All I've seen here in soc.culture.china are threads about the
Olympics, the Tibet issue, and perhaps Hu's visit to Japan. Does
anyone know anything about the Chinese government actually having been
doing anything at all to help the people of Myanmar, i.e., to have
worked actively and pro-actively to coordinate with other ASEAN
countries to organize a meaningful emergency rescue mission to relieve
their suffering?
Regardless of the military dictator****p in Myanmar, it is the duty of
Myanmar's neighbors in Far East Asia to do such a thing instead of
leaving it to the hand of the military at the Pentagon, which is
currently planning a military relief operation.
If China thinks of itself as a world power and if it is at the same
time so self-absorbed as to not recognize the im****tance of helping
its immediate neighbor, do not ever cry about how Myanmar is becoming
a new US strategic military forward base right at China's footstep in
the future, like Afghanistan and Iraq have recently become those in
Central Asia.
The same of course goes for India.
I think the Olympics has been a real distraction and has become a
weakness of China that is increasing being exploited by outsiders.
China, India, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, and
others in the region ought to be able to do a lot to help, instead of
letting the US and other european countries like France to get in and
do their things other than pure humanitarian relief.
And with success, such humanitarian efforts (from its neighbors) could
likely bring about real political change to Myanmar in the long run,
which will be good for all concerned.
The alternative will be for the hegemonic countries in the West to
rule over the region, a rather unthinkable scenario after Afghanistan
and Iraq and willcertainly lead to more war: a bad sign for world
peace.
If China does not have the technical skills to handle this kind of
relief effort, it ought to think hard about using its wealth to get
itself up to speed quick because it is going to see a lot of natural
disasters like this to land on China in the future. The trade winds,
due to the rotation of the planet and the terrain, are such that
tropical storms are most severe east of India and east of the
Caribbean (somewhat northeast of Central America). Now the incessant
shock-n'awe air strikes in the Middle East since 2001 have injected a
lot of high energy, high momentum fluctuations into the atmosphere
that will only be dissipated through these hugely destructive storms.
Meanwhile the lethal fluctuations are just quietly building up until
the next unpredictable instance occurs.
It will be sad to see that the Chinese government is one bucket short
in its effort to modernize the country when it can't even carry out
necessary relief efforts when disasters strike.
The following article has a single reference to China's role in this
and it is not pretty.
China, Myanmar's closest ally, urged the junta to work with the
international community.
lo yeeOn
========
1st big foreign aid flights finally let in by Myanmar junta
YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's military regime allowed in the first major
international aid ****pment Thursday, but it snubbed a U.S. offer to
help cyclone victims struggling to recover from a tragedy of
unimaginable scale.
Five days after the storm, the junta continued to stall on visas for
U.N. teams and other foreign aid workers anxious to deliver food, water
and medicine to survivors amid fears the death toll could hit 100,000.
Among those stranded in Thailand were 10 members of the USAID Disaster
Assistance Response Team. Air Force trans****t planes and helicopters
packed with supplies also sat waiting for a greenlight.
"We are in a long line of nations who are ready, willing and able to
help, but also, of course, in a long line of nations the Burmese don't
trust," U.S. Ambassador Eric John told re****ters in Thailand's capital,
Bangkok.
"It's more than frustrating. It's a tragedy," he said. Each day of
delay means "a lot more people suffering," he said.
Myanmar's isolationist regime issued an appeal for international
assistance after winds of 120 mph and a storm surge up to 15 feet high
pounded the Irrawaddy delta Saturday.
But the junta has been accused of dragging its feet despite emerging
re****ts on entire villages submerged, bodies floating in salty water
and children ripped from their parents arms.
"My children were crying all night. There is not enough food. There
will be no food this evening," said Daw Thay, who took refuge in a
monastery with her three children and her 99-year-old mother in a town
60 miles south of Yangon, the country's biggest city.
Daw Thay, 42, said monks were going without food so others could eat.
"We share what we have but there isn't enough. So they (the monks) give
the food to the children and the old people first," she said.
In the swampy delta, a horrible stench rose from corpses and dead
animals, bloated and floating in the water. Someone had written on a
black asphalt road in Kongyangon village: "We are all in trouble.
Please come help us." A few feet away, the desperate plea, "We're
hungry."
Tired of waiting for help in Yangon, red-robed monks, other civilians
and dozens of soldiers cleared piles of debris and toppled billboards
from streets and cutting branches off uprooted trees.
"They've started doing the clean up themselves," Aye Chan Naing, chief
editor of Democratic Voice of Burma, said as a light rain showered
down. "They are volunteers."
Public trans****tation was slowly coming back to life in the city, with
some trains operating, and cars formed lines three miles long to get
rations of two gallons of gasoline.
The cyclone blew off the roof of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's
dilapidated bungalow in Yangon and cut off its electricity, a neighbor
said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of
the subject. Suu Kyi, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for her
pro-democracy activism, has been under house arrest for years.
More than 20,000 are known dead and tens of thousands more are listed
as missing, and the U.N. estimates more than 1 million people are
homeless in Myanmar, which also is known as Burma.
Four airplanes carrying high-energy biscuits, medicine and other
supplies reached Yangon on Thursday, U.N. officials said. Two of four
U.N. experts who flew in to *****s the damage were turned back at the
air****t for unknown reasons, but the other two were allowed to enter,
said John Holmes, the U.N. relief coordinator.
By rejecting the U.S. aid offer, the junta is refusing to take
advantage of Wa****ngton's enormous ability to deliver aid quickly,
which was evident during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed
230,000 people in a dozen nations.
The first foreign military aid following that disaster reached the
hardest-hit nation, Indonesia, two days later. The most significant
help came when U.S. helicopters from the USS Abraham Lincoln began
flying relief missions to isolated communities along the Indonesian
coast.
It was the biggest U.S. military operation in Southeast Asia since the
Vietnam War.
With the Irrawaddy delta's roads washed out and the infrastructure in
shambles, large swaths of the region are accessible only by air,
something few other countries are equipped to handle as well as the
United States.
Tim Costello, chief executive of World Vision Australia, said that
"it's certainly the case that the Americans, as they showed in the
tsunami, have extraordinary capacity."
The U.S. government, which has strongly criticized the junta's
suppression of pro-democracy activists, will have to convince the
generals that Wa****ngton has no political agenda, Costello said.
"Clearly we all know the political context there, and I think it's
going to take a little bit more time for a breakthrough," he said.
Gordon Johndroe, President Bush's national security spokesman, said the
U.S. was working to gain permission to enter Myanmar.
One American official, Ky Luu, director of the U.S. office of foreign
disaster assistance, created a stir by saying one option being
considered was air-dropping aid without permission. But Defense
Secretary Robert Gates quickly said he couldn't imagine that happening.
Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej of Thailand offered to negotiate on
Wa****ngton's behalf to persuade Myanmar's government to accept U.S.
aid.
France is arguing that the U.N. has the power to intervene without the
junta's approval to help civilians under a 2005 agreement that the
world body has a "responsibility to protect" people when governments
fail to do it. That agreement did not mention natural disasters.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and British Foreign Secretary
David Miliband asked Myanmar's junta to "lift all restrictions on the
distribution of aid." Separately, Kouchner said France would make $3
million available to French aid groups operating in Myanmar.
The Association of Southeast Nations appealed to the international
community to send relief supplies through Thailand.
"Please keep the help coming, keep the contributions coming, and if you
have to, go to Thailand, park there and wait for redistribution from
there," said ASEAN secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan.
The U.S. military sent more humanitarian supplies and equipment to a
staging area in Thailand on Thursday. A C-17 trans****t plane brought in
water and food, joining the two C-130s already in place, Air Force
spokeswoman Megan Orton said at the Pentagon. Another C-130 loaded with
supplies was on its way, she said.
The U.S. Navy also has three ****ps participating in an exercise in the
Gulf of Thailand that could help in a relief effort, including an
amphibious assault ****p with 23 helicopters.
China, Myanmar's closest ally, urged the junta to work with the
international community.
The London-based human rights group Amnesty International said some
donors were delaying aid for fear it would be siphoned off to the army.
The World Food Program's regional director, Anthony Banbury, indicated
the U.N. had similar concerns.
"We will not just bring our supplies to an air****t, dump it and take
off," he said.
The U.N. refugee agency said it was assembling a truck convoy to take
supplies from Thailand to Yangon, but it would take days to put the
****pment together and up to two weeks to reach victims.
Myanmar's state media said Cyclone Nargis killed at least 22,997 people
and left 42,019 missing, mostly in the Irrawaddy delta. Shari
Villarosa, who heads the U.S. Embassy in Yangon, said the number of
dead could eventually exceed 100,000 because of illnesses.
Asked about the death estimate, Costello of World Vision said hours
after arriving in Yangon, "That extraordinary volume of rain, of wave,
of wind just cru****ng everything, snapping everything in its wake, that
death toll I think could be conceivable." He said some 60,000 people
were unaccounted for.
The World Health Organization received re****ts of malaria outbreaks in
the worst-affected area, and said fears of waterborne illnesses from
dirty water and poor sanitation was a concern.
Myanmar's state television Thursday showed the prime minister, Lt. Gen.
Thein Sein, distributing food packages to the sick and injured in the
delta and soldiers dropping food over villages. The date of the
distribution was not given.
Although most Yangon residents were preoccupied with trying to restore
their lives, activists wrote fresh graffiti on overp*****, including
"X" marks -- a symbol for voting "no" in a referendum Saturday on a new
constitution. Voting has been postponed until May 24 in Yangon, some
outlying areas and parts of the delta.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the junta to postpone the
referendum entirely and "focus instead on mobilizing all available
resources and capacity for the emergency response efforts."
In article <gd2724d9pknhrqdq4i9s9sk6eo1thmibeg@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Otis Willie PIO The American War Library <themilitarytoday@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>China calls for strengthening regional security cooperation
>http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-05/08/content_8128300.htm
>
>{EXCERPT} Xinhua, China... senior Chinese military official said here on
>Thursday. Speaking at the security policy conference of the Association
of
>Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)...
>
>http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-05/08/content_8128300.htm
>
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