by Brad Webber
Fearing for his safety, Than Hre, a student whose activism had attracted the attention of Myanmar’s military government, fled his homeland in 2000. He made his way from Hakha, the capital of the country’s mountainous Chin State, to Guam, where he would wait two years before securing permission to immigrate to the U.S. mainland. Hre eventually settled in Indiana, followed by his wife and young son. They joined thousands of other Burmese refugees, most of them Chin tribal people whose ancestors had converted to Christianity around the end of the 19th century, incurring enmity and persecution in their Buddhist-majority homeland.
In his new home, Hre relished his freedom to worship, assimilate, and prosper. He worked at a warehouse and ran a cleaning business. In 2008, he took over an Indian grocery store, stocking it with goods he knew would appeal to the Chin people living on the south side of Indianapolis — a population that has grown from a few hundred in the 1990s to more than 20,000 today. The store and Hre’s adjacent Chin Brothers restaurant now serve as a community hub for refugees in and around Southport — a city situated within the boundaries of Indianapolis that is at the heart of what the residents have dubbed “Chindianapolis.”
