The Acts of Man

Is there a reason why the situation in Myanmar angers me so?  It is late May, and on May 2 Cyclone Nargis ripped through the country, likely killing over 120,000 people, and 2.5 million require immediate aid.  Only now has the government accepted the idea of genuine aid into the country, after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited there.  Even so, no significant aid has—even today—been delivered.

There’s no need here to hash out all the reasons why this is.  The military junta, a corrupt cadre of generals who refused to accept the results of a 1990s democratic election, is now infamous for human rights abuses, violations of international agreements, and other atrocities.  Some initial attempts by the UN and ASEAN to deliver food found the government taking it for their own uses.  And the dozens of US and European ships off the coast are laden with helicopters ready to deliver everything they need.

Contrast this audacity to the healthy and immediate response of China to its recent earthquake in Sichuan, an enormous natural disaster filled with stories of success and optimism. (And contrast this, too, to the 1976 earthquake in China where borders were closed and 250,000 died.)

“Why not just airdrop the aid?” a CNN commentator asked a UN aid coordinator.  That would be a violation of Myanmar’s air space, he replied. And, “We prefer to work with the government, if at all possible.”

Nonsense. As hundreds and thousands die each day, clogging the rivers with bodies, every diplomatic mistake is too great.  Three weeks have passed as I am writing this with diplomatic touring, diplomatic tea, and diplomatic cordialities hiding the real deaths which are so easily preventable.  Sovereignty is not sacred—it must not be.

I could offer international legal justifications for broaching Myanmar air space (how the ICCPR does not allow human rights violations which, through neglect, cause suffering and death, even when a state of emergency is declared, for instance).  The bottom line, however, is moral as well as political: a government has an obligation to the welfare of its people.  If it fails this obligation, it is no government.  And if no legitimate government, no worries about sovereign airspace.

The US has the helicopters ready.  Send them in.  We could cross borders for worse reasons.

In doing so, the US should also go to the United Nations to author a new Universal Declaration of Disaster Relief, to be signed by all nations, an expectation that in the event of catastrophic natural disasters all nations are expected to coordinate with regional and international aid agencies to bring in support within 48 hours.  To delay longer is not merely negligence but a crime against humanity.

Under a UDDR, disaster relief will not be turned down and will be coordinated by the most able international agencies available.  Signatories would agree that delays would indicate their abdication of host nation status and management of the disaster:  the world would take over where the government failed.  (And the US could also not repeat its hubris in turning down relief from Cuba following Hurricane Katrina.)

Okay, you sense that I am angry.  But the idiocy of Myanmar ruling General Than Shwe (a UN spokesperson said that the government was “not the most enlightened”) is not what puzzles me most.  I want to know why I’m angry at this negligence and I do not raise similar ire at the same government’s or Nigeria’s violence against ethnic minorities, at Russia’s declaration that a gay pride parade was “satanic,” the denial of rights of the Chiapas Indians in Mexico, or the innumerable wars in Somalia or the Caucasus.

Is it because when humans attack humans, I am saddened but not surprised—yet when the natural world strikes the innocent I am moved? Am I, then, so jaded by human cruelty, selfishness, and ignorance that I am numbed to it?  Am I more moved by an “Act of God” than an “Act of Man”?  Or is it that I can’t imagine why anyone would hesitate to help those whose homes have burned or flooded, but can somehow rationalize an Armenia or a Darfur? (That one makes me shudder.)

Is it simply the ferocity, speed, and devastation of the tsunami or wildfire which moves me whereas man-made deaths, however terrible, are dragged out over time and cannot compare in intensity (or attention-deficit news coverage)?

Even now, I don’t know.  But it strikes me, that all of these are, in the end, human acts.  The Sudanese, Nigerian, and North Korean governments select their policies, perpetuate their crimes with premeditation—just as the governments of Myanmar and China make opposite decisions for their people affected by natural disasters.

After 48 hours, the negligence of Myanmar moves beyond the excusable.  The decisions to deny visas to aid workers and holding aid in Rangoon are premeditated, no different from a government intentionally shutting off heat and water supplies, no different from a government intentionally firing hundreds of thousands of bullets.

The rest of the world must decide how long the slaughter will continue.