As ‘Snowden angels’ start new life in Canada, other asylum seekers in Hong Kong are filled with greater anxiety, hope

When Ajith Pushpakumara, an asylum seeker from Sri Lanka in Hong Kong, hears the word “Canada”, his smile turns wider and his brown eyes brighter. That word isn’t just the name of a country, it means hope to him – an apparently distant and yet tenable possibility.

He is one of the four adults who sheltered American whistle-blower Edward Snowden while he was in the city back in 2013. They filed refugee claims for themselves and their children with the Canadian government a couple of years ago.

This week, the news that one of them, Vanessa Mae Rodel, from the Philippines, and her seven-year-old daughter Keana, had been granted asylum and were leaving for Montreal, shook his world all over again.

Pushpakumara, who has been in Hong Kong for about 15 years, knows that his life is at a crossroads and it can soon take dramatically different turns. “I may go to Canada or I may be detained in Hong Kong and sent back to Sri Lanka, where my life is going to be over.”