Imagine this.
You are living in a third-world country where the military runs the government with an iron-fist but you don’t have the luxury of caring who runs the government because you spend much of your daily life trying to help your father put food on the table for the whole family.
One day, a cyclone hits your country and is estimated to have instantly killed 100,000 people. Your home is destroyed and the only family you have, 2 other brothers and 1 sister along with your father fell victim to the cyclone.
The only ones that are left in your family is yourself and your mother who was seriously injured by a flying piece of wood carried by the winds right straight into her thigh. You look around for help in a state of chaos with people looking for their family who are missing and the cries of people who have found their dead family members.
You sit and wait because you know your government must be doing something. Help is on the way… you wait for a day… two days.. three days.. four days… and nothing happens.
By then you are hungry and thirsty with not much left and by then your mother doesn’t look like she’s going to make it. Not with the amount of blood she has lost. But still.. no help arrived and you wonder why.
Then by the 5th day, the military has come and your people cheer their arrival…
thinking that help has finally arrived but to your disbelief they come to tell you that you need to go vote in an upcoming polls that would approve a new constitution that guarantees 25% of the seats to go to the military that currently runs the government.
What would you do in that circumstance?
Chances are.. YOU WOULDN’T GIVE A FLYING FUK ABOUT THE DAMN POLLS… you just lost your home, your family, your friends and you haven’t eaten for days and YET instead of bringing food, medicine and other supplies, your government asks you to go to the ballot box to approve a constitution that would ensure they forever have some control of the government?
Although maybe not with pin-point accuracy since I’ve never been to Burma after cyclone hit, this is what I would imagine what’s happening to people in Burma right now and it disgusts me very very much.
When I first heard of Cyclone Nargis hitting the country, I thought it was sad and tragic but hey history showed that in light of natural disasters hitting even the poorest countries in the world, almost every other country world-wide and the UN will be rounding up planes to fly in aid and aid workers.
That’s true.. it did happen but here’s what I didn’t see coming.
The military-run government of Burma complicated and delayed all the aid and foreign workers from going in and at one point even CONFISCATED the food and medicine brought in by the UN.
Today, more than a week after the disaster and after a lot of pleas and pressure from other governments, what does the Burmese regime do?
They finally let in the aid but they block ALL foreign workers from entering. All aid is to be distributed only by their own military.
And here’s the best part of it all.
Before all the UN aid is sent in, each box had the names of their generals’ scribbled on it so that when the people finally get the food and medicine that arrived too late to save many lives, they will think that they are all gifts from their dear generals, the very same generals that blocked the aid from coming in earlier.
What the hell is all that propaganda for?
The Burmese regime takes the cake when it comes proven to be one of the worst governments in the world. Not only do they rob the country and its people of its riches but when the people are in need, they do little to help and when other countries want to help, they impede them from doing so.
Bloody hell.. it’s not like any of them are asked to take out any money from their own pockets to help their people… besides they have much much of those.
I’ve heard of a Burmese general who has a family in Singapore that buys S$100,000 Cartier watches for himself and his kids almost on a weekly basis.
One of those watches alone can buy A HELL LOT of food and medicine for his people.
On the way to the airport in Bangkok earlier, the Thai taxi driver talked to me briefly about the crisis in Burma. He said
“Poor people.. bad government”
I feel so sad for the people who have an incompetent and selfish government to decide their fates. The clock is ticking… and there isn’t much time left.
If not much more is done by the Burmese military regime, the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in Burma could lead to wide-spread disease to take the lives of many more.
Many charity organizations estimate that up to 2 million people could die from this natural disaster.
Read more about the disaster here, here and here.
PS: I know it’s not my style to write these kind of things but I just needed an outlet for all my anger… ahhh.. blogs are the best.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space