Burma's junta adds to cyclone's toll
 As devastating Cyclone
Nargis was, which struck southern Burma two months ago, it may well
be less disastrous than the country’s military regime, which
continues to ignore the urgent needs of its own people. The misery
visited on the country appears to be continuing without letup, and
without any aid from the junta, which remains holed up in its new
capital of Naypyidaw north of Rangoon, depending on the army to keep
a foot on the public neck.
A look at Burma today
finds at least 70 percent of the delta’s farmland remaining
uncultivated. With the critical planting period beginning in
mid-July, there is little infrastructure in place to aid farmers. As
has been widely reported, the State Peace and Development Council, as
it has called, not only was unable to supply immediate relief on its
own, but then severely restricted visas to international aid
organizations. One website asked “Could God get a visa to
Burma?”
Thousands of survivors
remain in refugee camps in the Irrawaddy Delta, nearly a month and a
half after the storm devastated the region, although numbers have
dropped significantly when 45 camps were set up to care for as many
as 50,000 people. The government has continued to attempt to force or
cajole people out of the camps and send them home, offering transport
and provisions. However, for the survivors, the storm was so
destructive that there are no homes, indeed in some places not even
towns to go back to.
Since August 2007, the
country has remained the focus of outraged international headlines,
and for good reason. Hundreds of thousands of Buddhist monks and
common people took to the streets nearly a year ago, raising their
voices against the State Peace and Development Council, as the junta
calls itself, only to be crushed. About 100 people are thought to
have died and thousands were sent to jail, many of them still behind
bars.
But this time, the
junta has been challenged by nature. Nargis wrecked the entire
Irrawaddy and Rangoon divisions of the country, ripping across three
other divisions and states. Nargis also left a trail of devastation
over Burma’s social infrastructure, killing thousands of
livestock and flooding paddy fields which were just being made ready
for Burma's rice crops.
According to the latest
government information, the storm killed 84,537 people, leaving
53,836 missing and 19,359 injured. The United Nations estimates that
Nargis affected 2.4 million people. More than 300,000 water buffalo
and cattle died in the delta and Rangoon localities. Moreover, nearly
1 million acres of farmland in the Irrawaddy Delta and 300,000 acres
in the Rangoon Division were ruined. Fertile lands also were flooded
with saltwater although according to outside authorities the intense
rains that continued after the cyclone probably leached a good deal
of the salt away.
Amid the chaos, the
junta went ahead with its long-planned constitutional referendum,
reportedly dragooning villagers into the voting process and
intimidating them to vote for a new constitution that stifles dissent
and contains pro-military provisions that appear guaranteed to keep
the junta in power. The rulers also extended the detention of the
pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi for one more year, prompting
harsh and apparently ineffective criticism from international
communities.
There have been a
number of bomb blasts by unknown protesters in the wake of the
disaster. The most recent was Tuesday in a Rangoon government
building. Authorities have been deploying round-the-clock security
guards and increased night-time patrols. No one has been reported
killed in the blasts. An armed students’ group in exile, the
Vigorous Burma Student Warriors, later claimed responsibility.
In addition, Irrawaddy,
an expatriate publication in Chiangmai, Thailand, reported that Su Su
Nway, a labor rights activist, has been imprisoned in Insein Prison.
The publication reported that security at Insein Prison has been
tightened since the roof blew off one of the prison buildings duiring
the cyclone and “In the ensuing panic, 36 inmates were shot to
death by prison guards and riot police,” according to the
publication.
Nargis
hit the country during a critical period of the year. The month of
May in the English calendar year is the season to prepare rice
seedlings for the second planting of the year. Like many South and
Southeast Asian countries, rice is the primary crop and staple food.
Planting needs to be completed within the rainy season, more
preferably by the end of July. Harvesting starts from October.
Hence the May 2-3
disaster put a heavy toll on rice production. Partly because
protective mangrove swamps had been torn out along the coast for fish
farms, the cyclone hit with a wall of water estimated at three to
four meters high, rolling inland for as much as 35 to 40 kilometers.
On one hand it flooded
arable lands with seawater, destroying the already grown spring crop
and on the other it killed the water buffalo essential to poor
Burmese for cultivation. If immediate action is not taken to support
farmers with tillers and fresh rice seedlings, Burma is almost
certain to face a crisis by the end of the year. The Irrawaddy region
produces almost 60 percent of the country's rice.
China and Thailand led
donations of as many as 5,000 power tillers to the farmers, but the
Burmese Agriculture minister Htay Oo announced the urgent need for as
much as 5 million litres of diesel to run them. United Nations
Undersecretary-General Noeleen Heyzer has also issued a call to
supply fuel, saying the fuel is crucial for the affected farmers to
meet their planting season.
Besides rice, the
region also contributes a major share of Burma’s farmed fish
production. The cyclone ruined most of the fish ponds, hatcheries and
shrimp farms in the area, which has impoverished another major
segment of the population.
Burma, which was once
known as the rice bowl of Asia, has seen production fall
precipitously as four decades of non-governance and disastrous
economic policies have meant that farmers have lost their interest
and motivation for surplus production. The country was expected to
export 600,000 tonnes of rice to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It is
still unknown whether they can meet that goal. The only way they can
do it is by starving their own people to meet the export quota.
"If a regime is
challenged by the people, the rulers might have the option to deploy
its forces, and the SPDC did that during last year's popular
uprising. But this time, the junta has been challenged by none other
than nature,” said Rangoon-based political activist Win Naing
(name altered for protection). “So what did the military rulers
do? As they can never go against nature, they went against the
innocent people! Have you heard of a government which not only denied
timely and adequate relief to those victims of circumstances, but was
also bent preventing the same from outside sources?"
Win Naing hopes for a
major uprising in the country.
"The cyclone has
taught the people that there is nothing like governance in Burma and
they have to face all the problems with their own with outside
supports. In fact, they come to realize the presence of outer
agencies in a bigger way after the disaster. It will definitely
enrich their optimism for a change," he said.
He also added, "During
the saffron revolution (September, 2007), the Burmese people (over 80
percent of them Buddhist) witnessed how their government could
torture the monks, the most respected community in the country, to
remain in power. This time, they have seen the cruelty of the
government towards them. I believe the junta will slip into bigger
trouble very soon as the regime has started losing its influence on
the monks and the common people. We expect if it would happen little
earlier."
But in fact it appears
that the junta, secure in their Naypyidaw redoubt, are still securely
in power, supported by China and India. Unless those two governments
turn on them, they appear capable of riding out not only a massive
uprising but the most ruinous storm in the country’s history.
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It is apparently neither motivated by a radical philosophy like in the case of the Khmer Rouge nor the result of a lunatic individual like in North Korea.
Can it really only come down to greed and fear?