Burma - A Race Against Time

I've been trying to follow the devastating situation in Myanmar (Burma), a country of about 55 million people located in southeast Asia between India, China and Thailand. As most know, on May 3, 2008, the powerful Cyclone Nargis struck the densely populated, rice-farming, Irrawaddy delta. The storm flooded nearly 2000 villages, with recent reports suggesting 120,000 people are dead or missing with 1.7 million people displaced. The U.N. estimates that more than 1 million people are homeless and thousands of children left orphaned.

The Burmese are used to bad news. The person who should be their prime minister, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning, pro-democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house detention or in prison off and on for 18 years. The brutal 500,000 soldier military junta has repeatedly proved that it has no intention of relaxing its iron-fisted rule, ruling their people by fear, denying a whole nation its most basic human rights. The people of Burma overwhelmingly rejected military rule yet the military continues to refuse to transfer power to Burma's democratically elected leaders.

The junta generals are so corrupt and hell-bent on keeping the country on lock-down, that they didn't even have an early-warning system in place to warn the citizens of the impending storm. I read an AFP news article in which Indian Meteorological Department spokesman B.P. Yadav said his department had warned the Burmese authorities of the coming cyclone. According to Yadav, "Forty-eight hours before Nargis struck, we indicated its point of crossing [landfall], its severity and all related issues to Myanmarese agencies."

Of course the horror of this situation does not end there. Not only did the criminal junta fail to warn the citizens of the approaching storm, but we have seen the regime continue their corrupt behavior, approving only $5 million for aid, even though the government receives 2.7 billion a year from oil revenue.

Perhaps the most disconcerting news for the millions struggling in the area is the obstruction by the regime, which continues to hamper the relief effort by delaying visas for aid workers. A delay motivated by the regimes intent to keep its people from coming into contact with foreign workers. However, time is of the essence, early estimates indicate 20% of children in the delta region are suffering from diarrhea. There were reports of families wading through water searching for loved ones amongst the corpses, further spreading disease. The regime must stop blocking the relief effort, 1.7 million people in flooded areas are having to cope with this disaster alone. 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. The international community cannot stand by and let this happen. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon must go to Burma and insist that aid teams have unrestricted access immediately.

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.

People sit at the flooded roadside, four days after the devastating cyclone Nargis, at the outskirts of the capital Yangon, Myanmar