IÂ’ve received a couple of emails from folks wondering why I havenÂ’t commented upon the humanitarian crisis in Burma. Let me offer a response publicly about why I have been unable to muster the public outrage to comment upon the inhumanity shown by the Burmese government towards the Burmese people.

What we have in Burma (and I refuse to call it by the name imposed by the military dictators) is the natural outcome of any totalitarian dictatorship. The lives of the people are not of interest to the leadership of such regimes – control is. That is why the junta will not allow significant amounts of foreign aid and /or emergency personnel to enter the country – such aid and people would undermine the fragile control they maintain over nation.

And besides – these are the same rulers who have kept their nation’s legitimate elected leader under house arrest for two decades. Why would we expect them to give a tinker’s damn about the people, any more than Stalin cared about the millions who starved under his artificially created food shortages?

Of course, I am concerned by the next humanitarian crisis to face the nation – a second cyclone.

Another powerful storm headed toward Myanmar's cyclone-devastated delta, where so little aid has reached that the U.N. warned on Wednesday of a "second wave of deaths" among an estimated 2 million survivors.

The U.S. military's Joint Typhoon Warning Center said there is a good chance that "a significant tropical cyclone" will form within the next 24 hours and head across the Irrawaddy delta area.

The area was pulverized by Cyclone Nargis on May 3, leaving at least 34,273 dead and 27,838 missing, according to the government. The U.N. says the death toll could exceed 100,000. An estimated 2 million survivors of the storm are still in need of emergency aid. But U.N. agencies and other groups have been able to reach only 270,000 people so far.

In other words, there will soon be more dead and injured – and more blood on the hands of the generals who control the nation. And I will continue to weep over them -- filled with sadness that those who misrule their nation do not give a tinker's damn about their lives.

But maybe another such tragedy will lead the people to rise up, and the military to support them.

Posted by: Greg at 09:13 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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