Local residents walk past damaged buildings after Cyclone Mocha in Sittwe township, Rakhine State, Myanmar, May 16, 2023. © 2023 AP Images |
Cyclone Mocha stuck Myanmar on May 14, its 250-kilometers-per-hour winds tearing through homes and shelters, with devastating floods rising in its wake. The UN estimates the cyclone – one of the strongest to ever hit the region – has left 1.6 million people in urgent need of aid across Myanmar.
With this amount of devastation, you’d think Myanmar’s junta would welcome aid workers.
But you’d be mistaken.
Since the cyclone made landfall, junta authorities have refused to authorize travel and visas for aid workers or release essential supplies from customs and warehouses, a new Human Rights Watch report says.
Humanitarian aid staff, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of junta retribution, told us the junta has hindered their agencies’ ability to conduct needs assessments, distribute relief supplies, and provide emergency medical care.
The lack of food, clean water, and shelter, coupled with waterborne illnesses, will only make the cyclone’s death toll climb higher.
On June 8, the situation got worse. That day, after weeks of appeals by humanitarian organizations for unrestricted access, the junta issued a blanket suspension of travel authorizations for aid groups in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, reversing initial approvals granted in early June.
This followed a letter requiring the UN and international aid agencies relinquish to junta authorities the distribution of relief supplies.
Why would the junta do this?
After sharing power with a civilian government, Myanmar’s junta staged a military coup in 2021 and is now fighting armed groups in the country – including areas hard-hit by Cyclone Mocha.
Our research found that many aid workers, local activists, and villagers expressed the view that the junta was seeking to use the cyclone response to legitimize and bolster its control.
Myanmar authorities have long discriminated against Rohingya Muslims, even confining about 600,000 Rohingya in camps and villages in Rakhine State – where the cyclone both made landfall and where the junta just suspended all travel for aid workers. The junta has long deprived the Rohingya of rights and freedom, hampering their capacity to survive.
From Rakhine State, the cyclone moved inland to the country’s northwest, where the civilian population has faced military attacks, displacement, movement restrictions, and internet shutdowns. Villagers from parts of Chin State, living under martial law, reported that the junta closed major roads after the cyclone hit.
In Sagaing and Magway Regions, where almost a million people have been displaced by airstrikes and fighting since the coup, flooding has destroyed large swathes of farmland. Flooding also shifted landmines and unexploded ordnance, endangering villagers.
“The junta’s moves to block aid have turned an extreme weather event into a man-made catastrophe,”said Asia researcher Shayna Bauchner. |
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