STAR TREK - TREK ACTOR CALLS ON FANS TO CAMPAIGN AGAINST ATROCITIES

STAR TREK star WALTER KOENIG has urged the show's fans to campaign against Myanmar's military junta, branding it an "outpost of tyranny". The 70-year-old actor, who played Commander Pavel Chekov in the hit show and several movies, is hoping for change after visiting a refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border recently. He says, "I can tell people what I experienced, meeting people without limbs, the ex-political prisoners, the squalor, all that I have seen in these brief days." And he believe the severity of the situation in the former Burma will resonate with the show's fans, adding, "Star Trek fans are very receptive to humanitarian causes. The stereotype is somebody who is into computers or sits at home and does nothing else. "But there is an extraordinary sense of philanthropy and benevolence among people who watch a show in which there is a company of characters who embrace all ethnicities and all races. "I think they would respond to real world circumstances as well and spread the word."