Alarm mounts as Myanmar’s misery deepens

What happened

Nearly two weeks after a massive cyclone devastated southern Myanmar, claiming tens of thousands of lives, the country’s secretive military junta this week continued to block relief efforts. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned of an “outbreak of infectious disease that could dwarf today’s crisis,” while E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana urged outside donors “to use all the means” possible to deliver food, water, medicine, and shelters to the affected region. U.N. officials complained of long delays in obtaining visas for aid workers and voiced worries that the Myanmar military was diverting supplies to areas unaffected by the storm. “The situation is profoundly worrying,” said John Holmes of the U.N. World Food Program. “They have simply not facilitated access in a way we have a right to expect.”

Relief officials who viewed the devastation in Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Delta said the number of people killed by the cyclone and a subsequent storm surge could reach 100,000. Medical authorities warned that the ultimate toll could well surpass that, as cholera and other diseases spread among survivors crowded into a handful of shanty­towns. State television showed images of generals delivering food to survivors, but locals say only a trickle of supplies has reached them. The government has refused help with distributing relief supplies and pressed ahead with a nationwide constitutional referendum aimed at consolidating the power of the brutal regime that has ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, for almost 50 years.

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What the editorials said

“A horrific crime is being carried out by the clique of generals that rules Burma,” said The Washington Post. While tons of relief supplies wait on the tarmac of the airport in Yangon, the country’s largest city, Secretary-General Ban “has literally not been able to get the top general, Than Shwe, on the telephone.” It’s past time for the U.N. to invoke its “right to protect,” which empowers it to launch humanitarian operations without the cooperation of the government.

While Burma is on the brink of “a public-health catastrophe,” we must not forget that it is also “a simmering human-rights disaster,” said the Portland, Maine, Press-Herald. For decades, the junta has brutalized its own people, denying them food and beating those who dare to protest. For the moment, the generals’ monstrousness is in the global spotlight. After the disaster passes, “they should not be allowed to escape it.”

What the columnists said

The generals may be violent, xenophobic, and paranoid, said Anne Applebaum in The Washington Post, but they are not irrational. “Given their most urgent goal, to maintain power at all costs,” their intransigence “makes perfect sense.” Distributing relief supplies marked with the logo of the U.N.—or worse, the U.S.—would only highlight the regime’s inability to protect its own people. So the generals are refusing assistance. But should they maintain this hideous course, “we have to start considering alternatives,” including the use of force. “There isn’t much time to ruminate.”

The generals’ clampdown on information is making a terrible crisis even worse, said Roby Alampay in The New York Times. The regime failed to give adequate notice of the storm’s approach, and journalists who have managed to enter the country suspect that their phones are being tapped and their movements tracked. The rulers “view independent information as more dangerous to them” than any storm. For the wretched people of Myanmar, “a drought in information” is now becoming the greatest threat to their survival.

The cyclone has revealed the regime’s “true colors to the world,” said exiled activist Aung Zaw in the London Guardian. Its sole concern is consolidating power through a bogus constitutional referendum. During voting that began last weekend, “many voters spoke of being handed paper ballots that had already been filled in.” But “the cyclone has changed the country’s political dynamics.” And while “it may be wishful thinking to suggest” that the junta’s days are numbered, “it is a hope widely shared among victims of the cyclone.”

What next?

U.S. Navy ships loaded with supplies are poised off Myanmar’s coast, awaiting the regime’s permission to begin distributing aid. Meanwhile, a movement is building in the E.U. and the U.N. to organize air drops directly to areas where victims are huddled—with or without the regime’s permission. At press time, another powerful cyclone was making its way toward Myanmar and was predicted to strike within days.