World Focus: Union of Myanmar

Since 1962, Myanmar (also known as Burma) has been under the control of a military junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). Situated in East Asia, Myanmar has been in and out of the news for various reasons, most notably widespread political protests in 2007 and the devestation caused by Cyclone Nargis in 2008, both of which contributed greatly to the refugee crisis in the area.

Starting in August 2007, there was a string of political protests throughout Myanmar that ilicited increasingly violent responses from the military junta. These protests stemmed from the junta's decision to remove all government fuel subsidies, causing some fuel prices to increase up to five-fold over the span of a week. Led by thousands of monks, the protests came to be known as the "Saffron Revolution" due to the colors of the monks' robes. In the first wave of protests, many demonstrators were beaten and arrested, including 13 of the nation's most prominent dissidents. Tens of thousands of monks marched in towns around Myanmar, and by the end of September, there had been a protest with an estimated 100,000 participants, the largest anti-government protest in Myanmar in over 20 years. Following that protest, the government started cracking down on the protestors, killing multipule monks, civilians, and even removing internet access from an entire town. By the end of the protests, over 130 people had died and thousands had been beaten or detained.

On May 3, 2008, Cyclone Nargis hit the coast of Myanmar. The cyclone was so strong, over 130,000 were missing or dead after it hit. The United Nations estimated over one million civilians were left homeless after the natural disaster, giving Myanmar one of the largest refugee crisises in the world. In the areas worst hit by the cyclone, reports of malaria outbreaks were common. This situation was further complicated when the military junta refused to let United Nations aid workers enter the country to administer aid to the suffering public. The government claimed that it was adequately taking care of its people, hence not taking outside aid, but reports sent back to America from journalists within the country showed unprecedented amounts of need. Weeks later the government finally started allowing aid to enter the country, but then disguised the aid so it appeared to the people that it was being provided by the government, and withheld aid from certain communitites.

Before both of these events, over 140,000 refugees had already fled Myanmar for political reasons. After the protests and cyclone, that number swelled to over 1.2 million. What can we do about this situation? How can we, as a first world country, help? Many Americans helped by donating aid, but there is little information about how much of this aid actually made it to the people of Burma, not just the government and their families. If the United States is going to sanction Myanmar in response to the way that the government has acted, they need to do so in a way that affects the government, not the people. Collaboration with the United Nations and other countries in Asia is necessary. Hopefully Barack Obama will approach the situation with the best interest of the people of Myanmar as his number one priority.

More Fighting in Congo, Kivu

Even though there was a call for a cease-fire last week in the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, fighting continues to plague aid workers trying to bring food and medical supplies into the war-torn region. The full story can be found here:

http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL8561770.html

Over 5 million people have died from fighting in the Congo, making it the most deadly war since WWII. Even so, many Americans don't really know what is happening there, and when they think of conflicts in Africa, only think of Darfur and Rwanda. In the last two years, over 1,000,000 people have been displaced, but there isn't even a good estimate of how many refugees there are from this conflict as a whole, since it is so widespread throughout the region and heavily rooted in the Rwandan genocide and multipule Civil Wars in Congo following that. While a peace deal had been reached back in January, fighting erupted again 3 weeks ago when rebels siezed a military camp outside of Goma. Conflicts erupted between the rebels and UN Peacekeeping troops, and the rebels ended up taking the city. Widespread looting and fighting has continued over the last week, and just now talk about a humanitarian corridor has begun.

How should America approach this? We sent our Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jedayi Frazier to the area to help assess the current situation, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been in constant contact with the Presidents of neighboring countries. If we wanted to send aid, doing it through a political vessel (State Department, sending troops to deliver aid, etc.) might not be the best idea, since the rebels have said multipule times they view UN troops as the enemy and will fight them on sight, and would probably extend that view to cover US troops as well. At the same time, we can not sit by and let people be shot dead for supporting their own government, or for being a part of a specific ethnic group (the conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda has crossed the border, and Tutsi and Hutu rebels are heavily involved in the fighting in Congo.) Talks of a regional summit to help promote the peace proccess in the near future put on by the African Union and European Union have started, and hopefully a better way of keeping aid workers safe will be discussed. If aid workers are not able to get to help the refugees that need it most, the humanitarian crisis in the area can only get worse.