MAY 9 UPDATE: The UN now believes that the death toll could hit 100,000, about 286 times the Myanmar government’s initial public announcement of 350 deaths. Fearing a loss of control over its people if the international community intervenes, the ruling military has refused to allow most aid organizations to enter the country — worsening the disaster and condemning many thousands of its citizens to death by starvation and disease. Many aid supplies that did get in remain locked up in government warehouses.
Some countries just can’t catch a break.
Eight months ago, Myanmar hit the world’s television screens when its unelected military government responded to peaceful monk-led protests with bullets, clubs, tear gas, torture and imprisonment. The official death toll, according to the army, was 13, but the world saw at least that many people killed in cell phone videos alone, and most observers outside of the country agree that hundreds were killed and thousands jailed.
Now, Myanmar is in the headlines again — this time after a cyclone and tidal wave washed away entire villages and killed at least 22,000 people.
From the International Herald Tribune:
At a news conference in Yangon, the minister for relief and resettlement, Maung Maung Swe, said 41,000 people were still missing in the cyclone, which triggered a surge of water inland from the sea.
“More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself,” he said, in the first official description of the destruction. “The wave was up to 12 feet (3.5 meters) high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages. They did not have anywhere to flee.”
A spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program said that as many as one million people might have lost their homes and that some villages were almost totally destroyed.
Predictably, Myanmar’s 400,000 troops are apparently clearing rubble almost exclusively in rich neighbourhoods inhabited by the ruling elite. The bulk of the aid and clean-up work is being done by the country’s Buddhist monks — the same ones the army was beating, shooting and rounding up at non-violent demonstrations last September.
Unfortunately, the initial official estimate of 350 deaths was a little optimistic, and Myanmar’s ruling military junta is in the awkward position of trying to explain why the toll is at least 66 times higher than initially reported. In a break with its usual isolationist policies, Myanmar has finally agreed to let some aid agencies help with the clean-up. Foreign journalists, though, are still banned.
Image via Sign On San Diego.
1 response so far ↓
1 PuterPrsn // May 9, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Death tolls are now in the hundreds of thousands, and will be climbing soon due to starvation, lack of water, and diseases like dystentary from tainted sources and unburied bodies. Local government still holds their counts in the tens of thousands - guess they don’t count the poor in the delta.
Nope, no extra aid agency personnel are being allowed in yet. And no foreign government equipment or personnel. So the UN shipments are sitting on the tarmac, with more due in tomorrow, and no way to get to the goods to the delta (locals don’t have helicopters with the range to deliver aid in the poor southern regions).
Once again, the government there is a lot more worried about public perception than health - they simply will not allow any other entity to be seen rendering aid other than themselves. Period. Regardless of the cost in human lives.
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