By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, May 4 (Yonhap) -- A home should be a place you can turn to for comfort and refuge in times of trouble. But for Maung Zaw, an asylum seeker from Myanmar, or Burma as he prefers to call it, he has no such home.
Living off the earnings from various factory jobs around Seoul as an illegal immigrant for the past 10 years, Maung Zaw had long dreamed he could one day call South Korea his second home. That dream came to an end last month when the government here rejected his application for refugee status.
After 10 years of life in South Korea, Maung Zaw says what really concerns him is not the fear of persecution back home but the loss of ties he has developed with Korea.
"We've waited for five years and were told to leave within five days," Maung Zaw, 36, who like most Burmese people has no family name, said in an interview last week.
The Ministry of Justice issued the final notice on April 12 to him and eight other Burmese asylum seekers in response to their applications filed in 2000. The five-day grace period was later extended to three months thanks to appeals from local human rights organizations.
Political persecution awaits him back home for his campaigning against the State Peace and Development Council military junta. But what really concerns him is not so much persecution back there, but being forced to leave South Korea that gave him a new vision for his own country. Maung Zaw takes inspiration from its example of winning a hard, long fight for democracy after decades of military dictatorship.
"I can relate to Koreans. Korea had a situation like Burma before it changed," he said.
Maung Zaw insists on referring to his country as Burma, not the official term Myanmar that was imposed by the military
regime in 1989 as a way to evade its colonial past and as an attempt to shake off the junta's reputation as a suppressor of democracy.
Born in Thaylin City on the outskirts of the capital Yangon, Maung Zaw said he was in his second year of high school when historic student demonstrations took place there on August 8, 1988, to protest the shooting of two university students by police. He joined in the demonstrations, just as many of his friends did, and soon became a member of an underground student organization affiliated with the National League for Democracy, the opposition party led by Aung San Suu Kyi.
After Aung San Suu kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, the military junta planned a national convention excluding many opposition leaders as a way to strengthen its hold on the country. Maung Zaw said he and his friends in the student organization issued a statement denouncing the planned national convention in 1992. And that action provided the government an apparent cause for punishment.
"Several of my closest friends were arrested or went missing after we issued that statement. I could no longer live at my home," he said.
He decided to flee his country and work for political change there from the outside.
South Korea was little known in Myanmar back then, only as the country of origin of the victims of the 1983 bombing by North Korean agents at a memorial for the founder of modern Burma, Thankin Aung San, in Yangon.
"All I knew was that there was a country called Korea divided into north and south, that the former had a similar political system to my country and the latter was somehow different," he said.
By the time he was forced to flee overseas, Maung Zaw learned that a friend of his from the underground democracy movement was working in South Korea as a migrant worker. He acquired a forged passport and visa through a broker and arrived in South Korea in 1994.
In this photos taken late last year, Maung Zaw (far R) joins other Burmese men and Korean civic activists to stage a protest in front of the Embassy of Myanmar calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi from home detention. (courtesy of Citizens' Action Network)
Once his visa expired after three months, he became an illegal resident. He started work in a plastics factory in Incheon, 40 km west of Seoul, where he experienced what was then common treatment for foreign workers here, withheld wages and a lack of health benefits or access to compensation for work injuries.
"One Monday morning, I woke up and went to work as normal only to find the company had just disappeared overnight," he said, recalling an experience from his early days in South Korea.
Maung Zaw later met with several of his compatriots here and they banded together to organize a Seoul branch of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in 1999. They staged protests against the military junta in front of the Embassy of Myanmar in Hannam-dong, central Seoul, on a weekly basis and held signature campaigns denouncing the regime.
Most Burmese democracy activists living in South Korea did not have the appropriate residency permits back then. It wasn't until 1999 when one of their group members was arrested by the South Korean police for being an illegal immigrant that they thought of applying for refugee status.
A group of 21 Burmese activists applied for refugee status in 2000 with the help of Lawyers for Democratic Society, a South Korean organization of lawyers dedicated to defending the human rights of the underprivileged. They had interviews with immigration authorities three or four times a year from that time until the end of 2002.
Seven of them, who held senior posts in the organization, were granted the status in 2003.
For the ordinary members, however, two more years passed before any contact came from the Ministry of Justice over their application. And then in March they were forced to contemplate returning to persecution in Myanmar when they received a notice in the mail.
"Even though the applicant insisted that because he participated in anti-government activities in his country he is afraid of being persecuted when returning to his country, the statement of the applicant does not apply to the provision of 'well-founded fear of being persecuted' as regulated by Article 1 of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees," read the Ministry of Justice's notice to Maung Zaw.
Korea has been reluctant to recognize refugees in the past. Since joining the U.N. Convention relating to the Status of Refugees in 1992, no claimant was awarded refugee status until 2001 when an Ethiopian man became the first to do so in Korea. To date, 37 of the 494 applicants have been accepted.
Maung Zaw and the others appealed, but the ministry upheld its decision.
What Maung Zaw can't understand is the process the Korean government had taken before coming to its decision. He was examined by ministry officials in several group interviews up until the end of 2002. No further word was heard from the ministry until the rejection notice arrived.
He remains critical of the group interview process he went through as a part of his application for refugee status.
"I was afraid that my intention to get the status may be threatening my friends still at home. If I talk about what I did and how I operated in Burma in the group interview, I thought, that information may somehow be passed to the Burmese government," he said.
Maung Zaw said the translator at the interviews was a Burmese national who seemed to have close relations with the embassy, as the man had traveled home to Myanmar in the past with embassy permits, he said.
"There are many ethnic minorities in Burma and as many different divisions in the anti-government movement. It would be easier to unite South and North Korea than to get the Burmese ethnic minorities to work together," he said.
The criteria by which the ministry decided to award the status to seven senior organization members and not to the ordinary members was unreasonable, he also said.
Maung Zaw now attends classes as an unregistered student at the post-graduate Department of NGO studies of Sung Kong Hoe University, works as an intern at the Citizens' Action Network, one of the leading civic organizations in Seoul, and is developing his Korean skills at Yonsei University's Korean Language Institute. He gets by on donations from his Korean friends who have arranged all sorts of opportunities for him.
Maung Zaw set up an organization called Assistant Program for Education of Burmese Children in 2003 that, with donations from South Koreans and Burmese migrant workers of between 3,000 won and 5,000 won (US$3~5) on average, manages to send some money to Myanmar in aid on a regular basis.
"I made a promise with my friends. If Burma becomes a democratic country in three years, I'll go back. If it doesn't, I'll stay in Korea and work with one of the Korean civic organizations," he said as his face lit up with a smile.
Three of his fellow group members who went to Japan in anticipation of the Korean government eventually rejecting their appeals were reportedly granted refugee status there. One more plans to join them there soon. Maung Zaw says, however, he would rather return to Myanmar than go to a third country if Seoul doesn't change its decision.
"Even if I have to leave Korea, I won't go to another country to claim refugee status. After all these years, I still don't know enough of Korea, and in a new country I'd have to learn a new language and start all over again," he said.
"My mind has changed since first moving here. I realize democracy activities are necessary inside Burma as well as outside. I'll go to a border region, where other Burmese movements operate. Some of my friends were already killed in the 1988 movement. And my situation is a lot better."
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)
http://english.yna.co.kr/Engnews/20050504/480100000020050504112734E5.html
SEOUL, May 4 (Yonhap) -- A home should be a place you can turn to for comfort and refuge in times of trouble. But for Maung Zaw, an asylum seeker from Myanmar, or Burma as he prefers to call it, he has no such home.
Living off the earnings from various factory jobs around Seoul as an illegal immigrant for the past 10 years, Maung Zaw had long dreamed he could one day call South Korea his second home. That dream came to an end last month when the government here rejected his application for refugee status.
After 10 years of life in South Korea, Maung Zaw says what really concerns him is not the fear of persecution back home but the loss of ties he has developed with Korea.
"We've waited for five years and were told to leave within five days," Maung Zaw, 36, who like most Burmese people has no family name, said in an interview last week.
The Ministry of Justice issued the final notice on April 12 to him and eight other Burmese asylum seekers in response to their applications filed in 2000. The five-day grace period was later extended to three months thanks to appeals from local human rights organizations.
Political persecution awaits him back home for his campaigning against the State Peace and Development Council military junta. But what really concerns him is not so much persecution back there, but being forced to leave South Korea that gave him a new vision for his own country. Maung Zaw takes inspiration from its example of winning a hard, long fight for democracy after decades of military dictatorship.
"I can relate to Koreans. Korea had a situation like Burma before it changed," he said.
Maung Zaw insists on referring to his country as Burma, not the official term Myanmar that was imposed by the military
regime in 1989 as a way to evade its colonial past and as an attempt to shake off the junta's reputation as a suppressor of democracy.
Born in Thaylin City on the outskirts of the capital Yangon, Maung Zaw said he was in his second year of high school when historic student demonstrations took place there on August 8, 1988, to protest the shooting of two university students by police. He joined in the demonstrations, just as many of his friends did, and soon became a member of an underground student organization affiliated with the National League for Democracy, the opposition party led by Aung San Suu Kyi.
After Aung San Suu kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, the military junta planned a national convention excluding many opposition leaders as a way to strengthen its hold on the country. Maung Zaw said he and his friends in the student organization issued a statement denouncing the planned national convention in 1992. And that action provided the government an apparent cause for punishment.
"Several of my closest friends were arrested or went missing after we issued that statement. I could no longer live at my home," he said.
He decided to flee his country and work for political change there from the outside.
South Korea was little known in Myanmar back then, only as the country of origin of the victims of the 1983 bombing by North Korean agents at a memorial for the founder of modern Burma, Thankin Aung San, in Yangon.
"All I knew was that there was a country called Korea divided into north and south, that the former had a similar political system to my country and the latter was somehow different," he said.
By the time he was forced to flee overseas, Maung Zaw learned that a friend of his from the underground democracy movement was working in South Korea as a migrant worker. He acquired a forged passport and visa through a broker and arrived in South Korea in 1994.
In this photos taken late last year, Maung Zaw (far R) joins other Burmese men and Korean civic activists to stage a protest in front of the Embassy of Myanmar calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi from home detention. (courtesy of Citizens' Action Network)
Once his visa expired after three months, he became an illegal resident. He started work in a plastics factory in Incheon, 40 km west of Seoul, where he experienced what was then common treatment for foreign workers here, withheld wages and a lack of health benefits or access to compensation for work injuries.
"One Monday morning, I woke up and went to work as normal only to find the company had just disappeared overnight," he said, recalling an experience from his early days in South Korea.
Maung Zaw later met with several of his compatriots here and they banded together to organize a Seoul branch of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in 1999. They staged protests against the military junta in front of the Embassy of Myanmar in Hannam-dong, central Seoul, on a weekly basis and held signature campaigns denouncing the regime.
Most Burmese democracy activists living in South Korea did not have the appropriate residency permits back then. It wasn't until 1999 when one of their group members was arrested by the South Korean police for being an illegal immigrant that they thought of applying for refugee status.
A group of 21 Burmese activists applied for refugee status in 2000 with the help of Lawyers for Democratic Society, a South Korean organization of lawyers dedicated to defending the human rights of the underprivileged. They had interviews with immigration authorities three or four times a year from that time until the end of 2002.
Seven of them, who held senior posts in the organization, were granted the status in 2003.
For the ordinary members, however, two more years passed before any contact came from the Ministry of Justice over their application. And then in March they were forced to contemplate returning to persecution in Myanmar when they received a notice in the mail.
"Even though the applicant insisted that because he participated in anti-government activities in his country he is afraid of being persecuted when returning to his country, the statement of the applicant does not apply to the provision of 'well-founded fear of being persecuted' as regulated by Article 1 of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees," read the Ministry of Justice's notice to Maung Zaw.
Korea has been reluctant to recognize refugees in the past. Since joining the U.N. Convention relating to the Status of Refugees in 1992, no claimant was awarded refugee status until 2001 when an Ethiopian man became the first to do so in Korea. To date, 37 of the 494 applicants have been accepted.
Maung Zaw and the others appealed, but the ministry upheld its decision.
What Maung Zaw can't understand is the process the Korean government had taken before coming to its decision. He was examined by ministry officials in several group interviews up until the end of 2002. No further word was heard from the ministry until the rejection notice arrived.
He remains critical of the group interview process he went through as a part of his application for refugee status.
"I was afraid that my intention to get the status may be threatening my friends still at home. If I talk about what I did and how I operated in Burma in the group interview, I thought, that information may somehow be passed to the Burmese government," he said.
Maung Zaw said the translator at the interviews was a Burmese national who seemed to have close relations with the embassy, as the man had traveled home to Myanmar in the past with embassy permits, he said.
"There are many ethnic minorities in Burma and as many different divisions in the anti-government movement. It would be easier to unite South and North Korea than to get the Burmese ethnic minorities to work together," he said.
The criteria by which the ministry decided to award the status to seven senior organization members and not to the ordinary members was unreasonable, he also said.
Maung Zaw now attends classes as an unregistered student at the post-graduate Department of NGO studies of Sung Kong Hoe University, works as an intern at the Citizens' Action Network, one of the leading civic organizations in Seoul, and is developing his Korean skills at Yonsei University's Korean Language Institute. He gets by on donations from his Korean friends who have arranged all sorts of opportunities for him.
Maung Zaw set up an organization called Assistant Program for Education of Burmese Children in 2003 that, with donations from South Koreans and Burmese migrant workers of between 3,000 won and 5,000 won (US$3~5) on average, manages to send some money to Myanmar in aid on a regular basis.
"I made a promise with my friends. If Burma becomes a democratic country in three years, I'll go back. If it doesn't, I'll stay in Korea and work with one of the Korean civic organizations," he said as his face lit up with a smile.
Three of his fellow group members who went to Japan in anticipation of the Korean government eventually rejecting their appeals were reportedly granted refugee status there. One more plans to join them there soon. Maung Zaw says, however, he would rather return to Myanmar than go to a third country if Seoul doesn't change its decision.
"Even if I have to leave Korea, I won't go to another country to claim refugee status. After all these years, I still don't know enough of Korea, and in a new country I'd have to learn a new language and start all over again," he said.
"My mind has changed since first moving here. I realize democracy activities are necessary inside Burma as well as outside. I'll go to a border region, where other Burmese movements operate. Some of my friends were already killed in the 1988 movement. And my situation is a lot better."
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)
http://english.yna.co.kr/Engnews/20050504/480100000020050504112734E5.html
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