Snowden asks for donations for refugee families who sheltered him

Edward Snowden took to Twitter on Saturday to solicit donations to help refugee families in Hong Kong move to Canada.

The refugees sheltered Snowden in the summer of 2013 when he fled the U.S. following his disclosure of documents from the National Security Agency (NSA). 

“Need a last minute gift for the activist in your life? Help the refugees who kept me safe underground resettle in [Canada],” Snowden wrote on Twitter Saturday, linking to a fundraising page on the site Fundrazr. 

Need a last minute gift for the activist in your life? Help the refugees who kept me safe underground resettle in :https://t.co/8uBbJse6ap

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) December 24, 2016 

{mosads}

The families who took Snowden in were identified for the first time in September, according to the New York Times. They included a Filipino woman named Vanessa Mae Bondalian Rodel and Sri Lankan natives Ajith Pushpakumara and Supun Thilina Kellapatha.

All of the families were seeking asylum and shared an attorney with Snowden named Robert Tibbo, who arranged for the families to take in the former NSA contractor.

The fundraising page, posted by a man named Marc André Séguin, refers to the families as “Snowden’s Guardian Angels” and asks for donations to support the families and to send a message to the Canadian government to take them in.

“This page is dedicated to raising funds for Snowden’s Guardian Angels and for Canadians to let our government know that we believe these exceptional individuals belong in our communities,” Séguin wrote.