‘They accepted the money but didn’t take care of my child’: what Luna Wong’s death reveals about the treatment of international students in the UK

When her parents waved her off to study in England they hoped it would be a fresh start the 16-year-old needed after struggling with her mental health in Hong Kong. Instead, 10 months later, she was dead. What went so wrong? As a young teen, one of Luna Wong’s favourite things to do was to walk to a bridge near her home in Hong Kong and sit there for a while, listening to the traffic and the water below, looking out at the lights and the activity of the city. She had a particular way of observing the world, which she expressed through photography. Her pictures were mostly landscapes, ordinary corners of Hong Kong, but she could spot an image nobody else would have seen in the same place.

She was an inquisitive kid who enjoyed making people laugh, and was deeply interested in the world around her. Then in 2019, when she was 13, political unrest in Hong Kong , swiftly followed by Covid lockdowns, shrank that world to the size of her bedroom. For a prolonged period, Luna barely left her family’s flat. School became a screen; friends were only accessible virtually. She stopped sleeping properly, started having panic attacks, and was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. When the world opened up after Covid, Luna was too changed to step easily back into it. She was often so anxious she couldn’t attend school, and fell seriously behind. Her psychiatrist prescribed antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication…