How the world is failing the people of Burma

How the world is failing the people of Burma
Written by ALwin

On May 2nd, just one day after May Day, Cyclone Nargis hit the southern part of the Ayeyarwady Division of Burma and passed through until it dissipated near the Burma-Thailand border after passing near the largest city of Rangoon. Fortunately for me I was living in Europe after having been offered work with one of the various international organizations. My own family was not so fortunate, living in near the outskirts of Rangoon, as they had to sit through several hours of intense rain and wind as the storm made its way into Burma. I myself wasn’t aware that there was a cyclone developing and had hit Burma until the morning of May 4th when I arrived at my office and opened my computer to CNN. I was first shocked and it took me a while to absorb the news and realize that my family could be in danger. For the entire day as I did my work, in the back of my mind, I was worried for my family and until Thursday morning, five days after the cyclone hit Burma was I able to contact them. Out of sheer fortunate luck, my family survived completely intact and our house suffered only minor damages to the roof which my mother told me had been quickly repaired. As for our belongings I guess the education that my brother and I both received in western schools where they have regular fire and earthquake drills and other emergency procedures paid off because he had moved all the valuable and important items to the safest room in our house. However many were so fortunate as us, a lot more suffered even worse conditions and had nothing left but the clothes they wore on their backs. I have even heard that some didn’t even have clothes as the storm blew them off while they clung to trees and other firm fixtures for survival as Nargis tore away their homes and their families.

The Burmese government’s response to this storm has a lot to be desired and borders on genocide.

• The government had received early warning of Nargis and yet failed to give timely warning to the populace not to mention the fact that their meteorological forecasts shown on their state run television channels did not in any way emphasize the severity of the cyclone

• Their reaction afterwards was even worse. The first people to provide help to others who suffered, to help clear roads and debris so that people who needed help could be reached, to provide shelter for those in need, all of these were done first by those living in the cyclone hit regions and were fortunate enough to have something left. And much of those help came from the religions figures of Burma, the Buddhist Monks.

• When government military forces arrived to the scenes of the disaster, they did either of two things. They stood by and watched as others worked to clear the debris and aid victims or they told anyone who was trying to help to stop.

• Immediately after this disaster, the international community rushed to gather resources and provide aid. The United Nations and its related organizations such as the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, World Health Organization, World Food Program, etc all have experiences in dealing with the enormous task of providing aid and relief after such a disaster. To this moment as I write this document, compared to the amount of aid received by the victims of the tsunami of 2004, the people of Burma have only received less than a tenth of the aid and supplies. What little supplies they have been given, many of it come from other nations and organizations but confiscated by the junta and relabeled as aid provided by the military leaders of Burma.

• Much more aid lies inside storehouses and cargo planes in neighboring countries and naval vessels located around the region awaiting permission from the junta to be flown into Burma. Many aid workers and experts who have the experience, knowledge and skills necessary to help rebuild the lives of the victims and prevent further deaths are waiting in cities where Burma has opened embassies waiting for visas. The longer these aid supplies and aid workers are kept waiting the chances are higher that the death toll in Burma due to Nargis will equal or surpass the total number of deaths during the tsunami which hit several nations.

As these delays keep dragging due to the military junta of Burma, many people are pondering whether or not they should send in aid regardless of the junta. Nations such as the United States and France are leaning towards this idea while nations such as India and the People’s Republic of China is against it stating that it would be a violation of the sovereignty of a nation. However, the question that needs to be asked is how much weight does national sovereignty carry against the lives of several hundred thousand civilians who did not choose to be born in a country which is ruled by a totalitarian government? Is the Sovereignty of a Nation more important the lives of people who live in poverty, too busy with struggling each day to provide for themselves and their families to be able to care about anything else, that when Nargis hit them and destroyed their lives?

In Burma people do not have insurance which can help pay for the damages they’ve sustained and help rebuild their homes, they do not earn enough a day to be able to save their earnings in banks and have enough to start back from square one, especially the poor rural farmers who live in the delta region where much of the farmland for rice is located. Also Nargis hit during the times of the start of the rainy season when crops would be harvested. The Ayeyarwady region provides for much of the rice eaten by the people of Burma and with the crops destroyed there is bound to be shortages and price rise of rice for the people.

Not only is the government delaying the aid to be given to the people, they are also taking what little aid that has been received and is using it as a propaganda too or as a tool of coercion to earn ‘Yes’ votes for the referendum for the new constitution which states that the military would have a quarter of the seats in the government and several key positions. In free nations, elections and votes are carried out under the observation of the independent groups who ensure the fairness of the voting process. In Burma the votes which have been casted in regions unaffected by Nargis have been done without the observation of such groups. In many cases the ‘yes’ vote has been earned through the use of intimidation and threat or has bypassed the voter completely as those responsible for holding the polls have pre-ticked the ballots for the voters. And to top it all off, the relief supplies which were donated to the people of Burma free of charge by the international community is being sold by the junta to the people who have lost everything. How does the junta expect people, especially those in the hardest hit areas, to pay for these supplies?

People are suffering and risking disease and death, the junta is prioritizing the referendum over the needs of the victims of Nargis and the world is debating what to do. Back in 2007, civilians and monks took to the streets to hold peaceful marches and protests against the government when it decided to raise the price of gasoline by a factor of 100% which also caused other commodity prices to rise at the same time. The decision of the junta was to send in troops and use lethal force to subdue the peaceful protestors and the Buddhist clergy. The only time I can think of where the government of a nation used brutal force against the clergy of a religion, comparable to the acts of this junta, would be during the Spanish Inquisition. The military junta also uses lethal force against ethnic minorities inside Burma at the level of genocide. The last time a government used lethal force to oppress people of other religions and ethnicity was in Nazi Germany during World War II under the rule of Hitler. And the world went to war for that, The United Nations was formed and Genocide was deemed a Crime Against Humanity where any act of persecution or any large scale atrocities against a body of people is considered to be such a crime.

It has now been eight years since the turning of the millennium and during the past century the world has become closer and smaller due to advances in communication and transportation technology. The world has gone past the point where nations stand alone and reached the point where the acts of one nation can cause an effect in another nation on the other side of the world. To reach this point the world has had to face two global wars and countless millions lives had to be sacrificed. Yet even with the development of the concept of a global community the world still allows and tolerates the existence of illegitimate governments which are given free rein to commit atrocities against innocents during peacetime.

At least Hitler had the wisdom to hide his atrocities and separate the death camps from the rest of the population. To Than Shwe on the other hand, the entire nation is his Auschwitz where he keeps the people locked up under oppressive rule and boasts to the world that he can do as he pleases. If he is allowed to remain in power and do as he please the world will be, through inaction, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to die from disease and starvation. And the world would be just as guilty as he and his junta are, soaked with the blood of innocents.