COMMENTARY
SANITSUDA EKACHAI
We thought we had it bad. Our 2004 tsunami, however, pales in comparison with the cyclone disaster in Burma which has killed more than 100,000 people. And more are still dying due to lack of timely rescue and aid.
We are frustrated with our half-baked democracy. But however imperfect our system is, our open society enables aid to reach the victims of natural disasters quickly. And no matter how unhappy we are with top-down assistance, inadequate long-term support and the authorities' inability to solve land rights disputes between the tsunami victims and greedy landlords, at least the help was there at the crucial moment, saving survivors from severe injury, disease and hunger. This is not happening in Burma.
The whole world is pointing the finger at the heartless junta as murderers, for not letting aid and relief workers reach the survivors in time. But the Thai government must also share in this sin.
The junta's refusal to let their people receive timely help is just the latest in a long list of atrocities the people in Burma have had to suffer at the hands of the generals. During the past four decades of terror, the generals have not only reduced the once prosperous country to a dirt poor nation, they also have silenced dissent through violent means and plunged the country into lawlessness and paralysing fear. Ethnic groups, in particular, are targets of the state's monstrous conduct, and endless civil war has given the Burmese troops the green light to kill innocent people with impunity. Stories abound about rape, forced labour and human mine-detectors. Meanwhile, farmers must put up with routine extortion, death threats and blatant stealing of their land through forced resettlement. In Burma, people know they can be killed on the spot and nothing will happen. They know they might easily die from simple diseases because of a miserably poor public health system.
The world was shocked when tropical Cyclone Nargis swept through the Irrawaddy Delta, taking away some 100,000 souls with it. Who knows how many millions in Burma have died premature, violent deaths from the junta's misrule?
Our government allows the junta to continue killing its people because top politicians and businessmen do not want to lose big-time concessions to exploit Burma's timber, natural gas, gems and hydro-electric dams.
When the villagers fled wars to save their lives and sought refuge within our borders, we pushed them back to face death. When they cross the border to work here so they can send remittances to families back home, we use them as slave labour. We allow our police to routinely extort migrant workers and arrest them when they meet to celebrate their cultural traditions. We even prohibit them from using cell phones and from leaving their shelters.
When the tsunami struck our Andaman coast in 2004, the migrant workers from Burma were not treated as victims eligible for help and compensation, but as illegal workers who had to be immediately deported. Fearing arrest, they had to hide in the hills, torn by grief and sorrow from the loss of loved ones, but too fearful to seek medical help for their own injuries. Yet many still said they wanted to work in Thailand. Things were worse in Burma, they said.
If we didn't believe them then, we must believe them now.
With the devastation of Burma's rice-growing areas and impending famine, we will soon see a huge influx of migrant workers crossing the border to find work.
We cannot stop this flow of migrants so long as we allow the junta to rule Burma with terror. We cannot help the Burmese people when they are struck by natural disasters so long as the atrocious junta remains in power. The only sustainable remedy for Burma is democracy - people's democracy.
When the Thai government helps the generals block the path of people power, it has blood on its hands for helping maintain the bloody path strewn with dead bodies of the Burmese.
Sanitsuda Ekachai is Assistant Editor
(Outlook), Bangkok Post.Email: sanitsudae@bangkokpost.co.th
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