“No one chooses to be a refugee,” Ruba, 41, says in earnest. Her youthful face belies the troubled life she has led. A Sri Lankan Tamil by birth, she fled her homeland nine years ago with her husband and two sons.
The family packed their lives into one suitcase and boarded a plane for Kuala Lumpur. They were running from a country riven by civil war, where their livelihoods had been threatened and their lives targeted. On arrival, they stayed in a hotel in Brickfields, barely daring to venture out for fear of arrest.
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