It’s easy to take for granted the freedom and opportunities we enjoy in Australia.
Mae Sie Win is finally living without fear and in a place where he can realise his dreams. But his journey to reach our shores would have broken many people.
Mr Win is a member of the Karenni people, a minority whose persecution in Burma goes back to the country’s independence from Britain in 1948.
Forty years on, when he was just 13, there was an uprising against military rule.
He was taken from his home at gunpoint by the Burmese military and marched through the mountains and the jungle in sweltering humidity. Along the way, he was beaten and barely fed as he carried the supplies and ammunition of the soldiers.
“Every time we slipped, they kicked us,” Mr Win said. “We were given two spoons of rice and two pieces of pork as a meal, but we were always very thirsty and weak.
“It was so unbearably hot that we had to walk on our heels and then our toes.
“One night, we heard gunshots and were told one of those captured had been shot, but we never found out if the soldiers had killed him.”
Finally released, he returned home, only to find he had contracted malaria during his capture.
“Because of the time I had been away, my family thought I was already dead,” he said.
Four years later, the military again entered his village.
“At that time, my father said we couldn’t keep hiding and the only opportunity of providing us with an education and some safety was to enter a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border,” he said.
“Life was very basic, though, and we had no electricity or sanitation. We didn’t feel like we had any hope.”
Determined to make a better life, Mr Win (above) took on the educational assistance provided within the camp and graduated from high school in 1998 before being given the chance to embark on university education in Thailand.
In 2008, his sister was accepted into Australia as a refugee and in 2010 he joined her.
Since that time, he has devoted himself to helping his Karenni community, both in Australia and in Thailand, raising over $65,000 to assist the survivors of the Mae Surin refugee camp fire in 2013, which killed 38 and left thousands homeless.
Now a settlement worker at the Wyndham Community and Education Centre, Mr Win assists newly arrived migrants. He’s also president of the Karenni Federation of Australia and recently completed his masters of international community development degree.
However, his most satisfying experience came in August last year when he became an Australian citizen.
“It was one of the happiest days of my life,” he said.
“In Burma, I never had a document saying I was a Burmese citizen so I look at it as a privilege to be officially recognised and to have an identity.”
Mr Win now lives in Hoppers Crossing with his wife and young daughter and one day hopes to enter politics.
He said Australia Day was a chance for people to reflect on how lucky we are and the people and achievements that have made our country what it is.
