A8 | SUNDAY, JUNE 5, 2011 | THE COURIER-JOURNAL KY-

dy slope where his wife, Lah EhPaw, and five children cook theirrations of rice, beans, oil and fishsauce. “My hope is to go to the U.S.,but it is not easy.”

His older brother, Hsar Say, isamong the lucky few who got out.After six years in Umpium Mai, hewas resettled half a world away to anew home in south Louisville in2008 — one of nearly 2,400 refu-gees from Myanmar who havebeen brought to Kentucky since2006.

They’ve quietly grown to be-come one of the commonwealth’slargest refugee groups, spreadamong Louisville, Bowling Greenand Owensboro. Many are concen-trated in Louisville’s South End,where they’ve become an increas-ingly common presence in localfactories, churches and schools.

But their new lives haven’t beeneasy. Most arrive with limited edu-cations, farming backgrounds anda lack of work history from years inthe camps, where there are no jobs,resettlement officials said.

“We are happy to be here, butit’s difficult,” acknowledged HsarSay, 42, who fled Myanmar afterparticipating in 1988 democracyprotests that prompted a militarycrackdown. “I hope to go backsomeday. But I’m not sure where togo back. There is no home any-more.”

U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has long been an outspokencritic of the Myanmar regime andstaunch advocate of sanctions de-signed to bring democratic changethere. But he believes that’s a dis-tant prospect.

“I’ve never spent more time onsomething with fewer results,” saidMcConnell, who said his field of-fices now help the new Kentuckyrefugees whenever possible. “Ican’t envision how you bring thisregime down.”

Despite more than 50,000Myanmar refugees being broughtto the U.S. in recent years, the num-bers in the refugee camps continueto swell.

“Only a minority is resettled,and everybody has left behind fam-ily and friends,” said John Koehlin-ger, a program leader at KentuckyRefugee Ministries, which, alongwith Catholic Charities, has reset-tled refugees. “It’s a cruel thing.”

Squeezed by military juntaLouisville resident Hsar Say’s

roots are deep in Myanmar, a poorcountry of ancient kingdoms andrural rice-farming villages. Theformer British colony gained its in-dependence in 1947, but not beforeforeign rule planted the seeds ofconflict between the Burmese andKaren ethnic groups.

The son of a pig butcher, HsarSay grew up during a time whenthe socialist military regime’s pro-gram of nationalization and mone-tary policies devastated family sav-ings and plunged the country’seconomy into disarray.

His family lived in a modesthome made partly from bamboo ina town outside the former capitalof Rangoon. He attended school ata time when many children did not,but his family sometimes struggledto earn enough money to eat, hesaid.

In the largely agrarian worldwhere Hsar Say lived, many ekedout a living as impoverished sub-sistence farmers, sheltering insmall huts clustered in villages.

Hoping to become a teacher,Hsar Say eventually studied bota-ny at Mandalay University. But inthe summer of 1988, he joined na-tionwide demonstrations thatpushed for democratic change.

The government crackdownleft 3,000 dead in six weeks. Andwhen a new junta, calling itself theState Peace and DevelopmentCouncil, seized control and re-named the country Myanmar, HsarSay began to see his friends arrest-ed or disappear.

“We weren’t safe. I thought if Istayed there, all of us would be ar-rested,” he said. “So we fled.”

He went to the remote junglesnear the Thai border where theKaren National Liberation Armybattled the government. But it lefthim constantly on the run fromarmy attacks that burned villagesand crops and forced men into ser-vitude as laborers.

Hsar Say eventually crossed theThai border to the town of MaeSot, where he found work with adissident advocacy group. He mar-ried and started a family, then de-cided he needed to seek a safer life.

“I tried to avoid the camps. Butat least there are schools andhealth clinics,” he said.

Late last year, after five decadesof military rule, Myanmar’s parlia-

ment elected career army officialThein Sein as president. But thecountry’s critics say the electionwas nothing more than pretense ofdemocracy, and most of the newgovernment’s top leaders are for-mer senior military officers.

In Yangon, Hsar Say’s friendSaw Blessing, a world politics in-structor at the Myanmar Instituteof Theology, said many are stillafraid of the government.

Human-rights abuses, govern-ment corruption and jailing of po-litical prisoners are common,according to the United Nations.

“They control people by con-trolling what people see and hearand do,” said David BrickeyBloomer, who works for an inter-national aid organization operatingin Myamar. “There’s a lot of hope-lessness.”

Safety but uncertaintyOver the Thai border, Hsar

Htoo sat cross-legged on the bam-boo slats of his home in the sprawl-ing Umpium Mai refugee camp,where the huts and small gardensof 4,000 families climb over the hil-ly terrain.

A former boxer, Htoo said po-lice had arrested and interrogatedhim four times in his village nearYangon, accusing him of being inleague with armed Karen rebels.He once spent three months inprison and was banned from work-ing.

In 2009 he headed to the safetyof the camps and now lives a shortwalk away from Hsar Say’s sister-in-law, Si Yo Paw, and her husband,Tha Htau.

The story is similar for ThaHtau, who six years ago was livingin a village when soldiers interro-gated everyone, suspecting themof being connected to Karen sep-aratists, and nearly killed a teacher.

Three years later, Tha Htau’sfamily came to the camps.

Their children attend the campschool, and Htau earns $8 a month

from aid groups distributing food.Still, he said he feels stuck. “Wecannot go forward; we cannot goback,” he said.

Inside the wire, most crampedhuts have no running water, toiletsor electricity. Camp residents relyon international aid groups thatprovide food, basic education andclinics to treat malaria and denguefever.

In a warehouse filled with ra-tion bags of rice and tins of oilstacked on pallets, camp leaderssaid aid groups have been reducingthe help they provide because oftightened budgets.

Hsar Tum Mwae, a camp leaderwho lost his arm fighting with theinsurgency, said many camp resi-dents grow weary of feeling con-fined and having no work.

“If they stay here too long, theyare depressed,” Mwae said.

Some sneak out to buy suppliesor risk working as day laborers innearby villages. Hsar Say recalledseveral times having to bribe Thaipolice to avoid being arrested.

The past six years, the refugees’plight — some have been stuck inthe camps since the 1980s — hasprompted the United Nations towork with other countries to findthem homes.

As a result, U.S. refugee admis-sions have jumped from 1,056 in2004 to18,139 by 2008, the year thatHsar Say was approved with hisfamily to come to America.

He took orientation classes thattaught proper nutrition and cultur-al customs, as well as life skillssuch as how to fly on an airplaneand change a diaper.

“It was a way to try to become areal human,” he said of the decisionto leave his homeland. “You can’tlive in a cage.”

All of Hsar Say’s relatives inter-viewed at the camp said theyhoped to join him abroad, but notall residents want to emigrate.Camp resident Johnson Kim saidmany are eager to return home.

“They just wait for the situation tochange in Burma, but it neverdoes,” he said.

Relief, new trials in U.S.On a spring day in Louisville,

Steve Clark and Annette Ellardpicked up two refugee students todrive them to Atherton HighSchool — a commitment they’vemade to help ensure the 18- and20-year old siblings graduate.

They spend 12-hour days help-ing refugees navigate schools, clin-ics, Medicaid offices and familyhomes. They attend court datesand hospital births and respond toconstant emergency calls — suchas when a refugee got lost on thebus and was found hunkered downfor the night next to a grocerystore.

The couple, who became in-volved in the refugees’ plight aftera mission trip, shares a unique win-dow into their struggles and tri-umphs.

They visited Thar Tin, who re-cently got a job at a Louisvillemeatpacking plant. Sitting near aKaren flag he’d hung on the wall inhis South End apartment, Tin’swife, Gay Htoo, served bowls of co-conut rice pudding as he explainedthat he’d fled his homeland be-cause soldiers were forcing men towork as porters and human mine-sweepers.

He spent nine years at thecamps before coming to Louisvillethree years ago.

“There was no good educationin Burma or in camp; here theyhave good school and good jobs,”he said, noting his children are do-ing well in school. “And you don’thave to sneak out to work.”

Yet many refugees have strug-gled, speaking little or no Englishand usually lacking experiencewith formal schooling and struc-tured jobs.

“They arrive happy to be wherethey are, and then reality sets in;they’re overwhelmed,” Ellard said.

“The reality for many of these refu-gees is they would like to go backhome and live life in the traditionalway, but they don’t have thatchoice.”

Ka Waw, 38, the son of rice farm-ers who arrived in Louisville inFebruary after spending nearly twodecades in a camp, said he was“very nervous to come here.”

Interpreters in schools and hos-pitals are still hard to come by,since most of the refugees speaktheir own Karen language.

Although he’s received help formedical care and housing assist-ance from local resettlement agen-cies, and is studying for his GED,he’s still unemployed. He has anadvantage because he speaks Eng-lish, but his newfound freedom hasbrought a new set of anxieties.

“In the camp, I didn’t worryabout food. We could at least sur-vive,” he said. “I worry now, whowill take care of my family if some-thing happens to me?”

Refugees brought to Americaget a one-time $900 federal payoutfor rent deposit, bus tickets andfurniture.

The resettlement agencies findthem housing, job training, Englishclasses and other aid, funded part-ly by donations. Families can qual-ify for Medicaid or Kentucky Tem-porary Assistance Program assist-ance. Churches are tapped to helpsponsor them.

But the temporary aid runs out.Federal cash assistance lasts justeight months, although familiescan qualify for 60 months’ worth ofwelfare. Resettlement agenciescontinue to work with the familiesto help them find jobs.

Fellow refugee Hsar Say and hisfamily, including his wife, Hsel Ku,and children Ma Ma Sharal, 11, andPoe Khwa Hsee, 7, live in a SouthEnd basement apartment.

More than two years into hisstay in Louisville, he often trans-lates for Catholic Charities, but hasstruggled to find work during therecession. He’s still consideringmoving to Iowa for work in a cattle-processing plant, he said.

The Louisville refugees fromMyanmar have established com-munities at several churches, in-cluding Crescent Hill BaptistChurch. Others gather to practicetheir Buddhist faith.

On any given day, they sharerides to jobs and help translate atschools. At several South Louis-ville apartment complexes, groupsof Myanmar refugees gather to cel-ebrate births and share traditionalmeals along with tips on navigatinglife in the U.S.

Last week, several Karen refu-gees were set to graduate fromAtherton High, among the firstgroup to gain diplomas, Clark said.

Many of those brought here saythey would like to return if thingschanged in Myanmar. But for now,they remain in apartments andmodest homes, quietly carving outa new life while keeping one eye ontheir homeland.

“If there’s no peace, I dare notgo home,” Ka Waw said. “Rightnow, I have no hope of going back.”

Reporter Chris Kenning can be reachedat (502) 582-4697.

MYANMAR | Unable to return home, oppressed refugees wait to be resettledContinued from A1

Photos by Geoff Oliver Bugbee, Special to The Courier-Journal

The huts of 4,000 families cover the hilly terrain at the Umpium Mai refugee camp in Thailand. Nearly 150,000 Myanmar refugees live in nine such camps.Unwilling to return home to a hostile regime, they hope to be among a fortunate few who are resettled in the U.S. or other countries.

Louisville resident Hsar Say fled Myanmar after a 1988 government crackdown, and his extended family lives in theUmpium Mai camp. They include his sister-in-law, Si Yo Paw, right; her husband, Tha Htau; and their children Rosy,Daisy and Harryo. Of his dissident friends, Hsar Say said, “I thought if I stayed there, all of us would be arrested.”

FLEEING MYANMAR

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