PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
October 30, 2007
Contact
Noemi Herrera Rojas, public relations specialist
(915) 356-0071, noemi@copyandpr.com
Las Americas helps Burmese man get asylum as unrest in Myanmar continues
El Paso, Texas - Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center has obtained asylum for a Burmese man who escaped the Union of Myanmar (a.k.a Burma) in May. He fled the country after soldiers beat him into unconsciousness for spreading Christianity and for refusing to denounced the religion.
“When I woke up, I was in (the) hospital,” the man wrote in his personal declaration. He found out from the doctor that the soldiers who delivered him to the hospital said they had found him already beaten, and that they would return to ask the man questions.
Afraid that the soldiers would return to take him into custody, the Burmese man slipped through a bathroom window and ran from the hospital. He arrived in Cd. Juarez a month later on June 4 with the help of a “broker.”
He believes his pastor friend is being held in prison. He also believes the soldiers continue to look for him and have threatened his parents.
Cynthia Canales, staff lawyer at Las Americas who helped obtain the man’s asylum, said she knows of at least two other Burmese nationals detained in El Paso. She said El Paso’s asylum seekers come from all over the world and about 10 to 25 percent of them are successful obtaining asylum.
Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, an internationally known nonprofit organization, provides high quality pro bono legal representation and advocacy to El Paso’s indigent immigrants. Established in 1987, the center works to project the human rights of unaccompanied immigrant children, refugees, and battered women and children.
Unrest in Myanmar has reached El Paso and the doors of Las Americas," said Raymundo Eli Rojas, Las Americas executive director. "We expect to see more people from the region as human abuses continue to take place there."
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