Hello, my name is Anon and I’m a Srilankan UNHCR recognized refugee, stuck in Hong Kong for many years. This is a real story that happened last month. Me and my friend were walking down a road near Kam Tin, when we saw a very old Chinese lady standing there with many stuffs in her hand, waiting for crossing the road. When she was crossing some of her stuffs fell down. When we saw that, my friend was running towards her to help her. He picked up the stuffs she dropped on the road, but suddenly that lady called 999 and caught hold of his arm to block him! When the police arrived they took him to the Pat Hueng Police Station. I don’t know what she told the police. The police also didn’t ask anything to my friend, they just brought him to the station. I went there and asked the police why they arrested him. They say he was about to ROB that lady. I argued with them that he did not try to rob her … HE TRIED TO HELP HER … I explained everything clearly to them, but they didn’t believe what I said and told me to leave the station. The next day they called my mobile and asked me to come to the police station and when I got there they released my friend. Some days ago, when I was walking in the street early in the morning like 8:30 AM, an old man fell down near the subway in Hung Shi Kiu. I ran over and helped him to stand on his feet and passed him his walking stick. I gave him some tissues, but that very moment he pulled away from my hands and just threw the tissues in the rubbish bin. He huffed at me with contempt and left without saying thanks. Similar events happen all the time for me and my coloured friends. Makes us wonder: What did my friend do to the old lady? What did I do to that old man? They don’t even know who we are … Why is there so much discrimination and racism? Is it my mistake to born as black? Is it that all the blacks are bad? I was about to help and in return I only got hatred. When will all this prejudice come to an end?

Here is something nobody knows. To get some cash in our hands we have no choice but selling the ISS food that we must eat. It’s not what we want as we don’t like being hungry, but when I need money I must find a way for surviving day by day. The ISS food must be for ten days and even that is never enough, as we share with others and have to beg for food from NGO charity and friends. Let me give you some examples. If you need a day-pass from Kam Tin to Tsim Sha Tsui, you can sell 5Kg BASMATI rice for 35$, which at shop cost 90$! We want more money, but the buyers know we have no choice, so they shout “No, no this is most or you go away, Black Devil, Curry Devil!” If you need 30$ you must sell 1/2L ANCHOR Milk which at Wellcome cost 95$ so the shop can sell for high profit. The Soybean/Sunflower/Peanut OIL cost 22$ but we sell for 9$, less than half the price. The one kilogram SUGAR is worst of all as it cost 12$, but they buy for only 5$. We know we are cheated! The one kilogram of frozen CHICKEN cost 45$, but we can only sell for 20$ because frozen cannot store. MISTER JUICEY one liter cost 22$ at Wellcome, but we sell for only 9$. Now you can better understand to make 50$ CASH we need to sell a lot of the week’s food. The best hope comes from some Philippina maids who on Sunday send food to their families and pay a few dollars more, but only on Sunday as other days they live in the employers’ homes, so don’t come to Kam Tin for shopping. I know the ISS Case Workers say: “If you sell the food we will stop given food to you!” How do they think we can buy SIM card for phone they must call us for? And also calls from UNHCR and Immigration Department. How they believe we live without even coins in our pocket? Maybe I better drink water from rain than milk and juice, but I need money for LRT and MTR. How else we pay electricity, cooking gas, clothes, medicines, haircut, fixing home and living for days and days, months and months, years and years??? If you have the chance, you can try being an asylum seeker in a foreign country – it’s really interesting! My Chinese friend jokes with me: “Don’t make the mistake of being born black when you come back to another life!” He’s a Buddhist and now he is afraid of rebirth as refugee nobody will help

CIA World Factbook – Sri Lanka: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ce.html