Burmese Need Our Help. But Can They Get It?
by Meteor Blades
Wed May 07, 2008 at 07:10:21 PM PDT
The Burmese are used to bad news. The person who should be their prime minister, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house detention or in prison off and on for 18 years. The military junta has repeatedly proved that it has no intention of relaxing its iron-fisted rule. As Dr. Suu Kyi said in her Freedom from Fear speech in 1990:
It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.
The generals are corrupt, so corrupt, indeed, that they did not have a system in place to give citizens an early warning when Cyclone Nargis struck Saturday. Even now, with Burma reeling from the aftermath of one of the world's worst modern natural disasters - with perhaps more than 100,000 dead and 2 million homeless - the junta is continuing years-long behavior, approving only $5 million for aid relief to their citizens, even though the government receives $2.7 billion a year in revenue from gas exports.
"Not only are the regime blocking international aid, they are not mobilising their own resources either," according to Mark Farmaner, the director of the Burma Campaign UK. "£2.5m is pathetic given the scale of this crisis. This is less than was spent on presents for the wedding of the daughter of Than Shwe, the dictator of Burma." The Campaign says that the government spends half its budget on the military.
As widely reported, the junta has somewhat relaxed its usual tight grip on aid workers who were already in Burma when Nargis struck. The BBC says these aid workers have been allowed to travel with someone from the local Red Cross or a government official without needing to obtain additional permission, as was previously the case. But far more aid workers are needed, and the junta is barely moving to make that possible, despite the devastation.
The military is extremely wary of allowing the small number of foreigners based in Burma to move around in normal times; the prospect of having many times that number operating in the country may prove too much for the generals to swallow.
"Some are getting in, some are not - we need the floodgates to open," said Britain's Ambassador in Rangoon, Mark Canning.
"It's crucial that we get these humanitarian experts in, and that's what we're putting a lot of effort into at the moment".
The government has appointed Deputy Foreign Minister Maung Myint to oversee the issuing of visas, but it still is not clear whether he has the authority to approve them in the numbers the international agencies say they need.
Early Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner spoke in favor of the United Nations invoking the concept of the "responsibility to protect." Under this highly controversial approach, approved by the world body in 2005, the United Nations could intervene in cases where governments failed or refused to protect their own citizens, even when this would violate national sovereignty.
But John Holmes, UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said "confrontation" would be unhelpful because discussions with the government were slowly moving forward.
"I'm not sure that invading Burma would be a very sensible option," he said in response to criticism that the United Nations was not doing enough.
"We are having useful and constructive discussions with the authorities of Burma," he said.
"It is moving in the right direction. We want it to move much faster clearly. But I'm not sure it would help at this moment at least to embark on what could at least be seen by some people as a confrontation."
Millions of dollars have already been pledged for relief if only it can be delivered directly to those who need it. That, it seems clear, will take some blend of cajoling of and pressure on the junta to save their own people. Time is of the essence. Obtaining clean water has been a problem for days, and lack of food is rapidly becoming a serious worry.
If the immediate roadblocks can be overcome, much suffering can be avoided, and, perhaps, the generals will see their way clear to relaxing their tough rule overall, although that is a far dicier prospect. Once the first weeks are past, it would behoove aid agencies to avoid some of the problems associated with aid to Aceh province in Sumatra after the 2004 tsunami. There, that aid, according to a survey by Oxfam, wound up in the hands of the more well-to-do, with the poor benefiting least.
Two good sites to visit for information about the situation are Democratic Voice on Burma and Campaigning for Human Rights and Democracy in Burma. The latter contains a short list of organizations accepting donations for cyclone relief.
One important effort you can make that won't require a financial commitment is to e-mail or phone your favorite media operations to urge them to pay attention to this tragedy.
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Avila and srkp23 have Diaries here and here on the same subject.
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