Humanitarian Intervention Calls Increase

By SAW YAN NAING
The Irrawaddy News

As the Burmese junta continues to block foreign experts from entering the country to help cyclone relief work there, calls for outside humanitarian intervention grow louder.

“It is time for humanitarian intervention,” said Burma’s opposition National League for Democracy (NLD).
“The government has failed to take the responsibility to help and save its own citizens,” said NLD spokesman Nyan Win.

Ethnic leaders agreed. Lian Sakhong, general secretary of the Ethnic Nationalities Council, told The Irrawaddy on Monday that humanitarian intervention was urgently needed.

Lian Sakhong, who lives in exile, said he was shocked by the scale of the devastation and was particularly concerned about the health risks posed by outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and diarrhea.

The Seven Alliances of pro-democracy organizations, representing the majority of Burma's ethnic and democracy groups in exile, released a joint statement on May 9 urging the regime to allow all international aid to enter Burma immediately.

The NLD’s spokesman in exile, Nyo Ohn Myint, who once worked with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, urged the US and the EU to seek agreement in the region for intervene with humanitarian assistance in Burma.

“Burma needs a new hope,” he said. “Burma is not Iraq but the Burmese are waiting (for humanitarian intervention).”

Nyo Ohn Myint asked: “Why has the regime refused to accept international aid agencies? They have the capacity to save our countrymen and women.”

The US says it has three ships standing ready in the Gulf of Thailand, including the USS Essex, which is carrying 1,800 marines, 23 helicopters and five amphibious landing craft.

Although the US government says it needs regime approval before going ahead with the direct delivery of aid, former USAID director Andrew Natsios has called on Washington to launch unilateral airdrops, regardless of the regime’s reaction.

Natsios pointed out that the US has facilitated the delivery of humanitarian aid without the host government's consent in some other countries.

Retired US General William Nash, of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the US should first pressure China to use its influence over the junta to get it to open up and then hand over relief missions to Thailand and Indonesia.

Naing Aung, the secretary general of the Thailand-based Forum for Democracy in Burma, urged the UN and the international community to “carry out high-level negotiations with the regime leaders to persuade them to open up the country and allow international aid and give them unrestricted access.”

If the regime continued to obstruct international assistance, said Naing Aung, “then the world has a responsibility to respond to the life-threatening situation in Burma by invoking the 'Responsibility to Protect' clause, a concept the UN recognized in 2005.”

Aung Naing Oo, a Burmese analyst in exile, said Than Shwe should be held accountable for barring emergency aid. “Than Shwe is the person most responsible for this crime,” he said.

Aung Kyaw Zaw, a former communist party member now living on the Sino-Burma border, pointed out that the regime had 400,000 troops at its disposal to help in relief work but had failed to enlist army assistance.