The Burmese Genocide

Natural disasters aren't genocides. Or are they? Because in Myanmar that is exactly what is happening. Last week a major cyclone tore through that impoverished country and some reports have as many 200,000 dead with the possibility of up to 500,000 or more.

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The 200,000 dead would be enough to classify such a disaster as a genocide if it were brought about by people, but not if the deaths were solely a result of a natural disaster. But it is possible that many of these 200,000 deaths could have been saved and certainly many of those potential 500,000 deaths are preventable. But they won't be because the paranoid Military government there are more concerned with maintaining their grip on power that they will allow hundreds of thousands of their people to die; and that is Genocide.

It was not until today, five days after the cyclone occurred that the first major foreign aid flight arrived in Myanmar. The lag in the arrival of aid is not because there is no aid to be had or that the international community is not offering, but it is because the Military Junta were postponing or refusing visas and entry.

The Washington Times reports:

Burma's military government blocked international aid workers from delivering relief supplies yesterday as bodies floated in stagnant waters left behind by Saturday's cyclone.

The United Nations said its workers based outside Burma had not received a single visa and that Burmese officials were demanding that official escorts accompany all foreigners.

Foreign workers based inside Burma for U.N. agencies such as the World Food Program also had not received permission to travel through the hard-hit Irrawaddy Delta, where entire villages remained submerged...

The senior U.S. diplomat in the country, Shari Villarosa, told reporters by telephone that the situation is "horrendous" and that the death toll could top 100,000. She said she was citing an estimate of one international relief organization, which she declined to name.

"There is a very real risk of disease outbreaks as long as this continues," Miss Villarosa said.

Some international aid made it into the country. But reports of convoys loaded with tons of supplies held up at border crossings and U.S. Navy ships waiting offshore for permission to deliver food, drinking water and medicine prompted warnings of a tragedy rivaling the December 2004 tsunami...

"There are assistance teams, including an American assistance team that would be ready to help the people of Burma. And what remains is for the Burmese government to allow the international community to help its people."

The United States has about $3 million in relief anchored offshore ready to deliver once it has permission from Burma's military junta, one of the world's most repressive governments.

As a result of the stupidity, greed, and out and out evilness of Myanmar's Military Junta hundred's of thousands of people are going to die. But the genocidal outrage won't be there like it is against Darfur or it was in Rwanda because this genocide is cloaked by a natural disaster.