CNN (Hong Kong) has released an interview with the refugees who sheltered while Edward was hiding in Hong Kong. There are two Sri Lankan asylum seekers among them. In the CNN interview, those are describing their extraordinary experience. 

Here is the story:

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 people took 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 shelterers have 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.

Underground in Hong Kong

The families and their lawyer are coming forward as their brush with history is immortalized in a new Hollywood movie.

The Oliver Stone film "Snowden" depicts the tense days when the NSA whistleblower went underground in Hong Kong, in a bid to evade US and Hong Kong authorities, as well as the world media.

Snowden made his first bombshell revelations about controversial US surveillance programs in an interview with the Guardian newspaper in a room in Hong Kong's Mira Hotel.

The film includes a scene where a lawyer takes Snowden -- played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt -- from the hotel to a cramped apartment housing a family of Sri Lankan refugees.

"These are good people, they won't talk," the lawyer tells Snowden. "They're stateless."

Legal limbo

Hong Kong does not formally recognize the United Nations Refugees Convention. And the Hong Kong Security Bureau told CNN in an email that asylum seekers will not be allowed to settle here permanently.

The city authorities do provide monthly rent payments, as well as additional stipends for utilities, transport and food coupons.

But asylum seekers are barred by law from seeking employment in the city. Their children are also born here stateless, denied citizenship and passports.

"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."