Long before the earthquake, China and Russia were places the regime sourced weapons. Sydney academic Sean Turnell explained that the military’s reliance on foreign exchange to purchase munitions from Russia and China was “a real key vulnerability”.
Turnell, who was Suu Kyi’s economics adviser and was jailed for 650 days on trumped-up espionage charges, worries that international aid will fall into the regime’s hands and will be used as a weapon to punish those who oppose the junta.
It’s a pattern we’ve seen before. A previous Myanmar junta shut the country to the outside world after Cyclone Nargis in 2008, a disaster that led to almost 140,000 deaths, mainly in the Irrawaddy Delta.
“People who had been stranded in the delta region just died,” says Phil Robertson, the director of the Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates (AHRLA) consultancy, who has long lived in South-East Asia. “This is a junta with a long track record of bad faith efforts and politicisation of aid.
“If it was a normal government and a normal country there would be support provided in a fairly quick way.”
Robertson said at the weekend that people were digging through the rubble with their hands looking for loved ones, and the true scale of the disaster remained unclear. The epicentre of the quake was also the main battleground. “Those areas are war zones.”
The US is sending help in the form of a three-person USAID assessment team, but they are not expected to arrive until Wednesday. The US has not been perfect in its application of soft power over the years, but diplomacy and aid are preferable to war and weapons.
As the world is watching, China has stepped in. After those who are buried are found, after the full scale of the tragedy is known, after the shock wears off, the lasting legacy of the Myanmar earthquake may be the US abdicating its role as a force for good in the world.
Michael Ruffles is a senior editor who has worked in Thailand.
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