If the cyclone wasn’t bad enough, now the Burmese people have to suffer the double tragedy of lack of aid. It isn’t that the aid isn’t out there, it’s that their own government won’t give it to them.

As a note before I continue: I must admit to having to look up why some people call the country Burma and some call it Myanmar. Politics, basically, and that seems to be the problem now with aid. The country became Myanmar when the current government took over (rather bloodily) and is recognized as Myanmar by the UN. The US and UK still call it Burma. I wonder what the people living there call it? It might be nice to know since the government doesn’t seem all that interested in them so why should the rulers of Myanmar/Burma control everything, including the name of the country?

In any case, a devastating cyclone has ripped through the country, hitting poor regions particularly hard. People have essentially been without help for a week — a week to sit among ruins and the dead who have not been removed. A week without food, clean water, shelter, or anything else they need. The UN and other countries have gathered tons of aid and want to send it to those who need it. The government of Myanmar/Burma, however, doesn’t want aid and neither does it appear to want to save its own people from more death and misery.

Officially, only 22,000 or so have died but estimates are that as many as 100,000 may have perished. We don’t even know the true extent of the tragedy because the government there won’t let people in to help. Journalists and aid workers are being expelled from the country or not allowed in. Aid is being seized or not allowed in. One has to wonder what the government is so afraid of that it would rather let thousands of people die from lack of aid than allow anyone in to provide that aid. What kind of government turns on its own people like that? Not a good one and that makes this tragedy doubly worse. The first UN shipments of food and medicine were taken by the Myanmar/Burma army; the UN won’t send more until it can distribute it without intervention. While politicians argue, people starve and suffer disease. It is just mind-boggling that the government is refusing aid like this.

It doesn’t matter right now how good or bad the Myanmar/Burma govenment is — either way they are acting shamelessly. Even a really bad government has to realize that it won’t have any power if it doesn’t have a population to govern. Even a really bad government has to realize that it needs to earn some sort of support from the people if it is to continue. Maybe the government truely does not care, in which case what they fear most — that someone will overthrow them — may come true, but it will come from the inside, rather than the outside. It is too bad that the poor have to suffer from the government’s self-destruction, but unfortunately that seems to be the way of this world.