No relief in Myanmar

By The Daily Progress Staff

Published: May 15, 2008

Anyone with a memory of the 1970s may see more than a faint connection between the Khmer Rouge of yesteryear and the “government” of Myanmar (a.k.a. Burma). For in recent days, the world has beheld the spectacle of a group of military thugs refusing to permit aid from the rest of the globe to assist its own civilian population in the aftermath of a devastating cyclone.

Although there’s no convincing evidence that this Burmese regime is as bloodthirsty as the Khmer Rouge, it is nevertheless clear that this country’s leadership would subscribe to the same philosophy about its “New People” populace promulgated in Cambodia in the late 1970s: “To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.”

The death toll from the May 3 cyclone is estimated to be upward of 32,000, with another 30,000 missing days later. Since the disaster, the military junta has refused outside aid with only few exceptions, and barred most foreign aid workers from entering the country. And the rulers have stated that they want to control the receipt and delivery of all supplies from foreign countries. Presumably, this springs from the junta’s desire to have their subjects avoid contact with any civilian or military aid workers from the outside world. Freedom might break out, you see.

Meanwhile, the suffering, the sickness and the starvation continues for tens of thousands.

Against this backdrop of misery stands nations such as the United States, which has persisted in its efforts to get supplies into Burma. By early this week, only a handful of planeload of U.S. supplies was granted permission to land in Burma.

And there’s the United Nations, where frustration with the xenophobia of the military leaders in Burma has reached a rolling boil. Ban Ki-Moon, U.N. secretary-general, put it bluntly earlier this week: “I want to register my deep concern and my immense frustration at the unacceptably slow response to this grave humanitarian crisis. Unless more aid gets into the country very quickly we face an outbreak of infectious disease that could dwarf today’s crisis.”

The Myanmar junta needs to be brought to account in the court of public opinion, as well as the United Nations. This macabre turn of events, in which a totalitarian government refuses outside aid to help its own people, is a stark reminder: The freedoms we hold dear and the value we place on every human life are not universally shared in all countries of the world.

As Ronald Reagan said, “There is no left or right. There’s only an up or down: up to the ultimate in individual freedom, consistent with an orderly society — or down to the totalitarianism of the ant heap. And those today who, however good their intentions, tell us that we should trade freedom for security are on that downward path.”