thailand; there is no future here for such a person, either as a refugee or as an illegal migrant. Shwe Bo, not his real name, was working in an NGO (non-governmental organisation) assisting people from Burma, and he was adamant that he wanted to stay to continue doing this. But he had no easily verifiable academic qualifications. The one certificate, a Diploma in Business Studies, he had received was in another name - one he was using at that time to safeguard his personal security. Eventually I was able to convince him that he would be left behind; that those he was helping would overtake him, be better qualified, making him redundant, older and still without recognised academic qualifications. This convincing took a good two years, so strong was his determination to help others fleeing Burma, who were worse off than he.
With Shwe Bo’s agreement, I was able to start the process with the Canadian authorities. However, first we had to find sponsors in Canada. For this I was able to use my former Jesuit Refugee Service contacts. Unfortunately, the Canadian group was sponsoring so many people from Burma that they were short of funds. This is where you and my other friends in the UK and elsewhere come in. I was able, because of your generosity, to pledge the 2,000 $US needed by the Canadian group for his sponsorship. This money has gone with him to Canada. The Canadian side of the process took the best part of a year to achieve. Eventually all was cleared in Canada and Shwe Bo was called to be interviewed by the officials of the Canadian Embassy in Bangkok, and was given a medical check by the IOM (International Organisation for Migration).
Matters went well, if slowly; Shwe Bo’s migration to Canada was not a high priority on the scale of world events. During this time I worked with him to improve his English language skills and his general knowledge. Shwe Bo’s comprehension of spoken English was excellent, so we focussed on his reading ability and his written English. An early test at the British Council showed that he was ‘upper intermediate’ in spoken English and ‘lower intermediate’ in other areas. After an intensive course he later obtained a great score of 540. Shwe Bo is a voracious reader.
There were some hiccups in verifying that he was a genuine refugee registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). These difficulties had to be addressed and they slowed down progress. Eventually it was decided that the quickest, and probably the only way, he could be verified would be for him to go to live in the Thai-Burma border jungle refugee camp in which his parents had registered him (if they had not registered him he would have been in some serious trouble getting clearance to leave Thailand for anywhere).
So a week after Easter, in April this year, I drove him to the small Thai town on the border with Burma nearest to his refugee camp. It was at the height of the hottest part of the year, with temperatures in excess of 40C, just before the rains come. It is a 400km round trip through the mountains, alongside winding, boulder-strewn, mountain rivers that had all but dried up since the last rains in early November the previous year. All was burnt a dry brown. Many trees had shed their leaves, and those remaining drooped, limp and exhausted. Signs warned of the danger of fires.
I could not take him further. He had to make the three hour journey through the jungle himself. Or rather he had to find someone to drive him on the jungle tracks, past the various security checkpoints to the camp itself. I would probably not be allowed through the checkpoints, and would, in any case, draw unwanted attention. Of course he had to pay his way through these. I gave him money for this and also to ease the progress of any necessary business with the Karen refugee officials inside the camp.
Once in the camp he would receive no information about anything. There is no phone and no electricity. The minimum necessities for survival and medical care are provided by various NGOs. He had a way of sending and receiving letters and he managed to receive all the letters I sent, bar two which went missing. He was worried about malaria - which has a very vicious drug-resistant strain on the Thai-Burma border. However, it was another mosquito-borne disease, elephantiasis, which was on the increase in the camp whilst he was there. All he suffered was a skin complaint due to the water. So for four months he had to endure the enforced boredom of endless days with no occupation - he had always been very active in some service or other in various NGOs helping people like himself. Shwe Bo was anxious that nothing was happening and that he would rot in the camp for ever.
Then suddenly I received a phone call from him, barely six days before he eventually left Thailand. He had received the call from UNHCR to make his own way out of the camp to the nearby Thai town. He was phoning from there. UNCHR was to pick him up, together with some others who were being resettled overseas, to go to the nearest airport. The next day he flew from the extreme north-west corner of the Thai-Burma border to Bangkok, and from there by British Airways to London, onward to Toronto, and so to Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Before he departed I made the same 400km trip I had made with him in April to wish him ‘Godspeed’, through the now rain-sodden mountains, alongside the same mountain rivers now surging with the monsoon run-off, all now lively green, with the teak trees bedecked with their whitish-yellowish-green blossoms. What a contrast this journey to freedom was, to the earlier trip into isolated confinement of the refugee camp.
May God bless Shwe Bo and all those who will assist him to orientate and establish himself in the totally new and alien culture of Canada. May he continue to grow in his concern and ability to help those less fortunate than himself.