monk needs your help:Burmese Monk Suffering After UNHCR Rejection
Dhaka: A Burmese monk, U Thuriya, who was involved in the Saffron Revolution protests in 2007, has been suffering mentally after the UNHCR Dhaka office rejected his application for refugee status, said an abbot who accepted him to stay at his monastery.
“I am really worried about his health because sometimes he refuses to take his food and medicine. He has been staying along in the monastery without talking after returning from Dhaka,” the abbot said. U Thuriya, who is 25 years old, was wanted to arrest by the Burmese military authority for his involvement in the many protests during 2007’s Saffron Revolution in Sittwe. At the time, the monk was a student from Pathein monastery located in Kon Dan Ward in Sittwe.
U Thuriya fled from Sittwe to Bangladesh through his native border town of Buthidaung in northern Arakan soon after the Burmese military authority began an armed crackdown on the monk movement in Burma in 2007.
U Thuriya once told Narinjara that he had crossed many dangerous places in the border area on his way to Bangladesh, but he luckily escaped Burma with the help of local tribes people in the border area.
After he arrived, he came to Dhaka to apply for refugee status with the UNHCR, but the UNHCR rejected his claim for asylum after only one interview. U Thuriya’s register Number was 393-08C-00044, and he was given notice of rejection on 22 October, 2008
Please send e_mail to UNHCR and urge them to act on U Thuriya http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/contact
http://www.narinjara.com/details.asp?id=2039
