May 22, 2008 | Read Time: 2 minutes
“I am an eyewitness to a terrible violation of human rights directed at victims of Cyclone Nargis by their own military government,” writes an aid worker, upon returning from Myanmar, on the Reuters AlertNet blog.
The blogger, who wants to remain anonymous for fear of jeopardizing his charity’s operations, describes how his charity was blocked from bringing aid to people in the cyclone-devastated Irrawady Delta. “We were told we could give the supplies to the military and they would distribute them for us,” he recounts. “After hearing stories of where military aid was going this was not an option.”
Aid groups are having to be creative. Some are hiring local teams to distribute aid, and training them on the spot. But the blogger says he’s worried that the supplies are being denied to members of the country’s oppressed ethnic Karen people.
“Our worker told me he had spoken to several Karen communities who had been bypassed by military trucks packed with relief goods despite pleading to soldiers for help,” the aid worker writes. “He thinks the military are denying aid to minority or separatist groups in the hope of exterminating them. If this is true, the junta are knowingly killing their citizens.”
The writer calls on all governments to renounce the acts of the Myanmar junta as crimes against humanity. “I must ask: ‘How many crimes against humanity does it take to call it a crime against humanity?” How many days of closed checkpoints will the victims have to endure? How many days will foreign disaster experts have to watch children dying on the TV in their Rangoon hotel rooms?’”
He concludes: “Most aid workers on the ground are in agreement that without immediate intervention the death toll could easily overtake that of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.”
