AUSTIN - HOPE IS A DISTANT LAND

In Burma, the attention of international community has been focused on crimes against humanity and exodus of Rohingyas and Muslims. But the country has been confronted for decades with various ethnic wars and long-lasting discriminations, massacres and deportations also targeting other Burmese minorities.

Naw Ruth (34) is a Karen Protestant Christian from Burma. In 2008, at the age of 23, she fled her war-torn village with her husband after being forced to work for the Burmese army as a nurse. For two years, the couple worked illegally in plantations of Thailand, to avoid refugee camps. Then both manage to reach Malaysia, where they applied in 2013 for the status of political refugees. 

This status was only granted in September 2019 and Sweden would eventually accept to host them to care for their last born, Austin Bright Miles, affected at birth by a serious disease requiring a liver transplant. In Malaysia, this transplant is only done from organs removed from deceased people, not from compatible living donors. Being an asylum seeker does not allow you to be on the transplant waiting list, nor to cross borders for a better support. In any case, these interventions are, most of the time, too expensive for people in irregular situation. 

A year of fighting to save their child who has gradually deteriorated. From joys to sorrows, from hopes to disillusions... Austin died at the age of one, on November 29th 2019, a few days before his schedule plane to Stockholm.

The day after his burial, Austin's ashes where scattered into the sea.

His familiy left Malaysia for Sweden on January 14, 2020.