Mock camp gives a taste of hardships displaced people face
An emergency refugee camp has been set up in Hong Kong, with tents made of plastic sheets and bare essentials crafted from scrap materials.
The camp, erected by the international aid group Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), has been set up in Kowloon Park to tackle a special kind of emergency - ignorance.
'We want Hong Kong people to be able to see, feel, touch and even lie down in the tents to really understand what it is like to be a refugee,' said Gloria Chan, head of press and public affairs for MSF.
The 3,300-square-metre exhibition features three types of tents for different climates, nutrition demands and health-care needs. It even has makeshift latrines.
The exhibition runs from today to October 4 at the Piazza in Kowloon Park in Tsim Sha Tsui. It has toured various countries in Europe and North America, as well as Japan.
Alice Chow Kin-tak, a civil engineer who has volunteered with the group and travelled to emergencies in Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Banda Aceh in Indonesia, described the process of building a community from scratch.
