Unitarian Universalist Service Committee

Afraid for her life, Myra Dahgaypaw fled her home in Burma (also known as Myanmar) in 1995.

Myra was forced to flee home because of the violence and human rights abuses so commonly experienced by ethnic minorities in Burma. “It was a living nightmare,” she remembers. “I fled with just the clothes on my back.” A member of the Karen ethnic group, Myra consistently witnessed military brutality toward her community.

“We had trenches around our school so that as soon as we hear the sound of the fighter jets, we can just literally jump straight into the trenches,” Myra recalls. “I saw a lot of people were killed, even including my own classmates.”