One step for a man, a giant leap for freedom

Today Nay Myo Hein, a Burmese refugee living in Saskatoon, was supposed to be deported to his homeland of Burma.

Instead he finds himself with temporary immigrant status and a new lease on life.

The federal government stayed his deportation after his application to the federal Immigration and Refugee Board for refugee status was rejected.

Eventually, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan intervened and let the 25-year-old Saskatoon resident stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds.

Hein arrived in Canada after escaping the Burmese military at age 13. He hid for eight years, then spent longer than a month in a shipping container on a boat before eventually making his way to Saskatoon. The refugee board decided that Hein would only be imprisoned for deserting the army, not imprisoned, tortured and possibly executed as Hein's supporters believed.

I appreciate the refugee board likely was following some protocols, but they were naive if they didn't think there would be dire consequences for sending Hein back.

We are talking about the same military that literally abducted him into the forces at age 12. The military where it's common practice to literally kidnap children from the street to train them as soldiers.

The military that in the summer of 2007, under cover of darkness, moved by the truckloads to descend on the monasteries, beating and arresting hundreds of monks and murdering at least one. This was to stop protests against them, the military junta that runs Burma, one of the world's greatest thugocracies.

Hein isn't the only one afraid of what that military can do.

When I was volunteering with a group in northern Thailand, I met several Burmese migrants. They were ethnic Shan - meaning they were not recognized by the Thai government as refugees but instead existed as illegal, second-class people throughout the country.

I made friends with one in particular, whose name I will not mention. He and his family escaped to Thailand after the guy's father deserted the military. He was being forced to kill his own people.

My friend described how he saw people being asked to join the forces. A truck would pull up to a coffee shop in a city somewhere in the country and boys deemed old enough would be hauled away, possibly never to be seen or heard from again.

It seems that everyone I've met who is from Burma misses home, and many of the migrants living in Thailand would prefer to be back in their own country, but they are afraid.

Burma was in the news for another reason recently when Aung San Suu Kyi - leader of the county's much-repressed democracy movement - had her house arrest extended for her recent conviction of harbouring an unlawful visitor.

The so-call unlawful visitor was uninvited and swam across a lake to access her property.

He has since been returned to the United States.

Recently a documentary called "Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country" was released showcasing the footage for the 2007 monk- and student-led protests.

Between smuggled out footage and refugees who speak out against the totalitarian regime, the rest of the world is gaining an understanding of what life can be like under the military junta.

I can only hope Canada sticks to its beliefs and continues to disapprove of the Burmese military regime.

Canada had bestowed honorary citizenship last year to Suu Kyi, also a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

If knowledge of what the conditions in Burma are like continues to grow and pressure mounts maybe, one day, residents still living there will experience the same freedom just gained by Hein.

Hill is a Herald reporter and her column appears every Tuesday