It's hard to believe that storms still kill so many people at this day and age. Katrina shocked me but it pales in comparison to the deaths and devastation in Burma. I still haven't seen the Red Cross asking for assistance to the people. I wonder if the military dictatorship will allow us (the West) to help the survivors.
//It's hard to believe that storms still kill so many people at this day and age. //
ReplyDeleteThere are more and more of us who live in dangerous areas of the world -- on the coast, for instance; we should expect the numbers of victims to increase, unfortunately.
//I wonder if the military dictatorship will allow us (the West) to help the survivors.//
I will be very surprised if they do. Why let pesky foreigners come to their country, to stay there for one, two, three years? And who cares about survivors? Not their own government, never, nowhere, almost.
I, too, doubt that they will let the Westerners in. Their whole promise is that they keep the Burmese safe from the outside. If they let the outsiders in to help it means that they are incapable of doing what they promise.
ReplyDeletePlus, you don't want pesky ideas about liberty and stuff infiltrating the society.
Friday, May 9. From the BBC:
ReplyDelete//Britain's Ambassador to Burma, Mark Canning, said authoritative sources were now speaking of between 63,000 and 100,000 people dead or missing.
Hundreds of thousands of people have no food, water or shelter. International aid agencies on the ground say seven tonnes of high-energy biscuits have been distributed in the delta region, but they have reached only 10% of those that need help.
Despite this, Burma's foreign ministry issued a statement on Friday saying it was not ready to allow foreign aid workers to enter the country.
The junta said it was happy to accept aid, but insisted it would control the distribution itself. //
There are suggestions now to deliver the aid without the consent of the Burmese junta. Let's see what happens. I think it's time to get rid of the junta all together - they've been acting like bad boys for some time now.
ReplyDelete