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BANGKOK - Exactly four years ago this month, a cyclone, the strongest in 30 years, hit Myanmar. A journalist, writing one month later in The Irrawaddy (a news magazine published by Burmese exiles), wondered how the country's state-controlled news media could fail to make any mention of a typhoon that the United Nations said killed at least 140 people, sunk vessels and made an estimated 18,000 people homeless.
The journalist, Dominic Faulder, wrote that "a town of 100,000 could burn to the ground here and nobody would ever know about it." Here, he concluded, is a country "where disasters don't happen, officially." For the people of Myanmar, this truth is more devastating - and its tragedy more lingering - than anything that nature may bring.
If information can flow as freely as nature's elements, the consequences of many calamities - be they earthquakes, floods, droughts, hurricanes or storms - are manageable and even preventable. Absent such freedom in news and information, all "natural" disasters are ultimately man-made.
When the military junta in Myanmar refused on Friday to accept relief workers into the country, its actions underscored a terrible reality: the ruling generals view independent information as more dangerous to them than Cyclone Nargis, which may have killed 20,000 to 100,000 people and left up to a million people homeless. And for the Burmese people, a drought in information can be deadlier than the forces that despots seek to deny.
Catastrophes of this scale are inconvenient to governments of this peculiar character because they give aid agencies compelling arguments to be allowed to operate in even the most notoriously secretive of states. Once inside, relief workers can afford the world a glimpse of the poverty within the world's most restricted borders.
In Myanmar, caught between the need to aid its people and the reflex to hide any suggestion of vulnerability, the junta has been consistent in its choice. After the tsunami of December 2004, Myanmar's generals made the World Food Program wait two weeks before its workers could even visit the affected areas.
Four years later, Indian meteorologists were warning of Cyclone Nargis as early as April 26. As predicted, the cyclone made landfall in Myanmar on May 2 - the eve of World Press Freedom Day. The irony is worth noting because the tragedy wasn't that India's advisories fell on deaf ears. Rather, they were relayed to the gagged.
Myanmar has the worst conditions for press freedom and access to information in Southeast Asia. All broadcasting systems are state-owned and the largest newspapers are controlled by the government. The junta's censorship of publications is so thorough (and deliberately slow) that daily papers do not exist. The Internet, too, is heavily restricted and monitored and foreign journalists are routinely denied visas into the country.
As a result, the rescue and relief efforts in Myanmar will inevitably continue to be tragic. By now it is plain that the junta's uncompromising policies regarding the press and access to information are a source not only of political repression, but also of humanitarian emergency. Aid workers are not the only essential element for relief and recovery that the country's callous leaders are denying their people.
Until free and reliable news and information become available in Myanmar, the Burmese will continue to suffer horrors that are literally untold.
Roby Alampay, an Asia Society fellow, is the executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance.
© 2008 The New York Times
13 Comments so far
Show AllI'll heartily partake in the BushBash...yet I must wonder, what the Devil does Burma got to hide that they are refusing help on this scale? I don't buy it just being the government wanting to keep outsiders away from the people, the people in the info-dark and vise versa.
Possible answer to this question...nuclear crap.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=7738
One other parellel to the hypocrisy factor of the Bush Administration is their reponse to both Cuba and Venezsuela who offered medical aid(in the case of Cuba)and price subsidized oil (in the case of Venezuela) to the US.
Sweden offered medical and food aid and the Netherlanda offered their expertise in dike construction and repair for the repair of the broken levies--all of which was refused by the Bush adminstration while making nowhere near the effort needed to help those suffering.
Nearly three years later there is still a mighty mess to be cleaned up.
We may actually have the capability to create such disasters with the DARP funded HAARP. Coming as it did 1 week before "elections" that would allow people to vote on constitutional changes, you have to be suspicous of the timing.
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/haarp_mind_weather_control.htm
"Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally... It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog, and storms on earth or to modify space weather, ... and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of technologies which can provide substantial increase in US, or degraded capability in an adversary, to achieve global awareness, reach, and power. (US Air Force, emphasis added. Air University of the US Air Force, AF 2025 Final Report, http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/ emphasis added)"
The document, titled "Owning the Weather" was removed from the DOD web site shortly before Katrina in 2005
Sadly China is just as rotten as the US. It plays with Africa and doesnt care about the people. Big powers are all the same.
I mentioned this in a post re; an article authored by Desmond Tutu. I feel NOLA should be fully rebuilt first, not the touristic hand over fist money area of the Quarter only that they did lickedy split.
I had mentioned to my daughter last night when she phoned that the Murderer in Chief had sent warships(2) to Myanmar although the Chinese or whatever puppet goverment China has there in Burma had not authorized it and the reason was they didn't trust the overture by the US, can you imagine that! Not trusting OUR government....Well I never, oh, yes I did.
This is another case of the pot calling the kettle black. The Bush administration ignored the people of New Orleans just as the Myanmar government is ignoring the plight of their people. What the hell is the difference? Bush refused help from other countries such as Cuban doctors and Dutch dike builders.
RichM nails it, as usual.
Since this site invites international commenters, it behooves me to briefly explain a universal American childhood custom: "calling it". It's easiest to use the term in context rather than fashion an abstract description.
So: Mom tells her three youngsters that it's time to leave for the mall. The kids race for the car, and one cries out, "Front seat! Front seat!" When they get to the car, all of the kids try to jump into the front seat. But the one who yelled pushes them aside, crowing, "I have the front seat! I called it!"
Thus, "calling it" is staking one's irrevocable claim; and the custom is generally honored and reciprocated, albeit with occasional disputes about whether the claimant truly "called it". But then there is the folly of trying to push the envelope by "calling it" for an extended time period, in a vain attempt to avoid constant skirmishing: "I call it for a week!"
Such extended claims may be indulged on a case-by-case basis, except for the absurd "I call it for life!"
Heads of state, unfortunately, were either raised in a rarefied society which did not include "calling it" in its lexicon, or they have forgotten their rudimentary instincts for boundaries. Because there are at least two "Reichs" who have "called" the Moral High Ground for life. You may guess which two I'm thinking of.
In both cases, once the Moral High Ground has been called for Life, the leaders feel perfectly justified in jumping in that front seat each and every time, and besting any competition by any means necessary. They called it! And the occupants of the Moral High Ground create reality for those in their thrall. So it is perfectly natural for them to pronounce upon the conduct of other nations, so secure are the Reichs in their psychotic exceptionalism.
The fact that their called-for-Life Moral High Ground is actually so far below sea level that their bubbles don't even reach the surface does not compute with them. They're in a bubble of their own, unable to see past their distorted reflections in the mirrored surface of its interior.
"...the ruling generals view independent information as more dangerous to them than Cyclone Nargis..."
Hmmm... why does that soooo familiar....
"This Gitmo trip and the ensuing "analysis" was but one small — though highly representative — episode that was part of the Pentagon's five-year propaganda program aimed at shaping domestic opinion on the Iraq war, the "War on Terrorism" generally, and virtually every controversy relating in any way to the Pentagon."
We have "learned" here in America that hurricanes such as Katrina can be caused by plans for gay parades, and well, cyclones are said to be quite similar events. I have to wonder what explanation Rev. John Hagee has for the plight of the people in Myanmar and his advice to them about avoiding the next one. This wouldn't matter, except that McCain thinks Hagee's counsel is valuable to governments.
No, I'm not making light of the people of Myanmar. It's sad.
"...When the military junta in Myanmar refused on Friday to accept relief workers into the country, its actions underscored a terrible reality: the ruling generals view independent information as more dangerous to them than Cyclone Nargis....And for the Burmese people, a drought in information can be deadlier than the forces that despots seek to deny..."
- What a shameless load of bullsh*t. The US media lacks the moral authority to be looking down its snoot at the Burmese. It's just too rich for words for a degenerate organ like the NYT to be putting on a show of mock horror: "We're so offended! In terrible Myanmar, the ruling despots prevent honest information from getting to the people!" This, while the NYT labors day & night as Ministry of Propaganda for the ruling depots in the former USA "superpower."
Tell us, NYT, when was the last time you tried holding the Bush mobsters accountable to the Constitution? You know, the torture, the non-existent WMD? When was the last time you demanded in tones of similar outrage that the swindlers on Wall St, who created the mortgage crisis, be held accountable for their crimes? Have you forgotten that the city of New Orleans no longer really exists, apart from the tourist sites?
The US is not better than Myanmar. It's just bigger & more vicious, with more hi-tech toys. The only reason the NYT prints an article feigning horror about Myanmar is because there's some "Shock Doctrine" opportunity in the wake of the recent cyclone's devastation. The Myanmar rulers are too close to China; the US despots see a chance to use the cyclone to get their paws into Myanmar, & "open its markets" for some good ol' fashioned Western-style exploitation.
ARVY is correct. The US will use this disaster (Burma) in any economic or political way, especially if it pisses off China. The empire certainly doesn't care a bit about little brown people enslaved by their military.
Hoa binh
That's one side of the story. There is another quite different persepective here if anyone is interested.
In any case, remembering Katrina and the U.S. governmental role therin, Laura Bush's statement on Monday chastising Burma's government for its failure to adequately prepare for and respond to the crisis is almost beyond belief: "The response to the cyclone is just the most recent example of the junta's failure to meet its people's basic needs", she said.
Hey, CommonDreams! The title of this article is 'No news is BAD news', not GOOD news.
Anyway, the Myanmar regime is propped up by revenues from natural gas, thanks to Chevron, the French firm Total and a Thai oil firm.
Let nothing stand in the way of corporate profits!