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Andrew Khoo was recently in Myanmar to comfort and
encourage friends. And to bring along some medicines and medical supplies,
blankets, candles, food, personal toiletries and money. He filed this report for
this website.
On Sunday afternoon I was listening to our superb Malaysian
Philharmonic Orchestra playing music by Leonard Bernstein in the majestic Dewan
Filharmonik Petronas.
On Monday afternoon I was looking up at the Petronas logo
affixed high on the frontage of the Sakura Tower, the tallest building in
downtown Yangon, Myanmar. On either side of the wide boulevard leading down to
the Sule Pagoda, scene of one of the many anti-government protest by monks in
September 2007, massive gnarled roots of upended trees stared me in the face.
The roads have been cleared, but the debris and detritus of trunks and branches
still line the sides of many streets in downtown Yangon. They are slowly being
moved to decentralised dumping grounds. Military, municipal workers and private
citizens alike in their own way toil daily to remove the huge fallen tree
trunks. Some teams have chainsaws and heavy lifting equipment, while others
simply have to make do with saws and small choppers. I spent a short time trying
to help a small group of villagers attempt to clear a huge tree which had been
uprooted in their village – it was hard going without modern machinery.
Near the hotel I was staying, an elderly man busied himself
chopping away at a big fallen tree trunk over the course of a few days, cutting
the branches into one-foot firewood-sized strips for easy bundling and carting
away. Throughout Yangon, firewood will not be in short supply for many months to
come. Which is a blessing of sorts since fuel prices in general have gone up due
to increased demand. Utility workers are also busy all over Yangon replacing
electricity and telephone poles.
Electricity supply is still limited, and police have to do
added duty directing traffic at traffic-lightless major junctions. Some
apartment blocks have generators to power up, as have most of the hotels. But
many houses in Yangon still have to make do with candles. Running water depends
on electricity powered pumps. It has rained every day in the week I was in
Yangon. The monsoon rains have come early this year, spearheaded by Cyclone
Nargis. A second potential cyclone threatened for a while, but dissipated. But
the rains continue, keeping the many potholes full and the roads muddy.
Terrestrial telephones are not fully operational, and e-mail
connectivity, not the greatest even in the best of times, is still unavailable
in many places.
There is also irony between the news heard over BBC
and CNN shown in the hotel room and the New Light of Myanma, the
local English-language tabloid. On the one hand, the daily paper is replete with
endless pictures of generals handing over aid to affected areas, southwest of
Yangon in the delta area, stressing the adequacy of relief efforts and supplies,
albeit from overseas friends. The local national-language television station is
no different. Grateful cyclone victims in relief centres or in front of tented
housing are seen being greeted by generous generals, and there are happy
handshakes as tokens of aid are presented.
On the other hand, BBC and CNN consistently
broadcast the failure of aid to reach those truly in need, the refusal to allow
foreign aid workers to enter the country and the conservativeness of the
estimates of death and homelessness.
The truth, as always, is somewhere in between. Quite exactly
where no one really knows. Aid is arriving, even from the US, and is being
distributed. Some victims are being relieved. But communications and transport
links are such that not everyone is being reached. It can take up to 7 hours to
travel the distance of 90 kms, the length of the journey between Yangon and some
of the nearer towns in the affected delta region. From these towns, it can then
be many hours by boat to extremely remote villages, tucked away in the maze of
land and water that constitutes the Delta region. Reports have been received of
whole villages having disappeared.
One survivor told me that in his village of 600, only 3
survived. He only did so by clinging to a palm coconut tree for his life as wave
after wave brought on by strong winds buffeted his village for hours. I saw
photographs of survivors with their chests and inner thighs rubbed raw from the
friction of clinging on to trees.
Another friend said to me that of 70 people in a sub-village,
only 19 survived. Many who died were related to him. So it is not surprising
that the death toll is raised almost on a daily basis. It went from 251 to
20,000 before I arrived. It moved up to 38,000 by mid-week and by the end of the
week it had almost doubled to 78,000, and still rising. All this in the first 14
days. ICRC estimates put the death toll at anything up to 128,000. The
government has stated that 1 million people are homeless. The UN puts the figure
at anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 million.
Like the clearing of roads, meeting the needs of victims
probably has its priorities. The important roads, from the airport to the city,
near diplomatic compounds, public monuments and key temples and monasteries, and
government offices, get attention first. So the bigger towns and those with
easier access are reached first. The government has now allowed religious bodies
to set up relief camps in addition to ones established by the government, an
indication perhaps that the situation is graver than the government had
originally anticipated. Aid convoys from international relief organisations and
NGOs are slowly getting through, but foreign personnel are however still not
welcomed.
If the tsunami in Aceh in December 2004 taught us anything,
it is that concerted effort and multi-level co-operation is essential. Not just
in the immediate aftermath, but for years following, as rehabilitation and
resettlement gradually replace relief as the principal focus. This can only be
achieved through a willingness to accept not just foreign aid but advice and
assistance as well. National pride and professions of self-sufficiency must be
put aside.
Anything less than that would be a disservice to the memory
of those who died and a denial of the future for those who survived. And those
who survived deserve more than what they are getting at the moment.
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