
The refugees who sheltered Edward Snowden in 2013 in Hong Kong - martgnz
https://global.handelsblatt.com/edition/509/ressort/politics/article/edward-snowdens-guardian-angels
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Jerry2
National Post has an even more interesting article on his stay in HK [0].

And I hope this finally lays to rest all those BS accusations that Snowden's a
'russian spy' and how he 'partied at the Russian consulate in HK'... like
Washington Post disinfo kept on repeating for years. [1] There are people
still on Twitter who are smearing Snowden and they claim he's a spy and
everything he did was to somehow 'help Putin' and they bring up this nonsense.

[0] [http://news.nationalpost.com/features/how-edward-snowden-
esc...](http://news.nationalpost.com/features/how-edward-snowden-escaped-hong-
kong)

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/report-snowden-
stayed-a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/report-snowden-stayed-at-
russian-consulate-while-in-hong-
kong/2013/08/26/8237cf9a-0e39-11e3-a2b3-5e107edf9897_story.html)

~~~
iamjeff
Real gems these ones. It is simply astonishing that strangers could give
refuge to a man that, at the time, was America's Most Wanted. The courage of
these refugees is staggering: they had lost practically everything in their
lives and were now confronted with hiding a target as valuable as Snowden and
the (mortal?) risks that came with it. Really remarkable people!

~~~
contingencies
It's true these people are kind. However, a lot of people have kind hearts and
it could be argued that anti-bureaucratic, anti-government sentiment is
basically omnipresent in much of Asia.

------
jkn
So beautiful and upsetting at the same time. Is there any way we can donate to
this lawyer and these refugees?

The last thing, about the Oliver Stone movie, what a shame.

~~~
aluhut
He's working for Vision First:
[http://www.vfnow.org/about/team/](http://www.vfnow.org/about/team/)

They have a donation page under "Take Action".

------
confluence
The world's most wanted man protected by those with nothing. Absolutely
incredible.

~~~
aws_ls
And they remain with nothing:

'The refugees who harbored him three years ago still live in miserable
conditions in a wealthy city that doesn’t want them'

~~~
pen2l
I come from Asia. This is something I noticed first-hand. Those with nothing
donate a much larger percentage of their wealth than those with a lot. Seems
absolutely insane, but it's true the more experience I gather... here in
America, I find it to be true again. Seems so counter-intuitive, I wonder why
this is so persistently true.

~~~
hood_syntax
They know what it's like to not have enough, imo

~~~
sophacles
I would say it is this, combined with first-hand knowledge of what getting a
"little" help at the right time can really do.

------
khc
I volunteered a couple times at an elementary school near Jordan (a
neighborhood in Hong Kong) where lots of South Asian kids attend. I am not
sure if the ones I saw were refugees but they clearly needed more help.

Many of them were sufficiently smart to do well in school but the curriculum
was only designed for people who are fluent in Chinese. For example, the Math
homework was all in Chinese but many of the kids could barely spoke Chinese,
let alone read (they spoke English reasonably well though). It's no wonder
that many of them didn't want to do homework and (presumably) not doing well
in school, even if you don't consider the situations at home.

Hong Kong has good public education but the local schools are all designed for
the local population. The expats (and well off families) send their kids to
international schools which are expensive. I am really not sure what's the
best way to help those kids.

~~~
analyst74
Do they not have special classes to teach people Chinese? Like how in English
speaking countries, there are normally resources to help people learn English.

~~~
pcr0
The schools don't offer them, as they aren't a part of the public curriculum.
People are still campaigning for it.

Apart from that there are free Chinese classes at some churches, that's about
it.

Outside classes are simply not enough though, there's no way a foreign child
could catch up to local children who've been immersed in Chinese since birth.
And the public Chinese curriculum is a challenge even for locals.

Lastly, Hong Kong people speak Cantonese which is considerably more difficult
that Putonghua which most of China speaks. (More complex characters, more than
double the tones)

------
cvwright
Quite a striking contrast between the super high tech spy world on the one
hand and the poverty of the Hong Kong refugees on the other. It's like
something out of a William Gibson novel from the 80's or 90's.

Sometimes I wonder if Gibson himself is surprised at the similarities between
his 1980's fantasy world and our current reality. The world is a strange
place...

~~~
hiddenkrypt
He is fond of saying "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly
distributed."

I've seen a quote attributed to him along the lines of "Cyberpunk as a genre
died out because if became real life", but I have not been able to track down
any source or proof of that attribution.

------
shambala
These Sri Lankans should go home to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is now at peace, and
they no longer need to find refuge.

