CHIANG MAI, Thailand - While the United Nations pleads for international aid
worker access to Myanmar's cyclone-hit areas, the ruling junta is handling the
natural disaster and the estimated 2 million people affected more as a national
security issue than humanitarian operation.
Myanmar's 400,000-strong military has fallen back on its controversial security
tactics to manage the crisis, including emerging cases of extortion, theft and
movement restrictions. The country's under-resourced armed forces have received
little if any training in disaster relief, but are well-versed in how to
maintain control of hostile populations and carry out armed assaults.
A relief worker with long experience of relief operations in the eastern border
areas of Myanmar said, "The situation in the
Irrawaddy Delta is exactly like on the border, only on a massive scale. Nature
did what the regime couldn't. They are operating in exactly the same way with
movement restrictions, forced relocations and hunting down people with
satellite phones and cameras."
Military-run checkpoints are a common component of Myanmar military operations
and in the wake of the cyclone they have blocked the few foreign aid workers
and journalists in the country from accessing the worst-hit areas. All the
major routes into the disaster area have checkpoints manned by security
personnel, who demand identity cards from Burmese and passports from
foreigners, most of whom have been turned back.
Permission for entry into the area must first be obtained from Major General
Thura Myint Aung, commander of the Southwest Regional Command and chairman of
the Irrawaddy division. The Irrawaddy magazine described recently how one group
of private donors trying to bring aid into disaster areas was turned back and
told they would first have to get permission from the Southwest Regional
Command.
Relief supplies brought in by two highly respected Buddhist abbots from Karen
state, U Pyannayar Sami or Taungkalay Sayadaw and U Kawi or Zwekapin Mountain
Sayadaw, were blocked by order of the Southwest Regional Commander on May 16,
sources with knowledge of the situation say. The abbots were asked to hand the
relief supplies over to the military instead, a request they refused.
All across the country checkpoints are a means for soldiers to enrich
themselves by demanding bribes for passage. A villager from the area said
private donors are allowed through checkpoints if they pay a bribe. For some
private donors and non-governmental organizations who gained access to villages
in the disaster-hit Laputta township has cost them half of their relief
supplies and rice sacks.
Other, potentially dangerous, ways exist to circumvent military extortion. A
relief worker who spoke on condition of anonymity said many checkpoints blocked
aid from reaching cyclone victims, but "there are many waterways in the delta
and we have other ways". This mirrors the methods relief groups often use along
Myanmar's border with Thailand to deliver relief supplies to villagers
displaced by ongoing army counterinsurgency operations.
It is not only the international relief agencies that have had their aid
supplies seized by the government. Religious leaders and private donors
attempting to provide relief say they have also been forced to hand over relief
supplies. Soldiers and government officials tell them that the government will
deliver the aid themselves. The would-be aid donors say they do not expect the
cyclone survivors to receive much, if any, of the aid.
Meanwhile, residents in Yangon are reporting large amounts of relief supplies
still bearing the logos of the UN, World Food Program (WFP) and other
international organizations available for sale in local markets and shops. Some
shop owners claim they purchased the supplies from soldiers. In another case of
diverted assistance, relief aid from the UN and other agencies donated to
Bogalay township has been put into warehouses by authorities and sold to
businessmen.
Abuse as usual
To villagers in Myanmar's border areas, this is business as usual. The Karen
Human Rights Group, Shan Human Rights Foundation, Human Rights Foundation of
Monland and others all had documented before the cyclone detailed accounts of
soldiers ordering or taking by force rice, chickens, pigs and other foodstuffs
from villagers who could already barely feed themselves. The food is usually
either eaten by the soldiers themselves or sold by them for a profit on the
open market.
In the mountains along the Thai-Myanmar border, where thousands of villagers
have been displaced by military operations related to a counterinsurgency
campaign, soldiers often burn crops, destroy food stocks and shoot at relief
teams bringing food and medicine to conflict-affected villagers, according to
various rights groups.
Citizens and relief agencies have said that very little of the clearance of
debris and trees blocking roads is being handled by the government. Rather,
most of it is being done by the local population, including efforts led by
Buddhist monks. In the worst-hit Irrawaddy Delta, victims have had to build
their own shelters out of whatever materials they can scrounge together or seek
shelter in schools or Buddhist monasteries.
If the generals hold true to form, as already seems apparent, then the
reconstruction of bridges and roads will also become the responsibility of
local villagers. In other areas of Myanmar, large gangs of villagers are
assembled by the army to build bridges, fill in potholes and rebuild sections
of road washed away in yearly rains. Road construction and maintenance,
agricultural projects, irrigation canals, clinics and schools are often done by
local villagers, which according to rights groups and the International Labor
Organization, is often accomplished with forced labor who have to bring their
own food, tools and often building supplies.
In the wake of the cyclone, reports of forced labor are already beginning to
surface. A May 17 report on the situation from the US Campaign for Burma, an
exile-run advocacy group, said cyclone victims in Set Su village, Bogalay
township, were ordered by the authorities to construct a helicopter landing
pad. Men, women and children were allegedly ordered to break rocks and level
the field by soldiers. In return they received a pack of biscuits with a WFP
logo on it, but no money, according to the advocacy group.
One villager from the area told Asia Times Online that "able-bodied survivors
are forced to perform labor on clearance and reconstruction work in exchange
for aid, mostly in the form of rice soup or basic shelter". A May 16 article in
the Irrawaddy magazine seems to support this claim. Aye Kyu, a Burmese doctor
who has worked closely with international relief workers, said that about
20,000 cyclone refugees from Laputta were sent to Myaungmya town and told to
work for the army or they would not receive food, according to the Irrawaddy
news magazine.
Last Thursday, Prime Minister General Thein Sein announced that the first phase
of disaster relief for victims of the cyclone was over and the second
reconstruction phase was now underway. Most of these reconstruction projects
can be expected to benefit the junta and businessmen since there is little
money in rebuilding the wood and bamboo houses many of the areas' residents
lived in before the storm.
Profit from disaster
Middle- and large-sized businesses have been ordered by the junta to give 2
million kyat (about US$1,800) each to support the government's relief efforts.
While the government touts this as a show of goodwill, Myanmar citizens say
they believe most of those donations will end up in the pockets of the
military. Certain local businessmen claim they have been told if they don't
donate to the relief effort they risk losing their business licenses.
Politically-connected others are positioned to benefit from the disaster. That
includes the Htoo Company, owned by tycoon and junta loyalist Tay Za. The
company is one of 43 different local firms which has received contracts for
reconstruction in the disaster-hit Bogalay and Dedaye townships. Many of them,
including the Htoo Company, are owned by businessmen currently under financial
sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union, Canada and Australia.
So far the only difference between the junta's counterinsurgency operations and
its cyclone relief program are the lack of killings, mass arrests and forced
relocations. That could soon change as more reports emerge from the delta and
Yangon of villagers desperate for food and aid assaulting government workers
and others bringing relief supplies. As tensions rise amid widespread food and
shelter shortages, it's not inconceivable that the generals could resort to
force if the social situation degenerates.
According to delta residents and witnesses who have made it out of the area,
there is a growing fear that villagers who have been displaced from their land
will have it expropriated by the government. Accusations of forced relocations
have already been leveled against the generals for their removal of people from
affected delta villages to some 26 relief centers in Pathein, Myaungmya and
elsewhere.
Some humanitarian aid workers say this is too strong an early assessment,
noting that the movement of people to centralized locations where relief
supplies can be concentrated and distributed are a common element of disaster
relief efforts. But in a country where the official confiscation of land is
common practice, a growing number of villagers are worried that they may never
be allowed to return home.
Conditions in some of the emerging cyclone camps worryingly mirror the official
neglect seen at forced relocation camps in Myanmar's border areas. At the camps
that have sprung up around Myaungmya, for instance, residents are prohibited
from leaving and outsiders are barred entry. Villagers from the surrounding
area are forced to provide food and water to the camp residents at their own
expense.
There are also fears of a more ominous side to the junta's blockage of aid to
the delta. Those concerns are fueled by the military's decades-old campaign
against ethnic Karen insurgents and what some refer to as a policy of
"Burmanization" in the area. The Karen claim to represent 60% of the delta's
population and some Karen residents claim that ethnic Burmans are receiving
priority in the junta's aid distribution.
A number of local Karen communities have asked the authorities to hand relief
aid over to their elders and allow the villagers to distribute it themselves,
but the regime has refused. The heavily hit townships of Laputta, Bogalay and
Maubin are predominately Karen and the Irrawaddy division capital of Pathein
until recently had a majority-Karen population.
The region is steeped in ethnic tensions and anti-government sentiments,
including the massacres that took place between Karen and Burman villagers in
the area during World War II, the Irrawaddy Delta's role as the heart of the
Karen revolution beginning in 1949 and running through the early 1970s, and the
aborted attempt by the insurgent Karen National Union (KNU) to incite an
insurrection in the area in 1991.
Lists updated daily of villages destroyed or flooded by the cyclone are now
being published by the government, but some residents claim the lists only
contain the names of Burman-majority villages while Karen and Muslim villages
are left out.
One villager who spoke to Asia Times Online said that the Karen in the
Irrawaddy Delta did not trust the military, which he said treated the ethnic
group as second-class citizens. "Many Karen villagers are not going to the
relief centers because they fear human-rights abuses by the military," he said.
Other ethnic Karen delta residents say it's still too early to tell if racism
is guiding the junta's aid distribution and that to date all ethnic groups are
suffering equally. Karen political and military leaders, based on the
Thai-Myanmar border, also cautioned against jumping to race-based conclusions.
"The lack of aid is general, they are all victims. The relief teams are not
reaching them," said David Taw, the KNU's foreign affairs minister. Yet whether
the discrimination is real or imagined, the perception that it may exist could
add to the frustration and desperation left in the cyclone's wake.
Brian McCartan is a freelance journalist based in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
He can be reached at brianpm@comcast.net.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road,
Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
