Filipina Vanessa Rodel, who sheltered whistleblower Edward Snowden in her apartment in Hong Kong in 2013, obtained asylum with her daughter in Canada. The 42-year-old and her seven-year-old daughter arrived in Toronto on Monday night and want to start a new life in Montreal.
Ex-intelligence officer Snowden flew from Hawaii to Hong Kong in 2013, where he provided journalists with information and documents about US intelligence surveillance programs. Because Snowden decided to reveal his identity, he quickly became known worldwide.
The whistleblower initially lived in the hotel in Hong Kong. However, when he tried to hide from security and media representatives, Vanessa Rodel occasionally housed him in her apartment in a poorer neighborhood in Hong Kong - where no one expected him. Rodel himself had come to Hong Kong as a refugee from the Philippines.
It was not until she saw his face on the front page of a newspaper that she realized that she had hidden the most wanted man in the world. "Everywhere in Hong Kong, his picture was on display in every newspaper," said Vanessa Rodel of "Time." "I thought the best thing I could do was take care of him." She hid Snowden for almost two weeks yourself.
Life in fear
A Sri Lankan family with two children as well as an ex-soldier from the Philippines also helped the hiding man during his stay in Hong Kong. In 2016, the identity of the volunteers, also known as "Snowden Refugees," became public through research on Oliver Stone's film "Snowden."
Since then, the four adults and three children are living in fear, repeatedly questioned and pressured by local and international authorities and investigators. The Snowden helpers were also cut aid to subsistence.
On the website of the Canadian non-profit organization "For the Refugees," which a group of lawyers founded in support of Snowden's helpers in 2016, states, "When their role in housing Edward Snowden became public, Hong Kong cut their skinny ones Support payments and persecuted them for immediate deportation to their home countries of Sri Lanka and the Philippines, where they face risks such as persecution, torture and death. "
With the support of the organization, the new life of Vanessa Rodel and her daughter in Canada will now also be funded, said Ethan Cox, a spokesman for dpa's For the Refugees.
Six years after the first NSA revelations based on the Snowden documents, the mother and daughter have now been granted refugee status in Canada. "The clock is still ticking for three other refugees and their two young children," said Christina Rogov, a lawyer for For the Refugees.