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Murder by inaction

May 16, 2008 By dev Comments are Off

It is to the Chinese government’s credit that it is acting aggressively in response to the Sichuan earthquake, a tragedy beyond comprehension.

But this shouldn’t obscure the destructive role China continues to play in the unfolding Burma crisis. Discussing the aftermath of Cyclone Nagris on the NewsHour the other night, Chinese ambassador Zhou Wenzhong told Margaret Warner:

I think we also need to respect Myanmar. Eventually, it’s up to the people there to do the rescue. … Others can only provide help. I think the people in Myanmar have to provide the rescue, the kind of rescue by themselves, eventually, fundamentally speaking.

MARGARET WARNER: But what if 500,000 people more are at risk because the government refuses to accept the assistance that it pretty clearly needs to?

ZHOU WENZHONG: I think they are not really refusing foreign assistance. They are receiving foreign assistance. Actually, lots of foreign assistance is beginning to arrive in Myanmar. And they are getting organized.

They’re getting organized in terms of stealing the emergency aid, in fact. Otherwise, the junta is content to let the cyclone victims rot, literally. If the generals allowed a concerted international relief effort, it would expose their xenophobic state ideology as an edifice of lies. Retaining power is all that matters, and the more people die, the fewer the regime needs to imprison or shoot.
[PS – Chinese pressure is perhaps the only thing the Burmese generals would respond to, but China has scuttled any UN action on the matter.]
“I hope we will give them some time to get further organized,” says ambassador Zhou. Translation: Let’s proceed according to the regime’s needs and priorities, not the victims’. From today’s NY Times:
Tom Malinowski, the Washington Director for Human Rights Watch, said that the international community was walking a tightrope. “We get a tiny foothold for humanitarian aid, and for fear of losing that hold, we operate on the junta’s terms,” he said. “Nobody wants to lose the 30 visas they gave us.”
China alone could make the difference here and chooses not to.
The Olympic Games are meant to celebrate human achievement in a context of global fellowship. This summer the Games will provide comfort to a government indirectly responsible for Burmese deaths on an epic scale.
[Update: The U.S. has some shaping up to do as well:
Both President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush have been personally engaged in the Myanmar issue, administration officials say, but one official said that beyond the President and First Lady, there is no one single high-ranking American official who has taken charge of America’s response to Cyclone Nargis.


Christopher Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, has been consumed with his efforts to negotiate a North Korea nuclear deal, while R. Nicholas Burns, the State Department’s former undersecretary for political affairs, has left the government, with no successor in place. Henrietta Fore, the head of USAID, has come under fire for appearing in a photo on the airfield in Yangon, smiling as she shook hands with a Myanmar official. Human Rights advocates said that such photos will almost certainly be used by the military junta as propaganda.

There has been some discussion, a second senior administration official said, of whether the United States and France should crack down on Chevron and Total for their work on a natural gas pipeline in southern Myanmar, from which the military junta derives much of its wealth. American sanctions against Myanmar ban most companies from working there, but Chevron owns a 28 percent stake in the pipeline, which is operated by Total. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that so far, talk of suspending Chevron payments to Burma have not gone very far.]

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