Young Writers Society

If you haven't heard yet (and if you haven't, then you really need to start picking up a newspaper), Burma was recently hit by a cyclone. The area hit was a flood plain and densely populated. The area was also quite impoverished, as most of Burma is due to the military dictatorship and lack of any basic human rights, such as property rights.

The government is disorganized, and is still not providing the necessary aid. Nor are they letting international aid organizations or foreign governments in to supply aid. As a result, many more hundreds of thousands of people could die because of starvation and disease.

At the moment, they're saying that 200,000 people have already died, but the number could rise to as high as 500,000.

Link:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... 143691.ece

My guess is the Burma government are putting their pride before their people. (Well, this is my view.)

But seriously, they should let people help!

They say you need a visa to enter their country. Applying for one takes a long time. And time is something they don't have at the moment. People are dying from starvation and they can't get drinkable water because the water is dirty. There are corpses all over the place. There are some even in rice fields!

People will get sick. People will die.

They should just let the aid organizations enter their country to help out with the current situation. Forget about the visa thing for the time being. People's lives are at stake.

I was just talking to my Dad about this.

The government needs to put aside its fears of losing power and pride to save its people: something I doubt it will do. If we look at the case of Zimbabwe, dictators and dictatorships are repeately paranoid about allowing foreigners to help them in their affairs. Sadly this threatens thousands of innocent lives.

This is one of these times I think sovereignty is ridiculous: screw international laws and just get the aid in there.

What?!

I am sure that I heard it was... 20000 yesterday. Woah... and what makes it worse is that they refuse to let foreigners in. I think it's been mainly UK/USA/France to send the most aid, but what use is that if it cannot be distributed?

I cannot believe the government are just... sitting there and letting people die. Half a million? In the UK, that's like 1 in 120 people dying . Figures are all this and that - but ye, like Jack said, screw international laws. What are Burma going to do? Try to fight us because they didn't want their people to live?

-Mark

I though they were allowing aid from Thailand and other immediate regional countries? I'm not sure though; I'll try to find the source...


EDIT: I probably misheard (which is why it's always good to have a source!). The government of Myanmar says it's accepting aid, as long as foreign workers don't actually manage the distribution. A step in the right direction?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=90213937

This really makes me want to cry. They're so terrified of outside control they won't let the aide that they need be let in... If they aren't careful they're going to kill all of the people they control. It's so upsetting. I saw this on the US news the morning after it happened, and then we watched the new in French class and it was on. (Not that I understand anything, but I knew what they were talking about!)

Also, isn't it called Myanmar now? I think they had a name change.

If the government continues to refuse to let in aid, there will be a slight of power in their country. Someone will stand up and rally the survivors to over throw the current government even if it is an outside party.

This is awful.

It's so hard to think of so many people dying. 500,000 people seems like an enormous number - I don't even know that many people. To let that many die just because of pride? Terrible.

I suppose most of us aren't so great either. Pride tends to get in the way of many people's lives. But to let it kill 500,000? That's 625 times the kids in my school. That's just so many lives.

~JFW1415

Yesterday on news radio, the hosts were talking about how the UN or some other international body should temporarily invade the affected region so as to provide aid and supplies. I don't entirely agree, but I don't entirely disagree either. We supposedly learned after Rwanda not to stand on the sidelines when hundreds of thousands of people are dying due to government programs or sheer ineptitude, but the situation here is somewhat different. Still, if the Junta doesn't allow aid agencies in soon, then maybe something like the Berlin airlift is called for (dropping aid supplies via plane). It'd be an invasion of national sovereignty, but with no actual invasion of land, I don't see how anybody but the Junta would oppose it.

Leja ->> The "as long as foreign workers don't actually manage the distribution" is the key part. They're seizing the aid, which means there are no guarantees it will actually reach the intended beneficiaries. It's also been reported that the government doesn't even know what it's doing, so even if it wanted to get the aid to the right people, their government is too messed up. Foreign aid workers need to get in there so that the aid can be distributed effectively.

Suzanne ->> "Also, isn't it called Myanmar now? I think they had a name change." Geez, I had no idea...

Look for Myanmar's wikipedia article. Burma and Myanmar are both acceptable names for the country; and Burma is the officially recognized Western name for the country. The junta wants it to be called Myanmar, but very few Western countries call it that at the official (and sometimes the news media) level because of the brutality of the junta.

I think they're letting in some aid from China and India, but very little from the West. I can't believe how bad the situation has gotten. Did you hear that apparently a three day holiday was called, because the goverment couldn't be bothered to handle all the visa apps?

I think the world needs to sit up and take action. Get in, get help- put aside politics for once and try to remember that we are all humans. If something like this hit the western world again, I'm sure we would expect help from the east.

In the words of Winston Churchill:

'Desperate times call for desperate measures'

Eimear wrote:I think the world needs to sit up and take action. Get in, get help- put aside politics for once and try to remember that we are all humans. If something like this hit the western world again, I'm sure we would expect help from the east.

In the words of Winston Churchill:

'Desperate times call for desperate measures'

The world is trying to help. They aren't letting us.

Though I heard something in Social Studies today about how they just won't let the US in. Is this correct, or is it somewhere else? *Shrug* I didn't pay too much attention today...We had three hours of testing, so I was half-asleep.

~JFW1415