United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon seems to have finally convinced Burma’s government to allow aid workers into the country, three full weeks after Cyclone Nargis killed at least 134,000 people and made 2.4 million people destitute.
From the Guardian:
The junta will accept relief flights into Yangon from many countries, including the United States, its fiercest critic.
But it rejected offers of French and American ships delivering aid.
UN officials said the idea that ships should dock was “very sensitive idea for them [the junta].”
But Shwe said Burma was open to receiving relief supplies and equipment from civil ships and small boats.
Colour me skeptical, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Burma says it has been refusing entry to aid workers in order to “preserve its sovereignty,” even as its citizens die by the tens of thousands, and clearly doesn’t care much about their suffering.
And as for that number — 134,000 dead — it’s an official government estimate, and awfully suspicious given that the initial official estimate was a piddling 350. The U.N. puts the death toll around 216,000, 4,000 fewer than were killed by the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Image via the BBC.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Lyndon // May 23, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Glaring example of the “reform” after the Asian war. Political genocide. The junta should be brought to trial, convicted, and hanged.
2 B // May 26, 2008 at 1:19 pm
We’ll see if the UPS has the will to intervene.
Leave a Comment