Will Cyclone Nargis lead to the downfall of the Myanmar regime?
By Brendan Loy
As the government of Burma/Myanmar continues to show more interest in chasing down CNN reporters than in trying to prevent a holocaust in the Irrawaddy Delta, meteorologist and weatherblogger Dr. Jeff Masters puts the junta's despicable actions in historical context:
[T]he criminal indifference of the nation's leaders towards the plight of the cyclone's survivors will doom hundreds or thousands more to death or terrible suffering. One can only hope that the people of Myanmar will rise up and put an end to Myanmar's dictatorship as a result of this awful tragedy.There is historical precedent for this sort of occurrence. The deadliest tropical cyclone of all time, the Great Bhola Cyclone of 1970, killed upwards of 550,000 people is what was then called East Pakistan (and now called Bangladesh). A statement released by eleven political leaders in East Pakistan ten days after the cyclone hit charged the government with "gross neglect, callous indifference and utter indifference". They also accused the president of playing down the news coverage. The dissatisfaction with the government response to the disaster boiled over into full-fledged civil war the next year, which ultimately led to the overthrow of the government and the establishment of the new nation of Bangladesh. As bad as the West Pakistani response to the Great Bhola Cyclone of 1970 was, the response of the Myanmar government to Nargis is far worse. The slowness of response to this tropical cyclone disaster is unprecedented in modern times.
It makes the U.S. and Louisiana governments' response to Hurricane Katrina seems like a model of efficiency by comparison. Here's an overview of what's happening:
More aid is on the way to cyclone-ravaged Myanmar - but so is the heavy rain... [and] relief workers, including Americans, [are] still being barred entry. ...Officials have said only one out of 10 people who are homeless, injured or threatened by disease and hunger have received some kind of aid in the week since the cyclone hit.
The government, which wants full control of relief operations, has less than 40 helicopters, most of them small or old. It also has only about 15 transport planes, primarily small jets unable to carry hundreds of tons of supplies.
"Not only don't they have the capacity to deliver assistance, they don't have experience," said Mark Farmaner, director of the pro-democracy Burma Campaign UK. "It's already too late for many people. Every day of delays is costing thousands of lives."
On Friday, Myanmar's military rulers seized two planeloads containing enough high-energy biscuits to feed 95,000 people sent by the U.N. World Food Program, which briefly suspended help after the action. The U.N. later agreed to send two more planes to help survivors.
The government acknowledged taking control of the shipments and said it plans to distribute the aid itself to affected areas. ...
The U.N. has grown increasingly critical of Myanmar's refusal to let in foreign aid workers who could assess the extent of the disaster with the junta apparently overwhelmed. None of the 10 visa applications submitted by the WFP has been approved. ...
Myanmar says it will accept aid from all countries, but prohibits the entry of foreign workers who would deliver and manage the operations. The junta is not ready to change that position, [Shari Villarosa, the U.S. charge d'affairs in Yangon] said she was told. ...
The junta said it was grateful to the international community for its assistance but the best way to help was to send in material rather than personnel.
Relief workers have reached 220,000 cyclone victims, only a fraction of the number of people affected, the Red Cross said.
"Believe me, the government will not allow outsiders to go into the devastated area," said Yangon food shop owner Joseph Kyaw. "The government only cares about its own stability. They don't care about the plight of the people."
Indeed. F***ing inhuman bastards. May they rot in hell. (And, more immediately, may their "stability" be undermined by their own obsession with it.)
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