The four -refugee family filled seven suitcases for their new life in America. They packed blankets, tin plates, one blade for cleaning the ground in their future house and one for cutting meat. They remained behind them, not to bring: slingshot, fish paste, traditional medicines from their native Myanmar.
But the family never got to Ohio. Last month their flights were suddenly abolished. Now with President Trump’s command Put the resettlement of refugeesEven for thousands of those who have undergone the approval process, they say they have lost hope of becoming Americans.
“I have no opinion of American politics,” said Steel Wah Doh, a 35 -year -old laboratory technician who is now back in a refugee camp in Thailand with his wife and two children. “I want to become an American, to work hard, to love democracy.”
The suspension of Trump’s administration and the freezing of foreign aid makes efforts to solve one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Not long ago, Myanmar was an icon of the democratic reform that West praised. Today, four years after the military government overthrew the elected government, It’s an international pariah largely uncontrolled BOMBS’s own civilians.
On Wednesday, non -governmental organizations that promote democracy and provide refugees and people displaced by a conflict in Myanmar, they said they were told that grants from the National Democracy Foundation were immediately suspended.
Ned was established by Congress during the Reagan era to strengthen democracy around the world. Three representatives of groups of assistance in Myanmar said they were told that Ned was unable to draw funds from the US cash register to pay for grants that had already been approved.
Stopping does not come two weeks after the order of President Trump freezing most foreign aidIncluding funds paid by the United States Agency for International Development. According to local monitors from USAIDs, myanmar -related programs received about $ 150 million. Money to help should be used for benefits, including HIV treatment and support for reporting reports on the Civil War in Myanmar.
In 2024 was Myanmar The other dangerous and violent Place on the ground, according to the monitor of the global conflict. More than 3 million people are now displaced; Thousands were killed.
For a long time, the United States has been offering legal ways to immigration in refugees who have fled the persecution, war or other threats for their lives. Mr. Trump’s Directive closed the door to Afghan interpreters who risked their lives for American soldiers, and those who had fled religious persecution. It also interrupted the dreams of people from Myanmar, some of whom have escaped persecution decades ago.
In Bangladesh, Muslims are excluded from Myanmar’s largest refugee camp in the world. Mohammad Islam was to be in the United States 13. February re -relocated with his family. The dream dried up.
Mr. Islam, 43, has been a refugee since he was 7 years old, but speaks fluent English and serves as a teacher in camps.
“I’ve never been in the classroom, I only studied in tent shelters,” he said. “I want my children to learn in real school, with walls and tables, in the United States.”
The 2021 coupwho condemned Myanmar’s generals in Washington was condemned by Bipartisan. During the first term of Mr. Trump as the president of his administration, he formally described the campaign of violence in the Myanmar Army against Rohingy and genocide. He also honored religious minorities from Myanmar in the White House.
However, American support for those fighting with Myanmar has never approached a cash commitment to Ukraine, Israel or other beneficiaries of the highest help. In the jungles of Myanmar, University studentsyoung professionals and even Poets who took the weapons To rule out generals, they expressed frustration of how little international attention was gained.
At the end of 2022, President Biden signed the law on Burma, which aims to punish those abusive human rights in the country and to provide assistance to those who oppose Junta. (Burma is the former name of Myanmar.)
Last month, Mr. Trump chose to remove a $ 45 million scholarship program, helping Myanmar students to flee from the civil war and hoping to study conflicts and peace building. The Educational Fund, supported by the USA, is called a development and inclusive scholarship program.
“We also blocked $ 45 million from Burma’s diversity scholarships,” Trump said, “You can imagine where the money went.”
In the X contribution, the so -called Ministry of Government efficiency marked the “scholarship dei” program and said it was canceled. Mr. Trump said that federal funds should not be used to promote diversity, justice and integration.
“It’s as if they just closed it because they could,” Ko Hlwan Paing Thiha, the recipient of the scholarship, said. He studied a master’s degree in public policy in Thailand.
While opposition militias were pushing the Myanmar Army from the huge lines of the territory, Junty’s forces forced revenge to civilians through a Brutal air campaign and scattering of ground mines in thousands of villages. The military forced the drain and is The kidnapping of young men From the streets to fill their ranks.
For hundreds of Myanmar refugees, which have already been cleaned to go to the United States, the prospect of an indefinite immigration stop is further problems in life that are subject to conflict, poverty and uncertainty. Saw Htun Htun said his wife and two daughters were already relocated in Vermont. At the end of February, he should fly to the United States, but he said he had little hope that the journey would go forward.
“My heart is weak and I’m afraid I will never see my family again,” he said. “Please pray for me to go to the US”
When he thought he was on his way to America, Mr. Steel Wah Doh left his laboratory work in his refugee camp in Thailand. His father, who also hopes that he will be relocated in the United States, cannot obtain the medical checks he needs for his immigration paperwork, because the Camp clinics have been closed by freezing Mr. Trump’s financing.
American assistance in saving life is to be exempt from the prohibition of expenditure, but medical facilities remain closed. Two non -profit representatives said they were told they would have to finance the programs before receiving compensation from US agencies. What represents the support of rescue has not been clarified, they said.
In the Uchingya refugee camps, health clinics, educational centers and hygienic programs financed by the United States also closed. On one of the most densely packed places on Earth, the sewer is overflowing and representing the threat of illness, the inhabitants say.
Gul Bahar suffered from heart and kidney disease, and has passed several times in the last two weeks to the American funded clinic to be averted.
“I have no hope,” she said.
In Lakewood in Ohio, Mr. Steel Wah Doh, Lay Htoo, 19, he said he felt terrible for his relatives who did not appear as expected.
Mr. Htoo was almost 8 when he and his family moved to the United States. Did not speak any English.
His father is now a mechanic in a factory that produces gambling materials. Mr. Htoo studies health at a community university, the first in his family, which has access to higher education.
Now the American citizen Mr. Htoo said he did not vote last year’s elections. Some of the other Myanmar refugees in the city, including family friends, said, support Mr. Trump because they consider him a talented entrepreneur.
“To be honest, I remember living in these refugee camps and it’s not even 100 percent,” said Mr. Htoo. “If I was still stuck there and I knew other people voted for a guy who overturned my opportunity for a new life, I would be extremely alive.”
Saiful Arakani contributed by reporting from Teknaf in Bangladesh.
