A GROUP of young children stand in line on stage singing and clapping their hands to music. They shuffle their feet as they dance and smile and laugh as their parents watch.

It's a scene reminiscent of any school performance, but for these Burmese children, taking part in their New Year celebrations in Sheffield has extra significance.

Over the past two years, the Gateway Project has been giving persecuted members of the Karen ethnicity the chance of freedom and Aung Than Mynt, who arrived in the city from a refugee camp on the Thai-Burmese border nearly 18 months ago, reflects the views of the 200 or so others when he says: "This is what life should be about."

For the first time in his life, Aung has real hope for the future and the knowledge that his four young children will grow up in a safe environment and in a country that embraces democracy and human rights. Here, unlike in Burma where 150,000 refugees have languished in camps, some for decades, the group can meet freely and teach their children the Karen language, culture and history without fear of arrest and torture.

Since shortly after the end of the Second World War, the Karen, one of the most oppressed ethnic minorities in Burma, have been engaged in a 60-year battle for survival against the military regime, a prolonged struggle that has been largely ignored by the Western world.

For Aung, one of the lucky few to have been granted sanctuary in the UK after fleeing a brutal military junta accused of gross human rights abuses, the recent spectacle of hundreds of saffron-robed monks leading pro-democracy protests in Burma, renamed Myanmar by the military, brought back painful memories. As he watched graphic television images showing the violent repression of peaceful demonstrations in Rangoon, Aung remembered how his niece died at the hands of Burma's pariah military rulers.

"In 1997, the Burmese army attacked our refugee camps on the Thai border and killed 100 people," he says. "My niece
Maw Ka Moo Paw died. She was only 16 years old. When I watched the pictures on television I felt for the protesters who were attacked and arrested. But I also thought to myself, that this has been happening for more than 50 years and no-one seems to care."

The Karen people, whose ancestors were refugees from Tibet, live mostly in the hilly eastern border region of Burma. There have long been ethnic tensions in the country and after centuries of discrimination and servitude, the Karen fought with the British during the Second World War against the Burmans and the Japanese.

However, promises of autonomy for their efforts were never kept, leaving the Karen battling for their freedom ever since.

"As many as 100,000 of our people have died, many during the forced relocation of the Karen during the 1990s when the military embarked on Operation Dragon King to ethnically cleanse our land," says Aung.

It's a policy that continues today in Burma. Villagers have reported widespread violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, destruction of houses and crops, forced labour, kidnapping and torture. Extrajudicial killings of Karen civilians has increased,and many people faced food shortages after the authorities banned them from leaving their villages to farm or buy food.

It remains a desperate situation, one that Aung, and his fellow refugees, Thin and Taw, are familiar with.

"The whole village – 300 houses – was destroyed. Some people were caught. The soldiers tied them upside down and poured boiling water into their noses," says Aung, who became a refugee in 1985, fleeing his village Llaingbwe when it was attacked by government troops.

Thin, who lived in south Burma, ended up in a refugee camp more recently, two years ago, after his family suffered persecution, while Taw spent 20 years with the rebel army in the jungle. All three men ended up with their families in one of the nine camps.

"In Burma, we were discriminated in every aspect of our lives and not even allowed to use the Karen language," says Thin, who until 1999 was a medic with the Karen National Liberation Army, tending to victims of the war in the jungle, including enemy soldiers. "It was not much of an existence."

Following the 1988 pro-democracy protests in his homeland, Taw says, up to 10,000 refugees fled to the Karen areas from cities when the military junta cracked down on dissidents and he fears history may very well repeat itself.

The only viable solution to end the humanitarian crisis, these three men say, is for the international community to undertake military action against the ruling government and to replace the existing political system with a set-up similar to the UK's, whereby different regions would have some degree of self-autonomy.

"The recent protests gave us hope but sanctions have not affected the regime," says Aung. "Nothing will change unless force is used. Unfortunately, this would mean some people would die – but the alternative is that the Karen and other oppressed minorities continue to suffer for another 50 years. How many people have to die?

"Sheffield may not have the climate of our home country, but the people have made us so welcome and we do want to thank them for that.

"I was a virtual prisoner for 20 years and there is no greater thing than freedom."

Taw and Thin nod their heads in agreement, knowing that for many thousands of others in Burma the future is far from secure.