Families who sheltered Edward Snowden in Hong Kong say NSA whistleblower ‘gave them hope’
‘Before I met Snowden, I thought I was lost. [But] he never gave up and I have changed my life because of him’ says Supun Thilina Kellapatha from Sri Lanka
The three groups of individuals who sheltered American whistle-blower Edward Snowden in Hong Kong after he leaked sensitive intelligence files in 2013, dream of leaving the city and being received by a third country, where they can find safety and rebuild their broken lives.
“I don’t like staying here, because we are not allowed to have a life,” Nadeeka Dilrukshi Nonis, an asylum seeker from Sri Lanka, said, holding her seven-month-old boy, still too small and fragile to understand his mother’s concerns. “We just want a place where my children can have a future. It can be anywhere, if there’s safety and freedom.”
“Before I met Mr Snowden, I thought I was lost. After Mr Snowden stayed at my house, I tried to learn from what he did… He never gave up. I changed my life because of Mr Snowden,” Supun Thilina Kellapatha, Nadeeka’s husband, also from Sri Lanka, said.
After such move, Kellapatha, 32, who filed his protection claim in 2005, said that “good and bad consequences” came their way.