Leave all behind
The Van Tha family arrived to Denmark three years ago from the country named Burma. A country in the Middle East, where soldiers raped Christian women, and killed them afterwards.
By: Mette Wiwe Andersen - HERO - 04-11-14
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Sui still thinks of her family that she needed to leave behind. Fotograf: Hannah Nissen Aalbæk
Sui is one of six children in the Van Tha family. Her family and herself escaped from Burma to India, by car and stayed there for a year. Then they took a flight to Denmark, and have lived there since.
Today the family lives in Ribe. We had a short time with Sui, where she told us her story about how, and why they escaped to Denmark.
“The soldiers of Burma fought against each other and the Buddhists’ hated the Christians. They tried to force us to convert to Buddhism. We denied it”
Based on that, the father of the family decided to move to Denmark were his older brother lived. They left the grandparents and cousins behind, but Sui still thinks about visiting her family in Burma.
“I won’t go back to Burma, but I would like to visit my family in Burma. My grandparents and cousins still lives there, but it`s not that badly in Burma anymore.”
While we write every word down, the question about how it is to come to Denmark has affected her, arrives.
“It is really, really hard. It’s difficult for me to learn a new language, because it’s harder to learn while you grow.”
Sui is 19 and turns 20 in March. She told that it’s better to live in Denmark, because in Burma she had helped her parents with hard work.
“We worked with farming and got helped by oxen. We plowed and sowed the fields. There I went to school every day, but if we hadn’t done our homework, or couldn’t remember an answer, the teacher spanked us with an iron pipe. If we didn’t pass 10th grade, we couldn’t go to the university. Then we had to take 10th grade again, but we could still go to the bible school.”
Even though she had a tough time in her childhood, she is a very happy girl today.