W hat a rotten piece of work this Myanmar junta is. It jails, tortures and murders its political opponents, makes children soldiers, sits happily by while troops rape women, and now on top of these evils and more, it does this new thing, this almost unbelievable thing, this abetting of a monstrous cyclone through hampering aid to its victims.
In various stupefying ways, the junta’s generals have frustrated humane outsiders wishing to rush medical care, food, water purifiers and other help to an estimated 1.9 million Myanmar people threatened with disease, hunger and death.
Let’s go ahead with a phony vote on a new, junta-validating constitution in the midst of this disaster, the generals also said, as they simultaneously affixed their names to boxes of aid sent by others, taking credit where they deserved outraged blame.
As we count the dead — quite possibly 100,000 and perhaps a great many more owing in part to these generals — there is something important to remember besides the hell dictatorial powers can assure. It is that the Myanmar junta might not even exist if it were not for its friends, if it were not, first and foremost, for China.
A voice of wisdom on this question is Steven Groves, a fellow at The Heritage Foundation who reminds us how Burma, as Myanmar was then known, emerged from colonialism after World War II as a republic that was thriving by the early 1960s when the generals staged their coup.
The country soon got enough of these thugs, who were badly defeated in a 1990 election to which they paid no heed. If popular opinion turns against you, there are always guns at hand.
The junta may nevertheless have faced conditions of collapse by now if it had not been for China, more than happy to supply economic and military aid in return for passage to the Indian Ocean and plentiful natural gas, Groves has written.
He notes the junta has even earned a kind of legitimacy through membership in the United Nations, which last year considered a resolution that would have condemned human rights abridgments.
China and Russia stopped that slap on the wrist with Security Council vetoes. Russia’s excuse was that the Myanmar abuses were a matter of national sovereignty, even though the junta is clearly in violation of the U.N. charter and could be expelled.
So we have a regime that, in a terrible crisis, has hesitantly, grudgingly accepted aid from the United States, the United Nations and others even as it has aimed to keep foreign disaster experts (along with the press) mostly at bay.
Without their assistance, the chances of actually transporting supplies quickly to where they are most needed is slim, but the government reportedly wants to send a message that it can take care of itself and hopes to keep the rest of the world from seeing the horror. Grotesque cruelty is thus matched by grotesque stupidity, for these measures have drawn shocked, focused attention from the rest of the world.
The one possible good that finally could come out of this is that this attention to the Myanmar junta — and, one hopes, to Olympics host China — could lead to a revulsion so widespread and intense as to help topple the generals.
What’s needed are not more half-awake editorials hitting first lady Laura Bush’s useful critique of a regimethat didn’t even warn its people of the cyclone, but more voices raised as hers has been in seeking democracy for this tragic land.
Examiner columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington wopinion writer and editor of two dailies. He may be reached at [email protected]
