=====
Zomi says:
The generals may now be afraid of their own men in the miltary.
Highlights:
The government is demonstrating its reluctance now by its slow acceptance
of
the aid it requested, complicating visa procedures for international
donors
and apparently seeking to limit the access of foreign relief workers.
In Geneva, United Nations officials said travel and visa obstacles were
hampering deliveries of aid to an estimated one million people believed to
be homeless.
The government runs the risk that foreign relief groups and governments
will
be seen as the rescuers of people it was incapable of helping on its own.
The government also faced the possibility of anger from hungry, homeless
people who feel the junta has failed them. Already it is common to hear
complaints from Myanmar that the military, which crushed peaceful
demonstrators in September, was nowhere to be seen last weekend when it
was
needed.
A steep rise in fuel prices was the initial cause of demonstrations last
August that swelled into huge anti-government demonstrations.
"The experience around the world is that people who don't have enough food
and water are desperate and will do desperate things," Villarosa said.
"They don't prioritize relief, which is an urgent need for the people, but
they prioritize their own plans to legitimize their government through the
constitution," Win Min said.
=====
A crack in Myanmar's wall
By Seth Mydans
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
BANGKOK: In opening its doors to international disaster relief, Myanmar's
military government is breaching a wall of isolation it has built around
itself for nearly half a century.
The devastation of the cyclone that struck Saturday, killing more than
22,000 people, has forced the junta to soften its pose of self-sufficiency
and ask for help from a world it fears and resents.
The request for aid came less than nine months after the ruling junta
rejected almost unanimous international condemnation for a brutal
crackdown
on democracy protests led by Buddhist monks.
The government is demonstrating its reluctance now by its slow acceptance
of
the aid it requested, complicating visa procedures for international
donors
and apparently seeking to limit the access of foreign relief workers.
In Geneva, United Nations officials said travel and visa obstacles were
hampering deliveries of aid to an estimated one million people believed to
be homeless.
Some assistance was reaching people in the main city, Yangon, and
elsewhere,
relief officials said, but they said flooding and road damage had cut off
many of the hardest hit coastal areas.
Relief agencies said hunger, thirst and the threat of disease must be
urgently addressed.
Since a military coup in 1962, the former Burma has sealed itself off from
the outside world in what was once called the Burmese Way to Socialism,
and
that barrier has grown higher in recent years with the imposition by the
West of economic sanctions for human rights violations.
"Normally they would be saying, 'We are going to stick it out, we don't
need
anyone's help,' " said Zarni, a Burmese visiting research fellow at Oxford
University, who uses a single name.
"That barrier has been broken," he said. "They must know that asking for
help means some degree of international involvement in the country's
internal affairs, whether poverty reduction or democratization."
This aid, if the government fully embraces it, will require a new degree
of
cooperation with foreign governments and with relief agencies whose
operations inside Myanmar have been increasingly restricted.
The government runs the risk that foreign relief groups and governments
will
be seen as the rescuers of people it was incapable of helping on its own.
"I don't think any one country would be able to manage a disaster on this
scale," said Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Myanmar,
speaking
from Yangon by telephone.
"They need outside assistance," she said. "The international community is
ready, willing and able to come in big time and help. Again, their
distrust
of foreigners is keeping that out."
She added: "They are very suspicious. They think that they're up to no
good."
The government also faced the possibility of anger from hungry, homeless
people who feel the junta has failed them. Already it is common to hear
complaints from Myanmar that the military, which crushed peaceful
demonstrators in September, was nowhere to be seen last weekend when it
was
needed.
A steep rise in fuel prices was the initial cause of demonstrations last
August that swelled into huge anti-government demonstrations.
"The experience around the world is that people who don't have enough food
and water are desperate and will do desperate things," Villarosa said.
For now, most analysts said, people are too concerned with survival to
express their anger in any open way.
The most likely avenue for change in the long term is within the military,
which controls most aspects of life in Myanmar, the analysts said.
It is the mood of the military that concerns Myanmar's top leaders more
than
the general welfare of the people, said Win Min, a lecturer at Payap
University in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and an expert on Myanmar's military.
"This is the only thing that matters to them, not public opinion," he
said.
"The junta is not relying on public support but on public fear that can be
done only by people in the military. Their worry is to have the support of
the military."
The government offered an indication of its priorities when it said it
would
proceed with a constitutional referendum despite the scale of the
disaster.
The constitution, which would legitimize its grip on power, is the product
of more than a decade of work and is the centerpiece of the junta's policy
for the future.
The government announced that the vote, scheduled for Saturday, would be
postponed for two weeks in the hardest hit areas but would proceed in most
of the country.
"They don't prioritize relief, which is an urgent need for the people, but
they prioritize their own plans to legitimize their government through the
constitution," Win Min said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/07/asia/myanmar.php
=====
|
