Myanmar's ill wind

Editorial: NST Online

THE toll of a cyclone like Nargis is measured not in the dead -- though they may number in the tens of thousands -- but the dying, in their hundreds of thousands. After the devastation of the storm itself comes the more insidious and much further-reaching effects of displacement, disease, malnutrition and exposure.

Shelter is gone. Food and essential supplies are gone. Injuries and debilitation are rife. Ten days since the storm lashed the Irrawaddy delta, literally changing the face of Myanmar, it seems that country will never be the same again. If, however, the wrenching transformations wrought by the cyclone also include the decline and fall of the military regime that has astounded the world with its deadly determination to keep out "foreign influence", perhaps the proverbial "winds of change" that have for so long eluded Myanmar took a very literal expression that fateful May 3.

The United Nations recognises the notion of "a responsibility to protect", the invocation of which some members, most notably France, are urging. But this is a provision for events of genocide and war, not natural catastrophe. Quite simply, international conventions have never conceived of a situation where a national administration would rather let its citizens perish than allow help to reach them from other than officially sanctioned quarters. Myanmar's Senior General Than Shwe's continuing refusal even to receive word from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon indicates that the junta seems hell-bent on drawing a line and making a stand, digging in its heels in obdurate refusal to capitulate to the humanitarian agencies that are waiting to alleviate the suffering of the 1.5 million people directly affected by the cyclone and its aftermath.

There are stories of heroic determination and resilience to be told in this tragedy, among the cyclone's survivors as much as those few foreign aid workers -- Malaysians included among the teams from Myanmar's Asean neighbours -- who have accessed the disaster zones. But they are subsumed beneath the over-arching saga of stubborn paranoia suffusing the response of their government, apparently still more concerned with garnering popular approval for its farcical "referendum" on the interminable "seven-step charter" touted as an alternative to the democratic processes that would have otherwise ousted the junta 20 years ago. Perhaps the cyclone might have succeeded where democracy, compassion and simple common sense have failed, in restoring a sense of reality to a regime where surrealism bizarrely reigns. But the generals are steadfast in denial.