What do Cyclone Nargis and Hurricane Katrina have in common...? A shitty government response...

- unprepared to non-existent emergency response on a national level

- using military force to control citizens inside national borders during a natural disaster

- refusing offers of aid from other countries

- a shocking disregard for the poorest and most vulnerable citizens

The United Nations suspended relief supplies to Myanmar on Friday after the military government seized the food and equipment it had already sent into the country.

Earlier, in a statement, Myanmar’s military junta said it was willing to receive disaster relief from the outside world but would not welcome outside relief workers. Nearly one week after a devastating cyclone, supplies into the country were still being delayed and aid experts were being turned back as they arrived at the airport.

In the statement, the government said it would distribute international relief supplies itself.

Paul Risley, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, said, "all the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated." He said the World Food Program was suspending the few flights that the Myanmar authorities had so far allowed to enter the country until the matter was resolved.

[...]

One United Nations official said he had never seen delays like this before in delivering relief supplies and aid officials. In Indonesia after the tsunami in 2004, he said, an air bridge of daily flights was established within 48 hours.

"The frustration caused by what appears to be a paperwork delay is unprecedented in modern humanitarian relief efforts," said the official, Paul Risley, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, in Bangkok. "It’s astonishing."

yes, the scale of human loss and devastation in myanmar is staggering and the cruel and authoritarian response of the myanmar military junta is appalling... but...

as brother tim was reminding me last night during our long chat, three years later, new orleans still looks almost as ragged as it did immediately post-hurricane katrina... my country has no room whatsoever to stake out a righteous position vis a vis myanmar...

god help the people of myanmar...

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