Passion For Reason
Burma: Nature’s wrath, junta’s indifference
By Raul Pangalangan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:01:00 05/16/2008
Filed Under: Myanmar crisis, Disasters (general), Foreign Aid
MANILA, Philippines—It is difficult to understand why Burma’s (Myanmar’s) generals are bullheaded in rejecting foreign assistance for their devastated and displaced people, but it is not so perplexing why the United Nations seems incapable of making the generals do what is merely sensible.
The human costs are massive, with 38,000 dead and almost 28,000 missing, the death toll projected to be between 68,000 and 127,000, and with 2.5 million survivors left destitute. The culprit is nothing political—a cyclone for which the junta cannot be blamed. Yet the generals continue to impede the entry of foreign relief workers, granting only 34 out of the 100 visas sought by aid groups.
International rescue teams are desperately needed. First, there have been complaints that aid has been diverted to the military camps, as for instance, when high-energy biscuits sent by relief groups were replaced with low-quality off-the-shelf substitutes. Second, disaster relief expertise is available mainly from abroad. For instance, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency specializes in rainwater collection, water filtration and sanitation, addressing exactly one sort of emergency that the cyclone survivors now face.
Third, while the junta has allowed the inflow of foreign relief goods, it has neither the organization nor the transport facilities to deliver the goods to the displaced. Because the junta has insisted that only their own five army helicopters transport the supplies, relief goods reach only one-third of the victims of Cyclone Nargis, compounding the risk of starvation and disease. The UN World Food Programme needs to move 375 tons of food each day, but is able to transport just a fifth of that. Worse, distribution is slowed down by the impending lack of fuel.
Finally, the state-controlled media have failed in their duty to keep the public informed. They are in virtual denial, preferring to highlight the state’s “guarantee” there were no epidemic outbreaks, that not a single survivor was hungry and that the junta “ha[d] their own team to cope with the situation.”
The most alarming consequence of the junta’s recalcitrance is the emerging debate on whether this obstruction amounts to a crime against humanity, which would enable the UN to forcibly deliver relief supplies. The European Union’s High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, has uttered the cryptic but unmistakable message.
“We have to use all the means to help those people. The UN Charter opens some avenues if things cannot be resolved in order to get humanitarian aid into a country that has had a catastrophe, as in the case of Burma (Myanmar), where the leaders of the country do not allow the fast and well-organized arrival of aid. By ‘all means’ we mean all the means that are provided for in the UN Charter—whatever is necessary in order to help the people who are suffering.” This suggests forcible action under a rather expansive reading of the UN Security Council’s powers.
Ironically, the scenario that the junta fears is at the same time the very scenario that it fosters. The generals are apparently paranoid about the danger of an invasion, and see international humanitarian aid as the opening salvo of the onslaught. The paradox is that aid agencies now recognize the risk of unrest, given the hunger and frustration of the victims and the impending rise in local food prices.
If the junta blocks foreign transport of relief, one of the softer “means” available is the airdrop of goods. This will be unfortunate. The distribution is not orderly and equitable. It may merely trigger off stampedes and free-for-alls. The food goes to the strong rather than to the children, sick, elderly or disabled. It will call for tall fortresses to store the food, which will secure them from the horde but, sadly, siphon them into military warehouses, further fattening and entrenching the cruel rulers.
But the Burmese generals have one last card: China, which now faces a death toll of 20,000 from the earthquake that hit Sichuan Province. China holds one of the permanent seats in the UN Security Council where it holds a veto. Why open the possibility of sanctions in the form of forced disaster relief just when you yourself are faced with a disaster not of your own making? At best, it will focus the world’s scrutiny on China’s disaster response and, at worst, it will lower the threshold for multilateral action that China detests.
Of course China’s humane and effective handling of the disaster is in stark contrast to the Burmese’s. By all accounts, the People’s Liberation Army has been mobilized, and the calamity has been recognized at the highest levels of government.
Significantly, the Chinese press has been admirably open and candid in its reportage, in contrast to the 1976 earthquake in Tangshan, when news and relief efforts were suppressed, leading to the fall of the infamous Gang of Four, or more recently, to the SARS outbreak of 2002, which wasn’t reported fully until it had risen to epidemic proportions.
For sure, China’s openness can be explained by the forthcoming Beijing Olympics, and I doubt if it will be sustained when, for instance, the victims insist on the investigation of the builders of the collapsed schoolhouses which killed hundreds of innocent children. Surely such inquiries will yield corruption scandals for substandard construction, and the trail will inevitably ensnare the high and mighty.
It makes us wonder how much agony, in the end, will have been caused by nature and how much by human bungling and flawed politics. Those who grieve the loss of their loved ones are entitled to know whether their sorrow springs from the vagaries of fate or from the sins of callous men.
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