supplying through the [Burmese] government doesn’t work. At the [Rangoon] airport, you can see supplies landing there but they are stored at a government warehouse. You can see army trucks carrying it out and in some areas you can see them reaching the army camp. The army camp gets [the supplies], not the villagers. Some was labelled with USAID. In some areas, there are seven villages and only one received supplies with the USAID logo, not others. Local commanders don’t dare distribute and need to wait for permission from the top.6
In some places local people who had cleared fallen tree trunks and debris from the streets, because the authorities had failed to do so, were then ordered to put it all back again so that soldiers could be filmed for state television in the act of clearing. Compounding this cynical act, the soldiers simply posed for the cameras, pretending to clear the trees – but in reality, once the cameras had finished filming, they left the debris where it was and ordered local people to clear it a second time. Children who had been orphaned were reportedly taken around and people required to make donations, supposedly for the care of the children. ‘Then they take the money themselves and do nothing for the children,’ a Burmese relief worker told me.7 Camps were set up for those who had been displaced, with pristine tents and relief supplies provided, and senior Generals and UN officials were filmed visiting, inspecting the rows of tents and handing out aid. As soon as they left, the tents were taken down, people were ordered to hand back the relief supplies, and they were sent away, without food, medicine or shelter. The rows of blue tents were simply props in the regime’s propaganda war.
Those directly affected by the disaster were not fooled by the regime’s propaganda, but according to a representative of one international aid organisation, people in the north of the Delta, who had not been so severely hit, initially believed the regime. Only when they began to hear reports, by word of mouth or via exiled Burmese radio broadcasts, that aid organisations were denied access did they begin to realise the truth. ‘One man in the Delta exploded when he heard that an aid organisation had not got permission,’ an international aid worker told me. ‘He said: “We have listened to the [state] radio and television, and the government says it is doing all this. But now you are telling us you have not got permission. We have been lied to.”’
Instead of helping the people, the regime used the crisis to pursue two other objectives. First, the referendum on a new constitution, which will be examined in the next chapter, went ahead, to the world’s astonishment, on 10 May – just one week after thousands had died and hundreds of thousands of people had lost their homes and loved ones, and were barely surviving. Second, numerous attacks were launched against civilians in Karen State, taking advantage of the world’s focus on the Irrawaddy Delta. According to the Free Burma Rangers, hundreds of people were displaced and villages burned down as the Tatmadaw ‘stepped up its efforts to terrorise villagers into hiding’. Hundreds fled as the military ‘mortars villages, captures and kills villagers, and continues to expand its network of military camps into the farms and villages of the local people’.8
For the first time ever, people began to talk seriously about invoking the UN’s ‘Responsibility to Protect’ mechanism and forming a military coalition to intervene in Burma for humanitarian purposes. Air drops of aid were considered, and some argued that the naval ships off Burma’s coast should deliver aid into the country, with or without the regime’s approval, by force if necessary. The NLD issued an appeal urging the international community to help ‘by any means’,9 and Charm Tong, from the Shan Women’s Action Network, issued a rebuke to the international community for its tough talk but lack of action. At a press conference in Bangkok she said: ‘The survivors must be wondering if the world has forgotten them. This is not the time to go along with the regime’s restrictions. Now is the time when humanity must be more important than diplomacy.’10 A coalition of Burmese democracy groups wrote to President Bush, saying: ‘Intervention will be seen as divine intervention by the Burmese people, not only to help the cyclone victims but also to finally free the entire nation from the military yoke. Please do not compare Burma with Iraq, because Buddhist monks, students, Burmese patriots will happily assist you with whatever you need to go inside Burma and help the cyclone victims and entire nation. Many concerned Burmese citizens are willing to join the intervention. Please do not waste precious time.’11
For a brief period even world leaders talked tough. As the French naval ship Le Mistral, the British ship HMS Westminster and the Americans’ USS Essex, as well as several other naval vessels, sat off the coast of Burma laden with aid supplies, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the regime was guilty of ‘criminal neglect’,12 and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown described the regime’s behaviour as ‘inhuman’. He said: ‘We have an intolerable situation created by a natural disaster. It is being made into a man-made catastrophe by the negligence, the neglect and the inhuman treatment of the Burmese people by a regime that is failing to act and to allow the international community to do what it wants to do.’13 Britain’s then Leader of the Opposition, now Prime Minister, David Cameron said the Generals should be brought before the International Criminal Court if the situation did not change,14 and US First Lady Laura Bush held a press conference and delivered a strongly worded critique of the regime’s failures.15 French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner advocated a UN Security Council resolution that would authorise the delivery of aid regardless of the regime’s wishes, invoking the Responsibility to Protect. Many took the view that if the regime’s deliberate and calculated failure to protect and assist its own population in the face of a devastating catastrophe did not invoke the UN mandate, what would?
Yet the moment passed. The bodies continued to decompose, the aid trickled through, the will of the international community crumbled and the ships sailed away. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited Burma and met Than Shwe on 23 May – three weeks after the cyclone – and then told a press conference in the Sedona Hotel in Rangoon: ‘I am happy to report that we have made progress on all these issues. This morning I had a good meeting with Senior General Than Shwe. He agreed to allow international aid workers into the affected areas, regardless of nationality. He has taken quite a flexible position.’16 It was reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain’s return from Munich, in which he proudly declared ‘peace in our time’. As one Burmese relief worker complained, ‘the UN described our government’s response to Cyclone Nargis as slow. The UN should be on the people’s side. The response was not slow, it was silent. I don’t understand why the UN didn’t say this.’17 Another criticised the slowness of the UN’s efforts. ‘I would also request international organisations to put more pressure on our government if there is another catastrophe. We need political pressure exerted at UN headquarters in a much shorter timeframe.’ Ban Ki-moon, the relief worker added, ‘was effective once he arrived here but it took one and a half months for him to arrive. This is too late.’18
Than Shwe’s ‘flexible’ position was short-lived. As soon as Ban Ki-moon left the country, Prime Minister Thein Sein announced that the regime would merely ‘consider’ allowing access to international aid workers, but only ‘if they wish to engage in rehabilitation and reconstruction work’.19 The regime declared the relief phase ‘over’ before it had even begun. Talk of reconstruction and rehabilitation was scandalous, when victims of the cyclone urgently needed food, medicine and shelter and were dying of starvation and treatable diseases.
The regime’s conduct was shockingly callous. But it got worse. In its Orwellian eccentricity, it announced that the cyclone had killed precisely 665,271 ducks, 56,163 cows and 1,614,502 chickens. Loss of human life, in contrast, appeared irrelevant to the Generals. One official told foreign aid workers: ‘What you, Westerners, don’t seem to understand is that the people in the delta are used to having no water to drink and nothing to eat.’ With echoes of Marie Antoinette, the state newspaper, the New Light of Myanmar, declared that farmers could ‘go out
with lamps at night and catch plump frogs’ and did not need ‘chocolate’ from foreign countries.20 In June, the regime hit out at the foreign media, describing them as ‘the enemy who is more destructive than Nargis’.21
Meanwhile, bodies continued to float in the floodwaters and hang uncollected in trees. Snake-bite became a common cause of death as people and snakes competed for shelter. There were reports, in the first few weeks after the cyclone, that the military forbade the burial of corpses, leaving them to decompose and spread more disease. And people continued to die. According to one relief worker, ‘a huge number of people actually died after surviving Cyclone Nargis. They had injuries and infections from holding on to coconut trees for eight hours straight. Nargis emergency relief came two days late, people had fevers and no food or water for that whole time. They were in an area far from town so it was difficult to get transport to seek assistance. Within one week so many people had died again.’22
There is a widely held view that the reason the regime did little to help the victims of the cyclone, and actively blocked efforts initially, is that a large proportion of the population in the Irrawaddy Delta are Karens. The junta saw the storm as doing their dirty work for them, eliminating a proportion of an ethnic group which they had been trying to eliminate militarily for years. Some also point to the fact that Senior General Than Shwe had been the regional commander in the Irrawaddy Delta in the early 1980s, and had confronted the Karen insurgency during that time. In 1991 Than Shwe had presided over a military offensive ironically called ‘Operation Storm’, in which several hundred Karen were killed. In some villages, all the young men were taken away, tortured and executed. Perhaps he saw this natural disaster as completing what he had started. According to Karen sources, a Tatmadaw officer was overheard, a few weeks after the cyclone, saying: ‘There are a lot of bullets for the Karen people in eastern Burma, but Cyclone Nargis has already cleansed Karens in the Delta.’ A Burmese relief worker from an international agency confirms this. ‘The SPDC cannot win over the Karen rebels, so this is another strategy to destroy the people. Like rape, it was used as a weapon, to destroy an ethnic group. The regime has lots of resentment towards the Karen,’ she said.
The Emergency Assistance Team (EAT) and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health confirm in their report ‘After the Storm: Voices from the Delta’ that ‘discrimination existed in the distribution of aid to cyclone victims, particularly in the Irrawaddy Delta, which had significant non-Burman and non-Buddhist populations’. One relief worker told EAT that ‘at first the government only supported the Burmese [Burmans]. Not Karen people … When the government came to help the people, they came by boat, they took the Burmese [Burman] people in the boat. But … the Karen people, they kicked them down, they didn’t let them on the boat.’ Another relief worker claimed that religion was a factor as well. ‘When the government comes to help people in the affected area, they leave behind the Christian groups because they know they may be helped by Christian organisations.’23
Any hint of criticism drew a sharp reaction from the junta. A Burmese aid worker employed by an international aid agency to lead their efforts in the country went on Canadian television and said that in a disaster of this scale, even the United States or the United Kingdom would not be able to cope alone, so Burma would certainly require international assistance. He was called in that night for questioning.
Slowly, the situation began to change, as a result of international pressure. Aid agencies were permitted to operate, and according to one aid worker from a major international organisation, ‘by September, the aid situation had improved significantly. A lot of good work had been done.’ However, while some in the international community believed this was a genuine opening, and spoke optimistically of lifting sanctions and pouring aid and investment in, others are more realistic. ‘I am very sceptical that there is more space,’ a representative of an international aid agency told me. ‘The Generals will always find a reason to close it off again. They may be biding their time, but it is not as open as people think it is.’
The real problem, this aid worker argues, is at the very top of the regime. ‘At a local level, local authorities eased restrictions early on, but then closed off. The central government was very closed, until about five or six weeks after the cyclone when they began to open up more. This was due to the influence of ASEAN and others.’ Even then, however, there were still restrictions on access to some areas. ‘Access did not open up immediately after Ban Ki-moon’s visit. We still had to go through various processes to get permission. The regime appeared to say you could go in “only if we deem that it brings added value”. There were strings attached.’ Local authorities sometimes refused permission even when the central government had agreed it. ‘The government sometimes said yes, in order to ease pressure on themselves, but then sent a message to the local commander telling them to refuse access. The central government could then say “It’s not our fault, it’s the local authorities.”’ An added problem was that the central government was so suspicious of international agencies, it took care to reshuffle ministerial responsibilities regularly. ‘If government officials show any relationship to an international NGO, they are moved or removed. They constantly move senior officials and ministries’ responsibilities around. The Ministry of Forestry and Tourism was responsible for dealing with the disaster response in Bogolay for a time.’
While international agencies battled for access and struggled to overcome the red tape, an informal and diverse network of Burmese civil society addressing the crisis was growing. Businessmen, Buddhist monks, Christian churches and prominent activists and celebrities all responded to the disaster. They too faced significant risks and challenges, but performed a vital role.
Two young foreign volunteers contributed to this effort. Khin Tun, a half-Burmese student from the United Kingdom, was able to slip in to some restricted areas and help deliver medical and food aid. ‘We were continually hampered by local authorities who were highly suspicious of our motives, and by restrictions from Rangoon and Naypyidaw,’ Khin Tun recalls. The need, however, was enormous. ‘We saw a great need for food, clean water, shelter, medical supplies, mosquito nets and other basic needs such as footwear. People were sustaining further injuries with debris cutting their feet.’
Trauma counselling was also a major unmet need. ‘Survivors were still in great shock from the horrific experiences they had encountered, such as seeing local community leaders and a pregnant mother hanging dead on trees.’ Another aid worker agrees. Speaking almost a year on from the cyclone, she told me that in some areas people are still afraid when they hear the rain. ‘They still see what happened [in their minds], but they can’t talk about it.’ In some areas, all women and children were killed, and only the men have survived. ‘Waves of nine or ten feet tall destroyed all the houses, and the women and children died. The men survived because they were physically stronger.’ Another aid worker told me: ‘Our team returned from Bogolay traumatised. They saw bodies, human and animal, floating all over the place, and no one was allowed to do anything.’
Eventually, the local authorities tracked Khin Tun and his friends down and forced them to leave. ‘But before we left we were able to visit the Nargis victims one last time, but under the condition of not taking photographs and not going to the refugee centres,’ he recalls. ‘We ended up having to distribute supplies and games to the children through a closed metal gate. Words cannot describe the feeling we experienced of being able to touch them, but feeling so powerless. Were we really a threat to national security, distributing medicine and footballs to children?’
Tens of thousands of children had been orphaned or separated from their parents in the cyclone, and had to survive on their own. Older children found themselves caring for younger siblings, and many had to find work to support themselves. Sixteen-year-old Khine, whose story is told in a remarkable documentary film Orphans of the Storm, worked a ten-hour shift pushing a heavy roller on a
military-owned salt field. Ten-year-old Ye Pyint was left to look after his six-year-old sister and three-year-old brother. ‘We never found my mother,’ he said. ‘Someone told me they saw my father’s body with some rubbish on a beach.’24 The DVB camera crew risked thirty years in jail to make the film and defy the regime’s media blackout.
Extortion and theft were rampant. On 31 May, a Burmese Christian lawyer went with a friend into the Irrawaddy Delta, to do what she could to help. They loaded up a pickup with thirteen 50-kilogram rice bags, as well as noodles, salt, clothing and twenty packs of water – each pack containing twelve 1-kilogram bottles. ‘When we reached a checkpoint at the bridge at the junction of the road to Twante and the road to Daydaye and Laputta, we were stopped by two police officers,’ she recalls. ‘They asked me what the supplies were for, whether they were donations for relief, and I said yes. They asked if I had permission. I told them the supplies were for labourers on my fish farm. They told me the supplies were too many, and that I could only take half the amount. I paid 20,000 kyats (approximately 20 dollars) “tea-money” and they let me through.’
After delivering the relief, they drove back to Rangoon. ‘At 5 p.m., on our way back, we found a long line of cars, at least fifty, standing still at the checkpoint. We were stuck in the line until 11 p.m. A captain came to us and I asked him what the problem was. He told me he had instructions from his senior officers to take our driving licences and tax certificates.’ After giving him the documents, she was told to follow him, and was taken to the Insein Government Technology Institute. ‘We saw at least one hundred cars in the compound. I was told to write down my name, address, driving licence number and other details, and then at around midnight, I was allowed to go home by taxi. The next day I was told to go back to the compound, and pay 30,000 kyats (30 dollars) for the release of my car.’25
Burma- a Nation at the Crossroads Page 27