Cyclone Nargis
None of us can have missed this.
More then 22,000 people have died as a result of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (still formally recognised as Burma in the US). Incomprehensible tragedy. 41,000 are missing and an estimated 1 million are homeless.
Buddhist nuns and monks have been spearheading the rescue efforts and trying to clear roadways to villages with little more than axes. The notoriously secretive military junta (the same people who have had pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi under arrest for 12 of the last 18 years) has been slow to ask for international help, even as its people die. The generals have now agreed to admit international disaster teams but the UN humanitarian team are still waiting for them to issue their visas.
The junta is in a sticky situation. It maintains a strict control over outside influence and Myanmar is, to all intents and purposes, a closed country. (Its fatality numbers are still unknown after the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean.) Allowing aid workers in risks the world seeing in, and also Myanmar’s people beginning to see out. Also, aid workers would be seen by the people to be the rescuers rather than the junta. However, failure to let people in would result in both internal and massive external condemnation, possible national revolt and closer international scrutiny than Myanmar’s generals would like.
This is a poor country whose leaders are more invested in their own power than in the welfare of the people. Its own resources and communications are severely lacking and international aid is therefore the only hope the Burmese people have.
Here’s a way to help. You’ve probably come across lots of portals to donation sites for this cyclone already but I figured one more couldn’t hurt. Who knows, probably a portion of donations doesn’t actually reach victims and goes on advertising and admin instead – maybe even an unacceptably large portion – but a fraction’s better than nothing and all the charities represented here are very visible in the field and well-known.
I’ve been interested in Aung San Suu Kyi, an amazing woman, for a while and consequently have learnt a wee bit about Burma. The country is woefully unprepared for a disaster of this sort anyway but to make it worse, the military junta didn’t even bother to tell the people a cyclone was on its way, people who are denied access to any information from the outside world. This is a natural disaster but it could easily be compounded by human evil, inertia and covert politics if help isn’t immediate and substantial. If people can at least be given vaccinations soon it might halt the spread of the diseases that can kill as many again after these things. It’ll become overtly political again soon enough but, in the meantime, lives could be saved. The numbers are already beyond all understanding.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:39 am
One of the things which always worries me about donating to aid agencies who wish to provide help to countries such as Burma, is that these agencies are forced to work with the despicable governments in order to try to lend a hand. Thus, many times our donations, made in good faith, wind up in the pockets of some junta somewhere instead of helping the needy. This is not the fault of the aid agencies or NGO’s but rather the result of the avarice of the rulers.
Thus, we are faced with the philosophical quandary, do we donate and risk propping up a dictatorship which is the root cause of the evil in the first instance? I don’t have an answer, mind you, it just troubles me.
(A German relative was responsible for W. German aid administration in Ethiopia in the 1980’s and watched western food aid for famine relief being loaded back onto Soviet freighters as payment for T-72 tanks and AK47’s — all while people starved in the bush.)
May 8th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Rand, it brings the reality home when you hear an actual eye-witness account of it. I agree that there’s a problem with where aid ends up sometimes but in this case, it is in the junta’s interests to see the people recovered as soon as possible if only to get foreign relief-workers out.
The silver lining in all this tragedy might be the ineluctable opening up of Myanmar with access to information from the rest of the world for its people.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
The natural disaster may be the key to overthrowing the junta, but in the meantime, what a tragedy for the people to be wading around waiting for rescue. It’s like Katrina on a grander scale.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Medbh, it’s horrific. Every hour wasted faffing around with visas, God knows how many people are dying. Disease is the next thing. I read today, the toll of this storm could be as many as 100,000. It’s hard to know how to wrap your head around suffering on that scale. I’m not sure I can but I guess the thing is not to look away even when its at its most distressing. I’m tempted to, and inclined to believe that there’s precious little I can do so I should just turn over or stop reading what will only depress me. But, as with the depressing news from Iraq and Tibet and Darfur, I’m forcing myself to pay attention because I reckon when people are suffering on that scale the very least we can do as individuals is to pay attention, and if we’re able, to send a few bucks if, as Randall says, we can be sure it won’t do more harm than good.
May 8th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Since I read this post, I’ve been troubled all day about my feelings. We support an Aids orphanage in Uganda and the organization which runs the place (Baptist) is quite candid about the graft which is involved. Fully fifty percent of donations go to paying people off.
And I pay so little to support 2 kids and one mother.
My blood pressure rises to Olympian heights when I think about these bastards living large off the largesse of the rest of us kick in.
I don’t know what to do!
I know everyone thinks we Americans are rich bastards, but still . . .
Sorry about the rant.
Cheers, dear and thanks for pointing us to a way to help.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
There is a deal of fuss nowadays about the graft swiped from NGO and the like. But in most situations it is the normal method of making a buck in these places, day to day. There is a shocked reaction from people in the west when we hear about it. But, the tipping method in the States is seen by all as part and parcel of the wage of a waiter/ess. So with the graft in many of these places.
Over the last number of years there is a reduction in the volume of donations to the NGO’s because of this reaction. A reaction I believe to be a error, because it is hitting at the wrong level. Better by far to force the international banks to report and hold moneys of the high ups in the governments, like they do with the drug barons, and then recycle it back into the area. This would do much to force the holding of the moneys in the target area, kickstarting a circle economy.
The situation in Burma as with that Ocean surge and famine, is different and urgent, symposium can wait. People are dieing now.
This morning, I hear on the radio that the they are preventing Aid ‘planes from landing, bastards.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:04 am
In these cases I always go with the Red Cross. They and the Salvation Army are two charities we feel we can trust over many years.
May 10th, 2008 at 4:27 am
We get ourselves tied up in knots about these things, but for good reason: we want to help the people that need help and not make things worse for them. My mother was born and raised in Burma, and was half (or thereabouts) Burmese. I would love to go and visit but don’t want to support the Junta. I said this to a Burmese post grad student at the university recently and he looked at me as if I was mad “The government don’t own everything,” he said “stay with a family and shop in local shops, eat in small cafes, pay local people directly for the things you need.” I felt suitably chastised, but then later I wondered how he was here, why he has been let out of the country to study, is he a government official’s child? But then he jumped out of an airplane to raise money to send a Burmese child to school. He is studying tourism.
I think we should send our money in good faith, and keep our fingers crossed. If we send nothing then the people have no chance, if we send something then they at least have some chance.
May 10th, 2008 at 5:44 am
Hi, Sam. I just saw this on Drudge.
Sad.
May 10th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
It’s worse today. All aid into the country has been stopped because the Burmese military were seizing it.
The UN is dragging its feet inexcusably on this. This is not a legitimate government and they are deleteriously affecting the fate of thousands of people. They are criminals now, if they never were before, and should be restrained by force until the Burmese people get some relief. This is what the UN is for – but still they dawdle to the timetable of a wicked junta. Unbelievably frustrating.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:25 am
I have been a regular visitor to Thailand, and the border towns with Burma have a thriving trade both ways. Burma has a relationship with both China and Thailand who are assisting them in their current crisis. Why do Americans think they know best about how other countries work? They have fucked up in Vietnam and Iraq and made things worse. The government in Burma is taking aid from the various charities, they are happy to take aid from the West, they just don’t want Western people controlling it – there is no need for the west to go in and control it themselves – how would the US like the Burmese/Iraqi charities to enter and control the way aid was doled out in the New Orleans crisis. And a lot of aid goes AWOL – I have a friend working for the Red Cross/Crescent and she says much of the aid is only accepted in places like Darfur on the basis that it is passed to local business for distribution. She says much of the foodstuffs can be seen on sale at local markets at silly prices. It’s a given that charities who want to continue working in these countries have to accept as part of the local culture. The charities are pragmatic, as any help they can give is worthwhile, even is some of it is misdirected.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:19 am
The Junta also appear to believe that the West is only tryng to give aid to gain access and some kind of political control and judging by the reporting in the media in this country they are right, is all seems more political than humanitarian. Even some of the charity employees have given views on tv that came across as political – very dangerous as they could jeopardise all the charities who are there at present who are there on the basis that they are non-political. The help should be without reservation, purely humanitarian.
May 13th, 2008 at 8:52 am
The help should be without reservation, purely humanitarian. Exactly. Why can’t the junta see that? It’s common for other countries to offer aid in such situations. The military “government” have no experience of responding to disasters on this scale – the Chinese testify to this too – and they willfully dragged their feet on issuing visas, and the rest. While people died. They politicised this by placing politics and their own grasp on power above the interests of their people.
On their state newscast today they reported on the referendum they held. 15 minutes into the broadcast they mentioned the cyclone.
May 13th, 2008 at 9:01 am
I agree the West often lacks sensitivity and blunders into other people’s countries. This is primarily a UN and worldwide Red Cross effort though, and they are only allowing the Chinese limited access too.
To not even warn your people a hurricane is coming; to rate your own grasp on power over the welfare of millions of your own people, whom you allow very little access to the outside world anyway; to materially affect the odds of the survival of thousands both before and when disease starts to take hold; and to blithely devote your time instead to a referendum is insensitive, arrogant and wicked, I reckon. With this particular junta though, these traits are already well-documented.