ABDUL SAM-ON

Kurier.at

Abdul Sam-On: 

You are a Burmese and you are 14 years old. For eight years, you have lived in Thailand. The Buddhist and highly militarized Burma, where you come from, uses to starve, hunt and kill people like you, because you are a Rohingya and a Muslim, and you are suspected of terrorism.

At the age of 6, you were forced to go into exile with hundreds of thousands like you. After a very long walk, you crossed the border of Thailand. Since you do not have an identity card, under the law you have no rights, you don't exist, you are nobody. Since you don't even have the status of a refugee, you are not welcome in Thailand, but you are tolerated... However, you speak five languages: Burmese, Thai, English, Mandarin and Wa. You play the guitar, you go to school and you are an excellent football player in the Wild Boars team.

Last July, during an excursion, you and your Boars friends, you found yourselves imprisoned in a very deep and extremely dangerous cave that the torrential rains of the monsoon suddenly flooded. The water rushed furiously behind you as you sought refuge deeper into the rocky cavities. Water had been rising for days. At the spot where you managed to huddle, the flood made narrower and narrower the little space that allowed you to breathe. For nine days, until blessed British divers managed to spot you, you lived the horror: little air, total darkness, nothing to eat, hardly a trickle of water to survive.

The rescue operation, complicated and risky to the extreme, could only start after another eight long days. In this operation, one of the Thai divers lost his life. In the end, risking the whole thing, you happily all came out of that chasm unscathed. The witnesses speak of a miracle.

How could this happen?

You, Abdul Sam-On, you have been the man of the situation.  Being the only one able to communicate in English, you were the lifeline between your companions and the British rescuers. Without your knowledge of English and without your wits and coolness , in a word, without you, young undocumented Rohingya and illegal immigrant, this cave would have been, with all certainty, your tomb and that of the whole Wild Boars.

Thanks to you high above, dear Abdul Sam-On, for what you are and what you did. Thank you also to the good Thai Christians who, eight years ago, welcomed you as a real son in their home. These good-hearted people have transmitted to you their faith in a God who loves not only Christians, Buddhists, Burmese and Thais, but also Muslims, Rohingyas, undocumented migrants, refugees, foreigners and illegals. And, of course, he also loves brave Australian, British and Thai rescuers.

When everything was over, your fellow Boars told the media with great emotion that in the depths of the cave you had prayed a lot to God, and God answered your prayers.

You who continue now to be a zero before the law, you have been no less than the "savior" of your twelve brothers. Your story is great. It looks really like that of the young Joseph of the good old Bible. It even sounds like the story of Jesus himself, who also had twelve friends and committed his life to connect humans to each other to lead us, through millions of mountains and ravines, outside many perilous caves of this world, including the cave of death.

                                                                     Eloy Roy