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Emily Hung

Mary*, a 24-year-old Myanmese student in Hong Kong, was devastated when she learned from social media at around 3pm on Friday that an earthquake had struck her home country.
“At that time, only news about Bangkok was popping up on my news feed, but after reading it, I realised the epicentre was in my country, and that something was wrong,” she recalled.
Mary tried to contact family and friends in her home city of Mandalay, the second-largest city in Myanmar and one of the hardest hit by the quake.
But none of them had been online when she initially checked. News coverage of the situation in Myanmar was also limited at that time.
“My mind just went blank. I really didn’t know what to do or what was happening, and I needed to pull myself together,” she said.
“It’s very terrifying. I realised that anything can happen just within a few minutes – I could lose my family and my friends in just a few minutes.”
The effects of the earthquake have reverberated through Hong Kong’s Myanmese community, with many grappling with the uncertain fate of their home country.
Making a plea for direct aid to be delivered to victims, Mary and another Myanmese student told the Post that rebuilding the country would not be possible without a focus on peacefully ending its long-standing civil war.
Mary later confirmed that her relatives were safe, though their house was slightly damaged and uninhabitable.


For several nights, they had sheltered under a nearby roof with limited food and water.
Many in her family’s devastated hometown do not even have that and have become homeless.
“It’s now a ghost town,” she said, adding that there were people still trapped beneath rubble, screaming for help, but with no rescue teams or equipment to save them.
“Bodies are rotting under the heat, but there is no way to take them out.”
The death toll from the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that devastated parts of Myanmar exceeded 1,700 on Sunday, according to the country’s military government. In a rare move, authorities there made a request for foreign aid.
Access to the country has been limited since the military took power in a coup in 2021.
“If the international community is sending aid, please make sure that the aid really goes into the hands of people who are in need on the ground, not just to an organisation,” Mary said, citing past instances of misdirected relief when cyclone Nargis struck in 2008.
She was particularly worried that victims in areas not fully controlled by the junta might be denied access to aid.
But she also hoped the international community would go beyond sending aid that only focused on addressing the impacts of the earthquake.
“Please engage in the peace process for the country. If we cannot end the civil war, there is no way our country can recover fully,” she said.
“This is the thing we need to do, this is the root cause.”
Francis*, a 22-year-old Myanmese student in Hong Kong, was relieved to learn his family was safe in the Thai capital of Bangkok. He also had relatives living in rural regions close to the epicentre, but had not heard from them.
“I take it as no news is no bad news,” he told the Post.
“But the pain extends to the whole Burmese community because I have a lot of friends, or maybe friends of friends, who have lost their lives or their homes.”
Francis said many Myanmese people in Hong Kong were deeply anxious and fearful as communication blackouts would prolong the time it took to connect with family members back home.
“We are very worried, not just about the earthquake, but also the development afterwards,” he said.
“We are very uncertain about what the future will be for all of us, and we feel like we don’t have any support or certainty.”
He was frustrated by the unstable sociopolitical situation in Myanmar, where air strikes showed no signs of stopping despite the earthquake.
He said that some people would go to the field areas such as parks and stadiums because they were afraid of being trapped beneath the rubble if any buildings collapsed.

But seeking open areas risked exposing them to other risks such as air strikes and forced conscription, he added.
“This is pure chaos,” Francis said.
He said that although rescue teams and aid had been dispatched, he was not confident such measures would prove effective.
The student recalled the 2008 crisis, when the government at the time imposed many restrictions on rescuers, hindering the delivery of humanitarian aid to the most affected regions.
Francis argued there was a huge operational gap between local rescue teams and international donors, and called on anyone hoping to support the Myanmese people to donate to charities with existing local connections, meaning they were less likely to require the military government’s approval to deliver aid.
“This earthquake is not just a natural disaster, it’s also a big reflection of how the country has been dysfunctional under the military for the past few years, how the effect is becoming catastrophic, not just in terms of the earthquake but also with scam farms that have affected some Hong Kong residents too,” he said.
“Please see the impact of this failed system and voice support for some changes in the system to bring about better outcomes.”
Humanitarian operations in Myanmar have been badly hindered by damaged roads and infrastructure, with global aid organisations struggling to access impacted areas, in addition to facing significant blackouts and ongoing conflicts.
The United States Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Programme earlier estimated that there could be between 10,000 and 100,000 fatalities as a result of the quake, and the economic damage could be as high as 70 per cent of Myanmar’s gross domestic product.
*Names changed at interviewees’ request


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Two students grappling with destruction of their home call for help that goes beyond aid and a focus on longer-term efforts to end civil war


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