Burmese victims face peril from enemy within

from The Scotsman

By EMILY PYKETT
A CHILD orphaned by Cyclone Nargis sits crying in Pathein, right at the heart of the flooded Irrawaddy delta zone.
He desperately needs help if he is to survive.

Nine hundred miles away, British Red Cross workers fret impotently at a warehouse in Kuala Lumpur.

Planes loaded with shelter kits, tarpaulins and jerry cans are scheduled to fly to Rangoon the next day.

Will the vital supplies reach survivors of Cyclone Nargis in time? Or will they be seized by Burma's military rulers, who see everyone as a potential enemy – even foreign aid workers?

Aid agency flights into Burma were temporarily halted yesterday by the State Peace and Development Council. In some cases authorities refused to grant clearance for them to land and have rationed aid trucks to just two litres of fuel each.

Charities say their hands are tied because of delays caused by visa backlogs. And US defence chiefs have ruled out air drops of aid, claiming they are bound to respect sovereignty of Burma's airspace.

The Burmese junta is made up of 11 reclusive, paranoid, xenophobic generals who despise the western world.

They are currently building a brand-new sprawling capital city 300 miles north of Rangoon at Naypyidaw, known as the Abode of Kings. It has reliable electricity and water supplies, eight lane motorways and luxurious government buildings.

But while the junta leader General Than Shwe lives in a massive military complex and is happy to pay £25 million for his daughter's wedding, 90 per cent of Burma's population live on 50p a day.

The army recruits boy soldiers and is not afraid to deploy its stocks of antiquated military equipment to quell any uprisings, whether that is Buddhist monks peacefully demonstrating or the Karen ethnic minority defending themselves against state-sponsored massacres in the jungle.

The armed forces – and former rebels co-opted by the government – have been accused of large-scale trafficking in heroin, of which Burma is a major exporter.

Despite the military might, experts say the junta is afraid of everything – internal uprisings, a US invasion, globalisation and its capacity to dilute traditional Burmese culture.

International commentators agree that denying access to US military planes and withholding visas for aid workers all fits the same pattern – the military regime simply cannot reconcile the need for a massive international aid programme with the openness necessary to direct it.

Sean Turnell, a Burma expert at Australia's Macquarie University, said: "The military regime is extraordinarily xenophobic. If they can't handle the situation and they let westerners come in with helicopters, this will demonstrate to their own people the shortcomings of the military. They are more concerned with control and maintaining an omniscience in front of their people than saving lives."

Josef Silverstein, a retired Rutgers University professor who studied Burma for more than a half century, said aid workers could also be seen as a threat.

"From the junta's perspective, aid workers could be carrying weapons to give to the people, they could give them ideas of how to overthrow the government. They're afraid that if foreign soldiers come in they are the spearhead for revolution," he said.

Mark Farmaner, the director of Burma Campaign UK, said: "The council is basically dictatorship by committee.

"They have doubled the size of the army and spend half their annual budget on defence. They have never allowed free access – why should they start now?"

The junta has long mistrusted the western world, stemming from more than a century of British colonial rule that ended in 1948, with Burma deciding not to join the Commonwealth.

A parliamentary democracy survived until the ruthless dictator General Ne Win seized power in a 1962 coup.

During his 26-year rule, Ne Win's regime curtailed human rights and political opposition and closed the country off to outsiders.

Tourists were not allowed in for years until the 1970s when visitors were given strict, seven-day visas.

These days, tourists get one-month visas, but journalists are welcome only during carefully scripted occasions, such as the annual celebration of Armed Forces Day.

Burma, which used to be called "the rice bowl of Asia", is full of natural resources which mean it should be one of the continent's richest nations.

Before the cyclone destroyed the harvests, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation expected 600,000 tonnes of rice exports from Burma this year.

Yet 90 per cent of the population were living in poverty.

The government does not care about an economy already crippled through decades of military rule, and it does not care about the people.

Professor Bill McGuire, the director of the Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre at University College London, said: "This was a disaster waiting to happen, with millions of people occupying poorly built homes on a river delta barely above sea level and in the cyclone belt. Clearly, the government will have known about the approaching storm, but seems to have chosen to do nothing about it."

But although other large-scale natural disasters have acted as political catalysts, Cyclone Nargis will not help to change the Burma regime, according to observers.

And even under this level of international scrutiny, it is doubtful the catastrophe will persuade the government to open up the borders.

In fact, it could even play to their advantage, says Robert Heath, associate professor from the school of management at the University of South Australia.

The consultant in risk, intelligence and crisis and emergency management said: "The Burmese government junta may see this event as a politically convenient way to account for people who may be missing and dispossessed for other reasons including social decay."

So what can be done next to try to break down the barriers in Burma?

Dr Kerry Brown, an associate fellow on the Asia programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, said: "They are pretty introverted and have been very enclosed for many years. They have not got a great deal of contact with the outside world.

"We have tried applied pressure through the United Nations, tourism embargoes, breaking off political contact.

"Perhaps we should be pressing for the Chinese to talk to them – they seem to listen."

Dr Gareth Price, his colleague at Chatham House, added: "The cyclone has made some two to three million people homeless. Even with Burma's 500,000 strong army, the co-ordination and delivery of aid is lacking, the junta needs international organisations to step in.

"If the military is unable to provide food and shelter to those affected, it could see renewed protests on a much larger scale. But thus far, the junta has appeared immune from foreign pressure."

Andrew Kirkwood, Save the Children, Rangoon

OUR staff are treated like spies. Even under normal circumstances, all our staff need travel permits to go outside Rangoon, and we have to be accompanied by officials from the ministry of welfare and health.

But now, possibly because of international pressure to get aid out there to survivors of Cyclone Nargis, those rules seem to be relaxed. A number of international staff are being allowed to leave the capital.

Save the Children continues to stress that issuing visas for humanitarian workers and easing customs rules for the delivery of aid as soon as possible will greatly enhance the international community's ability to meet the needs of people who survived the cyclone.

However, in my view, it's not the lack of international people on the ground that has been the major constraint – the lack of logistics has hampered us most. The infrastructure is simply not there.

We've just heard that the French oil firm Total can give us the use of two helicopters, with pilots, two days a week. I am speechless – that is great news.

Once the immediate aid efforts are over, we need to start looking at the long term.

More than 3,000 primary schools have been destroyed – that means half a million students have no prospect of going back to school.

We have been working with Unicef to assess damage to schools and are starting to plan for education to resume on 1 June.

JUNTA

This term is used to refer to the ruling body of a country where it is considered the government, normally made up of military officers, who take power after a revolution or coup d'état. A junta normally governs in a dictatorship. It can also mean a council or assembly that deliberates in secret.

MYANMAR

The country achieved independence from the UK on 4 January, 1948, as the Union of Burma. It became the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma in 1974, before reverting to the Union of Burma in 1988. The following year the government adopted the name Union of Myanmar, but the controversial name change has not been not recognised by the opposition groups and many English-speaking nations, as the government which decreed it is unrecognised.

Mark Farmaner director, Burma Campaign UK

THE most senior general, Than Shwe, is 73, very sick – and quite crazy. Many people hope that when he dies the regime will shift, but we think the generals under him are just as hardline.

So there is no real option but for the junta in Burma to be forced to change. We need the United Nations Security Council to overrule it. Trade embargoes, sanctions, the "softly-softly" diplomatic approach – nothing else has worked so far. It is time for individual governments to start getting in there. By this, I mean infiltrate Burma if they have to – we can't wait for permission any more.

Agencies should start delivering aid to cyclone survivors regardless of the junta's position because the alternative is to stand by and watch thousands of people die.

The international community is making the same mistake as it has done for the past 20 years: assuming that somehow reason and logic will work.

But these are brutal generals who are more concerned with fighting in the jungle so they can wipe out civilians and ethnic minorities.

They are not diplomats or politicians; they will not come round and realise people are really suffering.