Everyone is running out of words to express their feelings about the Burmese generals. What the generals are doing is making the world furious. It’s time to call their actions a humanitarian crime. 

It’s impossible to find logical reasons for the junta’s rejection of adequate help from the UN, the US, the EU and the world’s relief agencies. Clearly, it’s hubris, xenophobia, fear and a callous disregard for the lives of the Burmese people.

“It’s a crime against humanity,” Pierre Fouilland of the Comité de Secours Internationaux, a French disaster rescue agency, told Reuters after he was denied a visa by the Burmese embassy in Bangkok. “It should be against the law. It’s like they are taking a gun and shooting their own people.”

The generals may believe that they are capable of coping with the catastrophe, but the basic facts refute their claim. They have only a handful of helicopters and transport planes. They also lack the basic supplies in terms of food, medicine, clean water and the ability to build the structures to house hundreds of thousands of people for a long period of time.

Rather, reports say the junta is concentrating on keeping true aid and expert relief teams out of the country and the affected area.

The junta lives in fear of Western television cameras showing their incompetence to the world, which is why they focus on keeping out as many foreign aid workers as possible, only letting in enough not to ignite a world backlash which could conceivably sweep them aside in some type of unilateral aid air drop action.

While such action would raise serious issues of sovereignty, and no doubt cause a furor among Burma’s supporters, such as China and Russia, it would accomplish one important thing: It would save lives and show the people of Burma that some countries will not sit by and watch a humanitarian disaster unfold without trying to do something positive.

On Monday, when the first US C-130 cargo plane carrying relief supplies landed in Rangoon, the state-newspapers reported that Vice-Admiral Soe Thein told the US military delegation, including the commander in chief of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Timothy J Keating, “So far, Burma doesn’t need skilled relief workers yet.”   

The UN estimates as many as 102,000 people have died and 220,000 people are missing. As many as 2 million people are affected. More survivors will die in the coming days if the junta continues to stonewall on aid.

“This is not about politics; it is about saving people’s lives. There is absolutely no more time to lose,” said Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations. 

The only people who are politicizing the humanitarian aid issue are the generals in Naypyidaw, Burma’s capital.

But, the more we complain about the junta’s inaction, the more time we lose. It’s now 11 days since Cyclone Nargis hit Burma.

The junta has restricted not only international aid but also domestic relief donations. Burmese citizens and organizations that want to donate to the victims must give the aid to the authorities. No government imposes such draconian restrictions.   

Even more restrictions are on the way, not less. Sources say that military authorities have ordered local authorities not to allow anyone to bring cameras into the affected areas. The junta is already upset with the extensive media coverage of Nargis Cyclone and the visual images of victims, corpses and damages.

If anyone thinks or believes the junta is going to open up more, I can say with conviction its wishful thinking. You will just be fooled again by the generals.
 
The international community, especially the US and EU, are trying hard to get their relief supplies into the country. The US is positioning naval ships which are loaded with helicopters, food, water and medicines. Will the junta allow the US navy to help? Don’t count on it. The western world, especially the US, the regime’s strongest critic, is the junta’s enemy.

So far, no one has found a way to get the junta to cooperate. Not the UN, the West, the EU, Asean or Burma’s friendly neighbors.

Time is running out. The world is running out of words. Many thousands more could die in the coming days and weeks. What else can be done?

The world can do a unilateral humanitarian intervention. Air drop food, water and medicine. What harm can it do?

It’s time for responsible actions in the face of irresponsible inaction.