Dear Editor,
Hope you are doing well and thanks for publishing my previous write-ups
This is an article about "Does Burmese Junta care its people?". I will be highly honoured if you publish this article. I apprecite your time to read this article.
Thanks
Have a nice time
With Best Regards
Ripan Kumar Biswas
New York, U.S.A
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Ripan Kumar Biswas
Ten thousands Burmese Americans, who live in New York and 100,000 in California or many others from different parts of the United States, are desperately scrambling to organize relief to their ravaged homeland, but not being able to help directly.
Even three flights under U.N's World Food Program in Bangkok, were waiting to take off from Dubai, Dhaka, and Thailand with 50 tons of biscuits on May 08, 2008, four days after the cyclone hit, but there was no immediate flight clearance from the military junta for the first major airlift of international aid.
Although Myanmar's generals, traditionally paranoid about foreign influence, issued an appeal for international assistance after the deadly storm struck on Saturday, preferably bilateral, government to government and blocked any individual or undesignated organization's assistance, but they have since dragged their feet on issuing visas to relief workers even as survivors face hunger, disease, and flooding in the hardest hit Irrawaddy delta. International organizations with access to Myanmar, such as the International Red Cross, UNICEF, the International Rescue Committee and the International Medical Corps, or other organizations under UN, are trying to persuade the government to issue more visas to speed the aid to sites where it is most needed.
The Saturday Cyclone Nargis killed at least 22,980 people and left 42,119 missing, says Myanmar's state media. But according to a top U.S. diplomat on Wednesday, more than 100,000 may have perished. This is the most devastating cyclone in Asia since 1991 when a storm killed 143,000 in neighboring Bangladesh. Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta town of Labutta, the area hardest hit by the cyclone that struck over the weekend, has been virtually washed away by the 12, 13, and even 20 feet high waves.
As the scale of the disaster in Burma now becomes clear, questions are being asked over how much, the authorities knew about the magnitude of the approaching storm. "Although they were aware of the threat, Burma's state-run media failed to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm's path," the US First Lady Laura Bush accused the military government like many others who think the same around the world.
However, a statement in state television declined any charge against them and said timely weather reports were announced and aired through the television, and radio in order to keep the people safe and secure in nationwide, but Burmese citizens complained that they were not properly alerted and no instructions were given as to what action they should take. Officials from the UN's disaster reduction agency in Geneva also believe as the scale of the devastation suggests there was not a proper early warning system. India's meteorological agency, which monitors cyclones in the Indian Ocean, said it warned the Burmese authorities about the cyclone's severity 48 hours before the storm struck.
The cyclone is the deadliest natural disaster to hit Myanmar in recorded history, according to a U.N.-funded disaster database that includes figures from the past century. Lack of clean water and poor sanitation in the wake of the disaster increases the risk of diarrhea, especially for children and floods can drive mosquito breeding, leading to outbreaks of malaria and dengue fever, according to UNICEF.
The military government is not allowing aid workers to move around the country without permission. In addition, government and private offices were unable to function with power cut off and staff absent. There was some anger on the storm-ravaged streets of Yangon at soaring food prices and long queues for petrol. According to the UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman, in situations such as these, people are highly vulnerable to disease and hunger, and they need immediate help to survive.
The junta, which rules Myanmar as a closed society, has always taken great pains to not even allow tourists to speak to ordinary Burmese people on issues such as democracy and human rights. Last September, the military violently cracked down on Buddhist monk-led demonstrations, killing 31 people and triggering international outrage. Aung San Suu Kyi, who is a Nobel Laureate for peace in 1991 and has become an international symbol of heroic and peaceful resistance in the face of oppression, is under house arrest for more than 12 of the past 18 years, following her party's sweeping victory in 1990 elections that the junta ignored.
Reflecting the scale of the crisis, the junta said it would postpone by two weeks a constitutional referendum in the worst-hit areas. However, the referendum, part of the army's much-criticized "roadmap to democracy," would proceed as planned elsewhere on Saturday. The regime plans a referendum on its constitution in May; leading up to what it says will be national parliamentary elections in 2010. But critics say if it proceeds under current conditions, the constitutional referendum they have planned should not be seen as a step toward freedom, but rather as a confirmation of the unacceptable status quo. The constitution that Burmese are now being urged, to vote for has been drafted only by regime supporters.
Aid groups and governments, including U.S. President George W. Bush, asked the military to relax their tight grip to allow humanitarian assistance into Myanmar, which has been ruled by the military for 46 years. United States and France complained about Myanmar's reluctance to accept direct aid. But they hoped that the military would realize to accept aid from everybody they could possibly accept it from and may be that will be the something good that can come out of this terrible destruction.
Autocratic regimes always try to underplay the scale of humanitarian disasters and, in shunning international assistance as a display of national ego, cause even more needless loss of life. The response to the cyclone is just the most recent example of the junta's failure to meet its people's basic needs. General Than Shwe's regime should remind that a country cannot subsist without people.
May 08, 2008, New York
Ripan Kumar Biswas is a freelance writer based in New York
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