The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas and the poor state of Burma's infrastructure and health systems mean that number is sure to rise. With as many as 1 million people still at risk, it is conceivable that the death toll will, within days, approach that of the entire number of civilians killed in the genocide in Darfur.
So what is the world doing about it? Not much. The military regime that runs Burma initially signaled it would accept outside relief, but has imposed so many conditions on those who would actually deliver it that barely a trickle has made it through. Aid workers have been held at airports. UN food shipments have been seized. US naval ships packed with food and medicine idle in the Gulf of Thailand, waiting for an all-clear that may never come. More...
See also: Cyclone Nargis in Burma: would the military junta prefer to see its people suffer than accept aid?
What are you people thinking? We have enough trouble with 2 idiotic wars going. Let's take care of New Orleans and out own people.
ReplyDeleteRight on! Exactly my point of view! Let Burma, and every other naion, take care of its own problems.Aid is not always a good thing...
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