Lala Win poses for a portrait in front of her Buddhist shrine in her Toronto apartment. Her village was attacked the day after she gave birth to her first child, forcing her to flee to the Thai border. After the Burmese military realized she had fled with her child, the soldiers then executed her father as a punishment to the family.
Over the last five years in Asia, I've had the opportunity to cover the Burmese refugee crisis by visiting camps and interviewing people stuck on the border. When I arrived back in Toronto, I decided to visit some of the Burmese families that have made it over to Canada through the UNHCR refugee resettlement program. Although I interviewed families and individuals with different religious and ethnic backgrounds, their stories of refuge all share a same theme: sorrow.
These brief anecdotes of survival and resettlement by no means encompass the entirety of their grief. As Canada begins to accept a new wave of refugees, the inevitable conversation will shift to the logistics of our country's refugee program, which, frankly, is a conversation that needs to be had.
Below are portraits of Toronto's Burmese refugee community with the few personal items that made it with them on their journey to Canada.
from VICE http://ift.tt/1TVAc4t
via cheap web hosting
No comments:
Post a Comment