Despite being ruled by the “glorious and wonderful government” of Than Shwe and his cronies things continue to get worse and worse in Myanmar. According to the United Nations there is still little progress towards fixing the damage caused by Cyclone Nargis earlier this year.
Officially at least 140,000 people died but many believe the true death toll may actually be closer to 500,000. According to the relief agencies by now they should be in the process of rebuilding homes, schools and other facilities but so far very little seems to have been done.
Unfortunately these kinds of stories tend to attract a lot of attention for a few days and then fall under the radar. It is sad to say that there will probably be very little done to help the suffering people of Burma/Myanmar.
Well - we’ve done it again. We’ve angered the Beijing leadership.
According to this news account from China’s Xinhua news service, the Chinese government is ‘urging’ the U.S. to curb the ‘odious conduct’ of a ’small number’ of ‘anti-China lawmakers’ after the House passed Resolution 1370 [it passed 419-1], which criticizes China’s human rights record. Furthermore - the Chinese government takes umbrage with President Bush, for meeting pro-democracy activists in Washington, since it ’sends the wrong message’ to ‘anti-China forces.
A superb opinion piece in last Sunday’s (June 15) LA Times belatedly caught my attention (I have been on travel, and my computer crashed). It is by Ted Widmer, a former speechwriter for President Clinton, and Director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. Although my comments are almost a week late, Widmer’s words could not be more current, or relevant.
In his piece, “America isn’t over,” Widmer laments the tragic state of affairs of our foreign policy and the setbacks that democracies around the world have suffered as a result:
There is no question that U.S. foreign policy suffered a monster setback over the last eight years, and it does not take a genius to realize that the next president will have to speak differently to a world that has grown cynical about American promises. After years of the most simple-minded platitudes about liberty, it will be a pleasure to declare ourselves free from President Bush’s “freedom agenda,” which was never well-defined or successful, even by its own yardsticks.
And,
In fact, during the last two years of Bush’s tenure, the number of democracies has been declining around the world, according to the human rights monitoring group Freedom House — the first two-year decline in 15 years. Notorious crooks, such as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, have stayed in power throughout the Bush years; other nations, such as Cameroon, have gotten worse, and we all saw what a nightmare Myanmar is when the cyclone blew the lid off its usual secrecy.
Widmer is concerned that, as a result of such foreign policy disasters and setbacks to freedom and democracy around the world, Americans will “throw in the towel,“ “disengage from the world,” and he goes on to provide an eloquent–and historical–argument for why America must once again effectively champion genuine freedom and democracy around the world:
Who among the new powers will take up the standard of democracy around the world if not the U.S.? Europe might, if it wielded sufficient military force, but that is an expensive investment that Europeans seem unlikely to make. The rise of China will do nothing to reverse democracy’s downward slide, and all summer it will be entertaining to witness the real gymnastics of the Olympics — the efforts of Chinese leaders to suppress dissent and appear welcoming at the same time.
And,
No one wants more cowboy diplomacy, but a forceful statement of American ideals at the beginning of the next presidency would go far to remind the world why the United States became a superpower in the first place. A clear vision of the world we want — and if necessary, are willing to fight for — would frighten despots, encourage young democracies and improve the odds for the large number of nations that might go in either direction.
A new and better freedom agenda, grounded in realistic promises of economic betterment as well as a core commitment to FDR’s Four Freedoms — freedom of speech and religion; freedom from want and fear — would do far more than parrot the pronouncements of the current administration. It would bring hope to hundreds of millions of people who still live in societies in which disease, illiteracy and the lack of opportunity make promises of freedom something of a distraction.
Widmer concludes his superb commentary as follows:
American promises of liberty can grate on the ears of listeners in other countries — near the beginning of the Iraq war, a German newspaper ran the headline, “Bush threatens more freedom.” But these promissory notes spring from a rich patrimony that has wrought a great deal of good in the world and that is at least as liberal as it is conservative. All presidents want to talk about the future, but we should not forget how much inspiration can be found simply by consulting the better angels of our past.
As a hobby I translate European (Dutch and Spanish) press articles into English for Watching America, and I have many foreign relatives and friends. I have thus, I believe, first-hand knowledge of the terrible skepticism, distrust and deep disappointment that Europeans have in and for the Bush administration. But, I can also sense the great hope and high expectations they are now beginning to have for the next president of the United States.
Thus, I believe that I can sincerely footnote Widmer’s essay by saying that perhaps we need not worry. Regardless of who our next president is, the world will clamor for a renewed, refreshed and realistic American involvement and global leadership–not cajoling, bribing or strong-arming– in once again working for genuine freedom and democracy around the world. Hopefully it will be a call that our new president and the American people can not and will not ignore. A call for a renewed, re-energized, and–above all–”re-moralized” American world leadership.
Ted Widmer’s next book is “Ark of the Liberties: America and the World.” It will be published in July. Can’t wait
June 16th, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
You might remember my reports on the monk’s, nun’s and Burmese people’s protests in September of last year, how my contacts in Yangon (Rangoon) dried up within days as cpu’s were confiscated, cell phones smashed, communications wires cut, and various deeply good souls arrested, many children, men, women beaten, many murdered by Than Shwe’s evil orders. It was agony and remains so, not to know the fates of those specific contacts/blogger/photographers who were bravely and desperately funneling information and photos out of Burma to literally anyone who would receive them.
I pray for highly endangered bloggers and journalists and radio and broadcast press people everyday. But after such brutal crackdowns as the smug dictator Shwe’s in Burma, for instance, I dont know the storytellers’ whereabouts, if I should pray for them on earth, or perhaps they have been killed and are in heaven. So I pray for them wherever they might be, that they be given all mercy possible, that they be made invisible at just the right moments, that they somehow know we know; that they can be assured that their courage work did not fall on stones.
I would like a monument to The Unknown Bloggers of the World. I would. I am deadly serious. Those who risked their lives to tell the story. Those who gave their lives to tell the story before they were cut down.
Here is more on the hugely disturbing free-form arresting and harming of bloggers, a practice that despite public knowlege, continues without effective intervention… In this report from University of Washington, a reported 64 bloggers arrested for publishing their views in 2003, to a 192 bloggers reported arrested in 2007, the numbers only increase. It is poignant to note that ‘reported’ numbers does not include those who are maimed, disappeared, murdered. Nor does it include, as the article states, those arrested in place just like Burma where the government gives the evil eye to anyone who asks after the welfare of any citizen.
From BBC
…A University of Washington annual report….
More than half of all the arrests since 2003 have been made in China, Egypt and Iran, said the report.
Citizens have faced arrest and jail for blogging about many different topics, said the World Information Access (WIA) report.
Arrested bloggers exposed corruption in government, abuse of human rights or suppression of protests. They criticised public policies and took political figures to task. Read the rest of this entry »
This Guest Voice post is by journalism professor and author Walter Brasch who is also a syndicated newspaper columnist and radio commentator, and president of the Pennsylvania Press Club. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice or its writers.
The Politics of Humanitarian Aid
by Walter Brasch
President Bush was justifiably upset. A cyclone four days earlier had destroyed a large portion of Myanmar, and the country’s military junta was still refusing humanitarian aid. “Let the United States come to help you, help the people,” Bush pleaded with the junta. “We’re prepared to move U.S. Navy assets to help find those who’ve lost their lives, to help find the missing, to help stabilize the situation,” said the President, “but in order to do so, the military junta must allow our disaster assessment teams into the country.”
With more than 20,000 dead, possibly 40,000 missing, and close to one million homeless, the junta made it clear that it, not the international community, would provide whatever humanitarian aid was necessary.
A week before the cyclone hit, President Bush extended sanctions against Myanmar by another year because of what he called that junta’s “large-scale repression of the democratic opposition.” Paranoid about anything that could threaten its power, the junta was frightened that the United States would use the cyclone as a reason to invade the country.
The junta’s response the first week of May was little different than the international concern almost three years earlier. It wasn’t the destruction of villages and the rice farming industry, but the destruction of cities and the shrimp industry. It wasn’t a cyclone named Nargis, but a hurricane named Katrina.
It’s been well documented that the Bush–Cheney Administration, with its head in Iraq, wasn’t prepared for a natural disaster. Like the leaders in Myanmar, the Bush–Cheney Administration was slow to inform the people, and slow to act during the crisis. Less known is that President Bush refused innumerable offers of assistance to the people of the Gulf Coast.
More than 20 countries—including Israel, Mexico, China, England, and the Dominican Republic—quickly offered humanitarian and financial assistance. President Bush’s first response was to tell the audience of ABC-TV’s “Good Morning, America”:
“I’m not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn’t asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country’s going to rise up and take care of it. . . . You know, we would love help, but we’re going to take care of our own business as well, and there’s no doubt in my mind we’ll succeed.”
Cuba, which has one of the best health care and disaster response systems in the world, offered substantial medical supplies and 1,600 physicians, most of them specialists. Rejected.
Venezuela offered $1 million, in addition to oil and humanitarian supplies. Rejected.
Russia offered medical supplies, evacuation equipment, a water cleansing system, a rescue helicopter, and 60 persons specially trained in search and rescue operations. Rejected.
Germany sent a military plane carrying 15 tons of emergency provisions. The United States denied it landing rights.
Not only did the federal government reject humanitarian offers from other countries, it either rejected or ignored offers by the American people and its own governmental agencies. Read the rest of this entry »
The Secretary General of the United Nations has said that he ‘regrets’ that the government of Burma (also known as the whims of Than Shwe) will continue to keep Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.
Kyi has attracted the wrath of the Burmese leaders for daring to support the radical notion that the people of Burma should have the right to choose their own leaders. Of course the rest of the world has a somewhat different tack on the situation, seeing as how she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
For the past 20 years she (and her family) have fought to bring freedom to an area of the world that is starving for something other than the latest incarnation of the tin pot dictator (aka President for Life, etc). But so far her efforts have been repeatedly suppressed.
Obviously at this point we do need to focus on recovery from the recent disaster (though keep in mind the world had to fight for the right to help the dying), but it is worth looking at this to see just how powerless and/or indifferent the United Nations has become to real problems.
They ‘regret’ when nations are under the thumb of brutal dictators, but don’t expect them to actually do something about it. If they did, they might not have enough time to give speeches about how evil the United States and capitalism are.
Want to assist cyclone survivors in Burma and earthquake survivors in China?
TMV reader C Stanley suggests:
In reading this story, where China is specifically listing an urgent need for tents, I was moved to research and give to an organization that had been mentioned to me recently - a group that provides tents and other subsistence items in natural disasters.
One ‘box’ costs about USD 1000 (that includes the organization’s costs in delivering it.)
Contents:
Each ShelterBox normally holds a 10-person tent and a range of other equipment, such as:
• Thermal blankets, insulated ground sheets & insecticide treated mosquito nets • A wood burning stove, or • A multi-fuel stove that can burn anything from diesel to old paint!
• Cooking pans, utensils, bowls and mugs • Collapsible water containers and water purification tablets • Basic tool kit –hammer, axe, saw, pliers, hoe head, trenching shovel, rope etc • A small, children’s pack containing drawing books, crayons, pens etc.
The organization has made it into Myanmar (they work directly through local contacts and are able to avoid some of the bureaucratic red tape of larger organizations) and is beginning to deliver boxes to the China quake area as well.
Apparently donors can find out specifically where their box ends up- each box is numerically coded- but I’m not certain on whether or not there’s a minimum donation to be able to track (I was told it was minimum of $250, but I don’t see that info on their website so I’m not certain.)
The charity got top rating from Intelligent Giving, a British rating organization- and they meet the basic standard of having 10% or less of revenue going to overhead and 90% going directly toward purchase and delivery of boxes. You can find a list on their site of their work to date, which is pretty impressive- they provided something like a quarter million tents after the 2004 Tsunami.
Caveats for anyone who considers donations- the payment is set up in British pounds since it’s a UK based organization (exchange rate currently close to 2:1 for USD: Pound.) And, I have no idea if this is tax deductible for US income tax purposes.
Seemed like a good way to get some immediate much needed assistance to these areas though, for those who are looking for a way to help. Since some of you have blogged about this, I thought I’d pass it along.
May 21, 2008 – The effects of Cyclone Nargis are continuing to intensify: the official death toll is now almost 80,000 while aid agencies estimate that the number of dead could be 128,000 or higher. At least one million people are currently homeless and some 2.5 million people are at risk of starvation and disease.
AJWS has been in constant contact with grantee organizations in communities neighboring the affected regions since the disaster struck and is working with them to make sure that aid reaches those who need it most. AJWS emergency funding is supporting the Emergency Assistance Team, a coordinated relief effort that includes the Mae Tao Clinic and several AJWS grantees. Inside Burma*, the Emergency Assistance Team is visiting affected communities, assessing needs, distributing food and clean water, providing shelter and health services, and disposing of dead bodies. The team is also documenting the scenes and abuses they are witnessing.
Grassroots relief efforts like those supported by AJWS are vital to the people of Burma at this time. While some Southeast Asian aid workers are now being granted visas to enter the country, aid efforts are still being hampered by the Burmese junta and aid workers are still not being allowed into the most badly affected areas. It is estimated that aid has only reached 30% of those who need it, and there are reports that international aid is being sold on the open market instead of being distributed.
An AJWS contact in the region, who cannot be named for security reasons, had this to say: “The provision of lifesaving aid has been stalled due to the [junta’s] underreporting and inept emergency management… The people of Burma have been cheated out of accessing the help they desperately need during this devastating time.”
As the situation on the ground in Burma continues to develop, AJWS will continue to provide updates and reports from our grantees in the region.
Click here for an overview on the political situation in Burma and the work of AJWS in the region.
*The name Myanmar was given to the country by the SPDC in 1989. However, pro-democracy activists still use the old name, Burma, to vocalize their objection to military rule. In solidarity with these activists, and in opposition to the illegitimate rule of the SPDC, AJWS refers to the country as Burma.
May 22nd, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
Than Shwe, as four (4), count them, four huge ships are anchored off Burma, ships filled with relief medical supplies, a helicopter, food, tents, clothing for the poor suffering people of Burma, and YOU Than Shwe, whose names literally mean “million gold’ …refuse to allow the ships into port to land.
This, Than Shwe, is now three weeks after the entire planetary community has rushed to give aid to the people of Burma. You have said and continue to say, No. You have grabbed what shipments of goods you’ve allowed into the country, for yourself and your friends, with only pale distribution far from the center of the Irrawaddy devastation.
A lot of people worldwide see no great leader in you, but think there’s a infantile mewling tyrant inside the great dictator of Burma. It may be so, for when a person carries a profound sense of inferiority, they also give great effort to compensate by overdoing status symbols. I hear you have festooned your military jacket with unearned gold medals, Than Shwe.
There’s an old saying in the military, the real and honorable military, not your colonized kind, Than Shwe: the more gold hanging on the outside, the smaller the man feels himself to be on the inside.
Even our five-star generals and admirals, Than Shwe, do not wear their ceremonial military uniforms at every turn as you do. They know the difference between daily hard work and the garb to do it in, and the occasional all-out ceremonial dress-up.
Most importantly, they got their medals, bars and epaulets the hard way: they earned them– often by spilling their own blood. Not like you, who spill the blood of your own people, and then award yourself a grand medal for doing so.
There’s another story Than Shwe, one from my own heritage:
The greed-sotted Conquistadores who staged a vicious coup, plundering the Aztec nations, setting themselves up as a dictatorship and junta… they had exactly the same problem as you Than Shwe.
Their lust to festoon themselves with gold they had not earned, but killed innocent Aztecs for, made the braggart Conquistadores’ bodies very heavy. The Conquistadores literally clanked from all the gold they hung on all over themselves.
Gold, so heavy in fact, that when the native people turned on them in rebellions that took hundreds of years to come to resolution– in the favor of the people– that when the phony dictators ran from the Aztecs to bunker themselves in their stolen palaces, the gold-laden soldiers often fell into the many waterways and aqueducts Read the rest of this entry »
May 15th, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
Than Shwe, the dictator of Burma, caused it to be announced today that a constitutional referendum “was overwhelmingly approved”– when in fact a huge portion of the Burmese are dead or lying injured and homeless from the cyclone and tsunami which hit the Irrawaddy delta rice growing region almost 13 days ago…and were unable to drink clean water, let alone vote.
Than Shwe’s referendum casts in concrete in perpetuity, more of the brutality and egotistical offal that Burma has suffered in the nearly four decades of military rule under and from Than Shwe.
Than Shwe claims his referendum document was voted in by 92.4 percent of the 22 million eligible voters last Saturday.
His henchman, named Aung Toe, head of the Referendum Holding Committee, touted such on state radio, saying the voter turnout was more than 99 percent.
Please forgive me, but this all reminds me of the grotesqueries of Elena Ceausescu, the headscarf and overcoat and thick heeled shoe wearing wife of the dictator of Romania, Nikolai Ceausescu. While her dictator husband appointed himself, literally, Geniul din Carpai, ‘Genius of the Carpathians’, she appointed herself Commissioner Head of Sciences. She also appointed herself the equivalent of ‘Highest Director of National Arts.’ Elena Ceausescu held daily three-hour long television shows of herself expounding to the vastly intelligent Romanian people, her stunted and ignorant ‘knowledge’ of the arts and ’scientific matters’. No one with even a baby pea-brain believed a word she said. But her abject dimness of heart and hubris made her believe others were somehow stupid and would never see through her.
But people did see through her, rejected her utterly, overthrew her and her husband. For his and her crimes against the people, which were evil and Mengeles-like, such as controlling and punishing reproduction or the lack of it, and for withholding medicines from those dying of AIDS, and causing a preventable epidemic as a result… and for doing as Than Shwe does presently… grabbing and stashing all the nation’s valuables and bullion to himself alone… for all these, the Romanians fought and won a coup, and imposed the death sentence on Elena Ceausescu and her husband. And they were no more.
And people do see through Than Shwe. Voices from all over the world, human rights groups, the UN, and others have utterly condemned Burma’s Than Shwe for gerry-rigging the vote, and outrageously lying that it was ‘a move toward democracy.’
The world communities of conscience condemn Than Shwe most of all, for abjectly leaving the cyclone victims to die and rot and starve, while he tends to his portly, well fed ego. It is believed well over 100,000 have perished in Burma from the cyclone and many thousands more from neglect by the government which has stonewalled, delayed, disorganized and also prevented well equiped and expert rescue teams from outside Burma to come to the aid of the poor suffering Burmese.
If you’d like to read a take on the effects of and containment of evil, regarding the social justice situation in Burma from a spiritual and political perspective, I’ve written an article entitled, “Facing Evil: Qui tacet consentit - Who Keeps Silent, Consents” at The National Catholic Reporter.
Meanwhile, the AP reports:
Following the balloting, local journalists said they saw cases of intimidation of voters at various polling stations around the country.
The fear of the military, which has ruled since 1962, was so great that
My sister Daphne studied Burmese music in Yangon. She is in touch with teachers and students at the music school Gitameit. They are organizing relief aid. Daphne wrote this:
Small and local aid agencies are best equipped to help the victims of cyclone Nargis because they are already operating on the ground. Donations to these agencies are more effective since big aid organizations are still struggling to access the affected areas. Local relief groups such as the Music School Gitameit, are providing the most urgently needed first-aid supplies.
For two years I lived in Yangon, studying Burmese traditional music and teaching classical flute at the Gitameit Music Center, a private school founded by the American pianist Kit Young in 2003. I returned to Berlin in December 2007 to finish my masters in Musicology and Southeast Asian Studies.
My friends, former colleagues, and students all tell me that Yangon, the old capital, is widely devastated and that the fertile delta of the Irrawaddy River is still flooded.
The United Nations this week said the refusal of Burma’s government to allow workers into the country’s devastated agricultural region was unprecedented in the history of humanitarian relief. The human catastrophe produced by Burma’s refusal to permit aid in the wake of Cyclone Nargis has stunned the senses of a world that has watched this spectacle for a week.
…It’s time to kick Burma out of the United Nations. If the U.N. does not put in motion a process to suspend Burma from its U.N. membership, then, clearly, nothing is forbidden….Booting Burma out of the U.N. would be symbolic.
“Symbolic” indeed. Since it’s not a serious punishment, the only thing that such an action is likely to accomplish is the elimination of a much-needed avenue for dialogue and conflict-resolution. Perhaps it’s better for the United States to focus on leveling some real punishments, as part of a comprehensive carrots-and-sticks approach, than just resorting to feel-good gestures.
New York, NY, May 8, 2008—Thanks to its historical, 94 years of operation as a non-political entity and relief organization, JDC staff has been granted entry visas to carry out humanitarian aid efforts for victims of cyclone Nargis which hit Myanmar last week. A senior JDC professional is on the ground in Myanmar, where he will assess the situation and carry out plans to aid the estimated several hundred thousand cyclone victims without shelter and safe drinking water. JDC is partnering with MASHAV, Magen David Adom (MDA), and F.I.R.S.T (Fast Israeli Rescue & Search Team) to provide emergency relief, including medical supplies and personnel and rescue workers.
JDC has opened a mailbox and is now accepting donations to provide immediate assistance and relief:
Donate to Myanmar Cyclone Relief:
Online: https://www.jdc.org/donation/jdc_form.cfm
By Phone: 212.687.6200
By Mail: Check payable to: JDC-Myanmar Cyclone Relief, P.O. Box 530, 132 East 43rd St., New York, NY, 10017
May 9th, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
According to my contact in Yangon, what pitiful supplies are on the ground, have no distribution whatsoever to any of the thousands of villages and tributaries in Burma hit into utter devastation by the tsunami/ cyclone. The Burmese, most poorer than poor before the tsunami, are going on their 6th sunrise without clean water, food, or shelter or medicines.
Meanwhile, it is certain, while the military government gets down their fiddles, the infants and newborns and toddlers grow dehydrated. Without adequate water and food, their mothers’ breasts will have run out of milk, and the children will die from dehydration, an entire generation of young will be gone within a week.
Than Shwe: You cannot keep others from knowing about the mayhem of your country. Burma is on satellite. The floods and the people and the animals can be seen dead and floating and bloated. The living can be seen by satellite also, picking through ruins, entire villages wiped out with no survivors.
Than Shwe, delaying allowing aid workers in, makes you only look more and more unleaderly.
Than Shwe, animals survive by adapting. Animals who can learn new behavior, survive the unforeseen.
Than Shwe, animals who do as they have always done, die.
Than Shwe, open your heart, if not your mind. Be known as a ruler who took care of his people in every way possible, rather than going down in history as the leader who stood by paralyzed and allowed holy people and helpless people, his own kith and kin, to die in misery.
CODA
I hear from my contact in Yangon, that the people on the ground in Burma are begging that international aeroplanes please fly over and drop supplies.
Than Shwe, if they fly, let them fly unmolested. Add no more horror to horror. It’s within your power. Choose honorific over horrific.
Than Shwe, the new respect you would receive then, would be remarkable.
This is our deepest prayer for you Than Shwe, and for the people of Burma… the Central Buddhist Precept:
Look at these faces. While the rest of the world wrings its hands and waits helplessly on the sidelines, Burma’s government says it will accept aid, but that it doesn’t want the help of foreigners in getting it to the people. (BBC News) The UN is pretty sure the government’s own unaided efforts won’t be enough.
The UN says that up to 1.5 million people may have been affected by Cyclone Nargis, which devastated the Irrawaddy Delta region on Saturday. Burmese state media say 22,980 people were killed, but there are fears the figure could rise to 100,000.
Hundreds of thousands of people have no food, water or shelter. Officials say people could die because no help is getting to them.
In a statement, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged the junta to prioritise the aid effort over tomorrow’s nation-wide referendum on a widely-criticised new constitution.
It would be "prudent to focus instead on mobilising all available resources and capacity for the emergency response efforts", he said. (BBC News)
May 8th, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
Various news reports say there are over 200,000 dead in the cyclone and tsunami that hit Burma… now five days ago.
Other reports say over 500,000 will be dead if the thousands of bodies floating in water and lying in mud are not burnt or buried, and the injured given help, and the vulnerable given clean water.
This is after the government originally said there might be a total of 10,000 dead. Maybe not even that many, they said.
This from The Sun, U.K., by Nick Parker, Chief Foreign Correspondent at Mae Sot on the Burmese border
and James Clench
The UK has so far pledged more aid than anyone, announcing a £5million package to be channelled through the UN.
Charities Save the Children, Oxfam and the British Red Cross have also swung into action.
But most of the aid is yet to be distributed because of the secretive Burmese junta, led by ruthless General Than Shwe.
His isolationist regime is paranoid an influx of foreigners might have a political impact on a national referendum due tomorrow, set to strengthen the army’s grip still further.
Three days ago, the dictatorship’s Health Minister went on TV, in what was called a rare appearance, and he said aid was on its way to the Burmese people. Right away.
It’s not. Aid is not on its way. Five days later, world aid is not present in Burma.
General Than Shwe, dictator of Burma, has 400,000 soldiers at his behest.
And as I wrote at TMV earlier, hopefully Than Shwe would stand out of the way and allow the experienced international teams of aid workers to bring equipment and supplies, and the means to both unload it and distribute it.
It didn’t happen.
Ships from many nations are still fully loaded all over the world waiting orders to turn the wheel and steam toward Burma. Cargo planes are loaded and waiting. They are filled with medical supplies At various airports outside Burma, aid workers are sitting on their packed duffels and backpacks ready to go: parameds, post trauma specialists, doctors, engineers, health care workers, and heavy equipment, such as back hoes, trailers. All waiting.
And waiting
And waiting
Than Shwe, hugely well fed dictator of the ancient Burmese people, he who has suffered no personal loss from this disaster for he is ensconced more than 200 miles away from where the tsunami/ cyclone hit… and it is Than Shwe, who wanted to be king of everything and who wanted to control everything, it is he who has publicly failed the world soul, failed the world heart that cries out for a humane response…
Than Shwe has failed publicly and utterly by keeping aid workers out of Burma, by putting no real teeth behind his health minister’s claim that help was coming, big help was coming, right away, huge help was coming.
Than Shwe is merely keeping all aid workers on strings… without cutting the red tape.
The dictatorship’s excuse? Than Shwe and his merelings continues to parrot that they “cannot let aid workers into the country out of concern for the workers own safety.”
Than Shwe,NEWS ALERT: to aid workers, a disaster site wouldn’t be a disaster site if it weren’t unsafe.
Than Shwe’s huge lie will not hold water, not even a drop left behind by the tsunami.
May 6th, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
With an estimated 40,000 lives lost in the cyclone three days ago, the Burmese dictatorship has said they will today allow humanitarian aid to come into Burma, along with aid workers.
There may be tremendous good come from this horrible disaster
– that the Burmese receive sypathetic and kind touches from others for once.
– that stories come out of Burma via the aid givers; true stories instead of those filtered through the regime.
Hopefully Senior General Than Shwe wont require all aid workers to leave their cell phones and laptops behind, putting aid workers out of touch with each other– communication about supplies and injuries is critical triage– as well as out of touch of their own families far away.
Several someones in the government of Burma have hearts and souls. The minister of health went on television to say aid would be coming. Not like last time there was a huge disaster and those governing Burma (now called Myanmar) hunkered down and allowed no aid to come in, allowing their people to die.
Hopefully the government will allow those from other nations who have real experience at post-trauma sites, to organize food, water and shelter distribution… So that transport planes do not sit on the tarmac for weeks on end without being unloaded, and medical equipment going only to the members of the regime and their families, instead of to the people who suffer so.
Hopefully, the government will not stand in the way again, but let aid flow to the people effectively this time.
CODA
There are conflicting reports thus far about Than Shwe’s government possibly suspending their ‘referendum’ this coming week that would have altered the Constitution of Myanmar giving the military junta perpetual dominion.
May 5th, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
UPDATE: Latest reports say 15,000- Burmese dead from cyclone. Given that dictator Than Shwe said only three monks died during the peaceful demonstrations by Buddhist holy people last September, when in fact the numbers maimed and murdered were in the thousands…
and given that after the September 2007 peaceful demonstrations, Than Shwe confiscated all cell phones and computers amongst the citizenry, jailing anyone or ‘disappearing’ anyone who had one…. thus Than Shwe managed to leave outlying regions in such a crisis as this cyclone aftermath unable to communicate their losses and their needs.
Such cavalier undervaluation of others’ lives is the hallmark of Than Shwe’s cruel dictatorship. While he endlessly gluts himself in fine drink and fine food and the best of everything, including his ill gotten gains from the cocaine trade exports of Burma, the people of Burma have nothing, no shelter, no water, no food.
The cyclone hit the productive rice fields. The price of eggs and rice have rocketed overnight. Thus far Senior General Than Shwe has left the babies sucking air, the old people without food, the injured without help, the dead without recovery or burial.
China is Than Shwe’s consort. With an nth of all Chinese manpower, they could have been boots on the ground and helping within hours. It is now nearing two days. According to my contact there, very little to nothing is being allowed into Burma or carried to those in need.
I feel certain that Than Shwe’s dragging his knees– again– is a tactic meant to murder the populations, instead of just slowly killing them, breaking their hearts and starving them as he was before.
Than Shwe’s past tactics are to dress some of his military up in monks robes and for them to pretend to be happy; to make sure to take pictures of such. The pictures are phony. It would not be beyond Than Shwe to mock up some ‘doctors’ and even display a red cross– and take pictures of these– to prove to the world he is letting aid into Burma that goes directly past his overstuffed coffers and to the poor people
There’s one thing Than Shwe hasnt counted on, however, and that is that the world is far smarter than he thinks and he is the one who is provincial and uneducated. People across the world see through him. The sight is not pretty.
—————-
Previous article by Dr. E, posted earlier today:
Cyclone in Burma (the junta calls the country Myanmar)
120 mph winds and rain.
Concentrated near Rangoon, (now called Yangon)
more than 10,000 Burmese men, women, children, old people are dead.
Dead, dead, dead.
military junta and soldiers slow slow slow to respond to the hundreds of thousands of Burmese who need shelter and clear drinking water…
… let alone helping to bury the dead
…let alone tend to the injured
not anywhere near as fast as the bloated self-appointed dictator Than Shwe moved his military in to murder peaceful Buddhist monks and nuns who protested the regime’s doubling the cost of essentials like cooking oil, overnight last September… cooking oil… an essential nourishment to Burma’s tribal groups and vast shanty towns of poor.
While Than Shwe sports lots of shiny military medals on his shirt over his prosperous girth, Read the rest of this entry »
April 7th, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
Several professional climbers have scaled the SanFran Golden Gate Bridge to put up huge flags high on the tall girders on the bridge. The flags read:
ONE WORLD ONE DREAM
and
FREE TIBET
Fox News says they have the cell phone numbers of one of two city workers who are at the highest point on the bridge, about half again as high as the climbers, who are pretty high indeed.
Apparently the police have arrested several people on the ground, and are not hazarding to climb the guy wires. Instead they will wait ’til the climbers come down. Western manners.
Regarding the two workers on the top of the bridge who are just sort of leaning there, waiting calmly… I hope the cell phone number Fox News has, goes to the guy with the long black pony tail. If he’s a Latino or a Native American, I hope Fox knows that we have five versions of yes that mean no.
On another note, there were riots in Paris, as there had been in London yesterday, as the Olympic Torch passed through; it was apparently extinguished three times today in the melee. I felt sorry for the torch bearer. Probably the honor of his lifetime. But, then, depending on his sentiments toward others, he might stand as a strong figure trying to do what Olympics athletes do; prevail against intense competitors. Who’d ever think carry the torch would turn into an endurance event? Read the rest of this entry »
Small and local aid agencies are best equipped to help the victims of cyclone Nargis because they are already operating on the ground. Donations to these agencies are more effective since big aid organizations are still struggling to access the affected areas. Local relief groups such as the Music School Gitameit, are providing the most urgently needed first-aid supplies.
