Summer Issue, 2012

Writing Stories for a Global Audience SweWin (MJ 2009) SweWin, one of the Myanmar students who studied at HKU’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre, has been signed on by the NewYork Times to write opinion pieces from Myanmar several times a month. SweWin returned to Myanmar in February, after receiving his Master of Journalism degree and then working for a Myanmar exile newspaper in Thailand. The Times’s web site published his story in March describing how it felt to return home after years of exile. He has since written several op-ed columns for the newspaper. While happy to be home, SweWin said he remains cautious about the recent and much-noted reforms by Myanmar’s former military regime. Referring to Aung San Suu Kyi, the long-imprisoned democracy campaigner who is free after many years and is now a member of Myanmar’s new parliament, he wrote: “As a friend of mine quipped recently, while freedom may have come for her, it has not for the rest of us yet”. SweWin’s participation in a student movement in 1998 led to his arrest for anti-government activities. He went on to spend seven long years in Myanmar’s notorious prisons. With a scholarship from the Open Society Foundations, he enrolled in HKU’s Journalism and Media Studies in 2008 under the pseudonym Kyaw KyawThein. He returned to Yangon, the former Myanmar capital, in February to work for The Irrawaddy as the magazine’s first correspondent there. He says his studies at HKU “gave me an understanding of how to write stories for a global audience” – a skill he is now putting to practical use. Photo: Christopher Davy Protecting the Rights of the Voiceless Pu m Kai Htang (LLM 2010) An internationally known human rights lawyer, Aung Htoo, who visited the HKU Centre for Comparative and Public Law in 2010, looks for the day that common law is re-established in Myanmar. In a paper, “Seeking Judicial Power: With a Special Focus on Burma’s Judiciary”, he called for a judiciary “that is not only independent from legislative and executive controls but also neutral, objective, competent and free from all external influences.” Perhaps that time is coming, as Myanmar struggles to transform itself from a military dictatorship to a democracy. Until that time, HKU Law graduate Pum Kai Htang is working to improve the rights of Myanmar citizens outside the country. “I am currently with an international organisation in an Asian country where thousands of Myanmar migrant workers, asylum seekers and refugees are struggling with life’s challenges,” he says. “My main job: protecting the rights of the voiceless.” While studying for a Master of Laws degree in Human Rights, Pum Kai Htang worked at the Hong Kong Refugees Advice Centre, meeting asylum seekers from many countries.The work improved his professionalism, he says, and also taught him about “changing people’s lives for the better”. Of his current work, he says, “It’s no easy job working to protect the rights of your own people in a foreign land. However, the knowledge, the skills, the confidence and the experience that I acquired while at HKU have always helped me overcome obstacles and challenges, and move forward amid difficulties.” “My law studies have transformed me and made me a professional with the power and the ability to change individuals and societies for the better.” 7