At HKU, students from Myanmar raise awareness of strife at home
Htoi Awng and two other Kachin students in Hong Kong shared their experience at a fundraising concert for Kachin refugees last week, raising over HK$5,000 for the Relief Action Network charity.
Among the excited first-year students who arrived on the University of Hong Kong campus last September, there was one man who has seen far more of the world's grimness than the average Hong Kong undergraduate.
Htoi Awng, 22, is from northern Myanmar's Kachin state, where ethnic Kachin rebels have been fighting government forces with renewed intensity after a 17-year ceasefire broke down in June 2011.
Htoi Awng and two other Kachin students in Hong Kong shared their experience at a fundraising concert for Kachin refugees last week, raising over HK$5,000 for the Relief Action Network charity.
Video by Hedy Bok
"Hong Kong people know only about Aung San Suu Kyi," Htoi Awng said in an interview, referring to the Nobel Peace laureate and politician who spent 15 years under house arrest.
"People think Burma [the former name for Myanmar] changed after she was released, but it has not. We have so-called democratic elections, but the problem is the parliament is controlled by the military … You can't ask sensitive questions in parliament, like how many people have died in the civil war. Since 2011 there has been so much foreign direct investment, but the money goes to the cronies who work together with the military and former generals. Poor people from my country are still poor."
