Story from the COURIER MAIL NEWSPAPER on AUSTRALIA DAY

This story appeared in the Courier Mail Newspaper on January 26th. The story of Karen fleeing Burma is a common story. Many of our students tell of being carried as babies in the arms of family memebers as they fled through the Burmese jungle into Thailand. Connect works primarily with Karen who choose to stay out of the refugee camps hoping to one day return to their own land. This is a costly, but understandable, decision for a Karen family to make. Connect continues to embrace, educate and empower these amazing people.

In order to continue our work here at the Thai/Burma border we need sponsors for current and future students. If you can sponsor a child please contact Ruth at connect3e@hotmail.com for further information.

SCATTERED among the colourful throngs at the more than 60 citizenship ceremonies around Queensland this Australia Day weekend are those whose life stories astonish,
gladden the spirit or rend the heart. Tamla Dwel’s does all three. Sitting in the lounge of his Aspley, north Brisbane, home surrounded by family and friends, the 59-year-old refugee from Burma told The Courier-Mail his story ahead of his own citizenship ceremony. With good humour, he points to his nose, explaining how a bear that attacked him in the Burmese jungle where he lived had nearly bitten it
completely off. This was the second time he’d been attacked by blasted bears, he says. The first time he’d been able to kill his large, brown antagonist. But the
second time he’d been unarmed and had been badly wounded. In the bears versus Tamla Dwel match, he laughs, it is so far a one-all draw.

More seriously, he says the Karen people of Burma — along with other minority ethnic groups — have long been persecuted in the South-East Asian state. But life for them under the junta governments that have ruled since 1962 has become intolerable. ‘‘I spent my whole life in the jungle living in fear and move, move, move,’’ he says, shrugging his wiry shoulders. ‘‘The Burmese military destroy our places again and again.’’ Tamla says one of his brothers was shot dead. Another was tortured in captivity and died.

In 1997 Tamla and members of his family who’d survived yet another burning rampage by the army fled across the Thai border. They’d ended up in one of the nine major refugee camps along the Burma-Thai border, where an estimated 140,000 Burmese
refugees languish. The family spent nine agonising years waiting in the camp before they were granted Australian residency on humanitarian grounds, joining a
growing number of Burmese refugees who are being settled in and around Brisbane.
Tamla’s son, Dwel Htoo Dwel, smiles widely as he tells how much he’s looking forward to becoming one of the more than 3200 Queenslanders who will become Australian citizens at the weekend — the 60th anniversary of the first citizenship ceremony. ‘‘I
feel good," the 26-year-old, who is working as a roofer, laughs. ‘‘Here is very nice, very friendly — even the police are friendly.’’ He, like his father, is studying English at TAFE. Both struggle to find the right words to express how they feel. Dwel Htoo says it’s important because it’ll be the first time he’ll be a
citizen of any country, given he wasn’t recognised as one in Burma.
Tamla nods. ‘‘For the first time I’m not (seen as an) animal. I am human,’’
he says with a triumphant grin.