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Burmese Families in Houston Celebrate First Christmas Outside of Refugee Camps

Posted byHoumanitarian
Photo: Mayra Beltran, Houston Chronicle

Susan Carroll, Houston Chronicle
Ler Htoo remembers fleeing Burmese soldiers as a boy, running from his farming village to the countryside to hide.
He always knew better than to run to the church.

“They announced that if they saw Christians, they would shoot them,” Htoo (pronounced “too”) recalled recently in his southwest Houston apartment.

Htoo, 28, was a minority within a minority in Burma – a member of the persecuted Karen ethnic group and a devout Christian in the predominantly Buddhist country that is now called Myanmar. He was 10 when he and his family fled to a refugee camp in Thailand, his home for 18 years. This summer, he, his wife and 3-year-old son were approved to resettle in Houston as refugees.

For the first time this year, the family is celebrating Christmas outside of the confines of a refugee camp, and without fear of armed soldiers or censure. They gathered recently with other church members at a southwest Houston park for an early Christmas celebration, sharing a feast of pork, beef, chicken, boiled bamboo and bok choy.

“I feel very happy and safe knowing I will not get into any trouble because this is a free country,” Htoo said.

In the past few years, the U.S. government has resettled growing numbers of Burmese refugees, many of them in apartment complexes clustered in southwest Houston. In 2011 the U.S. admitted 56,384 refugees – with Burmese accounting for some 30 percent, followed by Bhutanese and Iraqis.

Roughly 10 percent of all refugees nationally were resettled in Texas in 2011, according to U.S. government statistics. Houston in particular has been a magnet for refugees in recent years because of its relatively strong economy and affordable cost of living, local resettlement agencies reported.
(Read the full story at Chron.com)

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