Text: Pete Bevington
Photo: Malcolm Younger

9 January, 2008

THE RELIEF in the household on the Stucca estate, in Hillswick, is palpable.

Five years of anguish have come to an end for Hazel Minn and her two adopted sons Simon and Vincent.

On Monday the Home Office sent the family a letter with a set of temporary travel documents and the longed for message: “…it has been decided to grant you indefinite leave to remain in the UK.”

It wasn’t until Tuesday the family received the letter, thanks to a postal hiccup, and today (Wednesday) the news was still sinking in.

Hazel and her two boys rocketed to national attention in 2004 when they became the focus of a huge campaign to let them stay in the country after the Home Office rejected their appeal against deportation.

They joined Lerwick man Davy Thomason and his partner Tanya Koolmatrie in their fight to keep Tanya in the country, with almost 6,000 people signing the petition in their support.

Today MP Alistair Carmichael said he thought the campaign did much to help the Home Office see sense and allow the family to stay in Shetland.

Had they decided otherwise the campaign would have had the opposite effect. Having been launched into the spotlight, Hazel, Simon and Vincent could have expected immediate arrest on their return to Burma with an indefinite stay at the pleasure of the military government which maintains its iron grip on that sad nation.

Hazel, now aged 40, left Burma in 2002 with her cousin’s two sons whom she had adopted. Life was tough in a country where young children are forced into hard labour spend all day working in gruelling conditions to earn enough for a bowl of rice to keep them alive.

As a member of the persecuted Karen tribe and a Christian working for a Baptist organisation, she faced even greater hardship than many of her fellow Burmese.

She arrived in Hillswick in May 2002 to live with Simon and Vincent’s grandmother Lilian Armstrong on the housing estate at Stucca, where they have lived ever since.

But life has changed over the past five years for the family. Hazel now speaks good English and Simon and Vincent now only use the language of their adopted country.

“I ask them something in Burmese and they reply in English,” Hazel said.

Fifteen year old Simon and his 14 year old brother now attend Brae High School. Shy of the publicity their story has brought them, they were only too happy to take time off school yesterday to meet the press.

Simon is keen on computers and has thought one day he might study electronic engineering at university. Vincent plays guitar and is a fan of rock bands Green Day and My Chemical Romance.

Hazel said this week’s news came as “a complete shock”. She had received a letter from the Home Office shortly before Christmas warning her that unless she completed the enclosed forms and attached photographs and copies of her passport she could be arrested and deported.

This was just the latest in a series of unsettling communications from the government. In December 2006 she was called into Lerwick police station for an interview and only after some insistence was she advised she would not be arrested during the proceedings.

A reassuring police officer told her it would not be long before she was told the decision. It came 13 months later.

“I have not been able to stop worrying about it. Though I hoped for the best, I was prepared for the worst,” she said.

“I had to prepare everything in case the Home Office came and took me away. I was really scared and depressed and couldn’t sleep. All I could do was pray and cry myself back to sleep. I worried about the boys and their education,” she said.

“We have been on the television and in the news and we would be in a lot of trouble if we were sent back home. I would be arrested and put into prison. Now I can work and go to college in this country.”

Alistair Carmichael has campaigned tirelessly on behalf of the Minn family. This afternoon he said the effort and the wait and been worth it.

“I have no doubt that the support that Hazel received from the community in Shetland played a significant role in this decision and this is a victory not just for Hazel and her family but for the whole community,” he said.

“To send Hazel and the boys back to Burma would have been an act of unforgivable callousness. I am delighted therefore that the system has eventually been made to work with compassion.”

But it was a shift in government policy towards asylum seekers which turned around the Minn’s fortunes.

The Home Office letter went on to say: “This leave has been granted exceptionally, outside of immigration rules. This is due to the length of your residence in the UK and compassionate circumstances.”

Mr Carmichael explained that nine months ago the government launched a case by case review of all asylum cases. “One of the factors they were taking into account was how well people had integrated into the community, and Hazel goes to the top of the class on that score.”

The MP put in a concerted effort last year to demonstrate how much the Minns had become part of Shetland, contacting teachers, doctors, ministers and anyone else who could stress the point.

The 2004 petition itself played a major part in putting the argument across. “You wouldn’t get that level of community support if you weren’t integrated.”

Mr Carmichael was heavily involved in the 2006 campaign when thousands of Shetlanders rallied to stop the Home Office from deporting local lifeguard and athlete Sakchai Makao to his native Thailand after he was convicted of fire raising.

The Minn family handed the last £700 from their campaign coffers to help the Shetland For Sakchai organisers with their fight.

But despite the relief, Bert Armstrong, the boy’s grandfather by marriage, did not have a good word for the Home Office. “It’s been absolutely terrible. It’s just been one knock back after another from the Home Office. I honestly believe that one department doesn’t know what the other department is doing.”

Mr Armstrong said that when he went on holiday to Burma 10 years ago with Lilian, they had seen 10 year old boys carrying rocks to build motorways and 14 year old girls carrying bricks up rickety ladders all day long to earn enough for a bowl of rice at the end of the day

He said people had to pay to go to hospital, and if they wanted to be treated they had to bring in food for the doctors and nurses.

“If Hazel and the boys had been forced to go back to Burma we would never have seen them again,” he said.