The Hong Kong outcasts who gave up their beds for Edward Snowden
Hong Kong (CNN)Vanessa Rodel didn’t realize she was sheltering the most wanted man in the world until the morning after he showed up unexpectedly at her door.
Her houseguest from the United States had requested a newspaper. She discovered his high-profile identity when she recognized Edward Snowden’s face on the front page of the Hong Kong daily.
“I said ‘oh my God,'” Rodel told CNN. “The most wanted man in the world is in my house!”
Rodel — who fled the Philippines — is one of several asylum seekers in Hong Kong who are now going public with a secret they kept for years.
For weeks in 2013, these impoverished peopletook turns hiding the man behind one of the biggest intelligence leaks in US history.
“We are part of history because we did good things,” said Supun Kellapatha, an asylum seeker from Sri Lanka who gave up his family’s bed for Snowden.
Snowden’s unlikely shelterershave all lived for years in Hong Kong in a legal limbo. The city pays their rent and a small living allowance but it won’t allow them to settle permanently and work.
He then came up with an unorthodox strategy to hide the fugitive from the threat of possible rendition back to the US, where Snowden was branded a traitor.
“I advised Mr. Snowden it would be in his best interest to be placed with the refugee families in a populated area, as that would be the last place that anybody would look,” Tibbo said.
He took Snowden to several families who he has represented on a pro bono basis.
“Late at night they knocked on my door…they just told me that they need some help,” recalled Rodel. “I gave him my bed.”
The lawyer hopes the film will bring fresh international attention to the plight of an estimated 14,500 asylum seekers living in Hong Kong.
“People with the least to give, gave the most,” said Tibbo, referring to those who hid his high profile client.
Snowden’s sweet tooth
Rodel described how she and her daughter — who was a toddler at the time — slept on the kitchen floor of their one bedroom apartment for several days to make room for Snowden.
She left her home periodically to get equipment for his laptop and food.
“Mostly, [Snowden] liked sweets,” Rodel recalled.
Since sheltering Snowden in 2013, Rodel has moved to a new home. She now lives in a one bedroom apartment where she shares a bunk-bed with her elderly mother, her four and a half-year-old daughter, and another woman from the Philippines.
“If I stay in Hong Kong, my daughter will grow up the same as me,” Rodel said. “She won’t have a future.”
After leaving Rodel’s home, Snowden fled to Moscow where his claim for temporary asylum was granted. The US continues to seek his return on charges of espionage and theft of government property.
Snowden is clearly grateful for the hospitality he was shown. According to Rodel, he has helped pay for her daughter to go to kindergarten.
“These were refugees who had nothing. They were living in incredibly precarious situations and they still are today,” Snowden said, speaking from Moscow in an interview with the New York Times last month.
“They didn’t hesitate to open the door. They protected me. They believed in me and but for that I might have had a very different ending.”
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/06/asia/hong-kong-edward-snowden-asylum-seekers/index.html