“The table we’re sitting at was a gambling table. Over there was a bar. Now the college management committee meets there.”
The words are from U Tang Gum, the chief administrator of a school in Kachin State that used to be – you guessed it – a casino.
Opened in 2015 with nearly 100 students, the school is the subject of a fascinating feature in the Myanmar Times by Ei Ei Toe Lwin (check out the link for pictures).
The institute of higher learning is called Myen Ju and is in Mai Ja Yeng, a border town near China.
It was opened in late 2015 by the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) to give ethnic Kachin students in the northern state access to higher education and to further stave off an epidemic of heroin abuse in the community triggered by large-scale poppy production and the jade mining industry.
The KIO has been involved in intermittent clashes with Myanmar’s military since 2011.
There are 94 students, all Kachin, the Times reported. There are also plans to create accredited bachelor degree programs with universities in other countries.
The casino was apparently closed down about seven years ago after a Chinese official’s son was stabbed to death, the administrator told the paper. The death prompted calls from both China and Myanmar’s government to shutter the place.
“The company took back some machines to China, but some are still here,” U Tang Gum told the Times. “We can use the gaming tables, but we had to paint over the pictures of playing cards.”
