Over the years, I have spent many an evening listening to impassioned discussions about the merits of one political system over another, with those with the right to vote claiming democracy as a cure all, and those denied this right claiming education, economic development and cultural enlightenment should come before democracy or any other kind of political upheaval. There are many ways to govern a country, and recent events have convinced me more than ever that the correct way to judge a country is not by who sits in government but by how that government looks after the needs of its citizens. I would go further and say that one of the true tests of a government is in how it responds to a natural emergency.
The Bush administration was condemned to failure in my eyes when it responded so shoddily to the emergency created by Hurricane Katrina. As a foreigner, I had long disagreed with Bush’s foreign policy. Events in Iraq and elsewhere had shown beyond doubt that the administration placed little value on non-American lives. After all in Iraq, only the deaths of US and British soldiers are officially counted; as for the rest, well, they’re just collateral damage. But not doing their utmost to save the lives of their own citizens, that is another matter. That, I thought, showed a casual disregard for human life, and showed yet again that politicians are too easily tempted to put politics above the well-being of those who put — or keep — them in power.
And so in Myanmar today, the government has shown itself to be an unconditional failure. It has taken a week for the first relief planes to be allowed to land, with the Myanmar government dithering and arguing about who it will and will not allow into the country to save the lives of its citizens. By the time you read this sentence, it is likely the death toll will have reached 100,000, and yet the military rulers of this once rich and now desperately poor state, continue to put ideology and politics above saving lives. Shame on them. That they should distrust the US is understandable. That they should feel uncomfortable in letting in helicopters and planes from countries who criticize them constantly is also understandable.
That they should desperately try to control how emergency supplies are delivered and to whom is hardly surprising. That they are underplaying the sheer scale of the emergency and their inability to deal with it is also totally in character. But when faced with a natural disaster of epic proportions, it is time to throw open the doors and let those willing to help in.
And as for the West, how disappointing that the foreign ministers of Britain and France should feel the need to lecture the Myanmar government through the pages of their own newspapers. How rich for them to tell us that “emergency aid should come before politics” whilst playing politics themselves. What they should be doing is attempting to convince the Myanmar government to allow foreign aid in, discretely and behind closed doors, so that the Myanmar people can do so without seeming to lose face. Ditto for the US. We are all shocked and outraged, but what we need is to find the most effective means to get the Myanmar government to trust us enough to let our aid workers in, not to antagonize them even more.
The key players in this emergency are going to be Myanmar’s natural allies, and China in particular. In many ways it is up to the Chinese to wade in and ensure that supplies make it through to where they are most needed. If the Myanmar authorities feel happier letting in supplies carrying a Chinese, Singaporean or Thai flag, then let the supplies carry those flags. After all, we keep being told that emergency relief should come above politics.
There are signs that the Myanmar government is beginning to understand the gravity of the situation it is facing. As hard as it may seem, it needs help and guidance at this time, not criticism. That said, the fact that they intend to continue with their plans to hold a constitutional referendum today is not just sickening but depressing. It seems that ideology, and protecting that ideology from the corrupting influence of the outside world, matters more than human life in Myanmar.
