Aung San Suu Kyi's recent historic democratic victory in the Myanmar elections seems to have brought positive change for the country but for a whole generation of former child refugees, life was conflict ridden. Burmese born Ngelay Aung Soe fled Myanmar as a child with his family to find a better life here. Lynda Chanwai-Earle is in Auckland to hear how Aung and his family survived years of separation and turmoil to turn their lives around, with help from some dedicated community leaders and an Outward Bound course.

By Lynda Chanwai-Earle

He was only three years of age when his mother May Lay first left their home in Nay Pyi Taw the capital of Myanmar. It was 1999, she was forced to run because of her family's outspoken political allegiance with Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese opposition politician and chairperson of the National League for Democracy in Burma. May Lay's mother and aunties were all imprisoned. May Lay would have been next.

I'm in South Auckland at the family home where Aung, his older brother Si Thu Myo Myat, May Lay and husband Hla Soe describe how Aung and his family survived years of separation and turmoil to turn their lives around, with help from some dedicated community leaders and an Outward Bound course.

May Lay struggles with English so Aung helps with translations. She tells me she escaped Myanmar to work as an illegal immigrant in Malaysia. She was arrested and imprisoned several times while there, once serving 4 months inside a Malaysian jail.

Each time she was released and sent back across the border, she would try to rescue her children and sneak them out of Myanmar without success. The lengthy separation from her children and repeated imprisonment caused May Lay to suffer serious bouts of depression, bought on by post-traumatic stress.

May Lay tells me various people including and extended family, members of the Burmese community and UNHCR staff supported her through these dark times but it was her children she desperately wanted to be reunited with, in a safe country. She would scavenge for work and send money back home to the family. She would try to make monthly telephone calls but these were sporadic…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

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