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NAM Round Table
The NAM Round Table consists of news, insights, visions, ramblings and rants from the writers at New America Media.
[ filed under: asia environment ] As we learned during the tsunami of 2004, blogs can be particularly helpful in spreading information about major disasters. A group of Columbia Journalism School students who had spent almost eight months documenting the lives of Burmese refugees in New York for their Master’s Project [ http://FromBurmaToNewYork.com ], have now built a useful blog about the Burma cyclone – the death toll appears to have crossed 100,000 now. On the blog, you will find everything from the latest news to how you can contribute directly to the victims to information about candelight vigils (including one on Friday night at Union Square in NYC). Please visit: http://BurmaEmergency.wordpress.com – and spread the word. (they are looking for journalists and others to contribute items as well). You can contact the students, Divya Gupta, Karen Zraick, Lam Thuy Vo via divyagupta2@gmail.com Please let your friends know about the blog. Here’s what on their front page today: Interview: World Food Programme spokesperson flags immediate aid needs in Burma The World Food Programme’s main spokeswoman, Bettina Luescher, spoke to the Wall Street Journal about immediate needs in Myanmar. Also highlighted in the second half of the video is the impact of the global hike in food prices and how it is adding to the problems of delivering international aid in Burma. Lessons and Theory: Looking Back at Bangladesh cyclone, just six months ago American aid worker Nicki Bennett just posted from Bangladesh on Nick Kristof’s On the Ground blog on nytimes.com. She’s been doing reconstruction work in the aftermath of Cyclone Sidr, which ripped through Bangladesh six months ago. Here’s an excerpt: < What’s the difference? Poverty, exclusion, inequality and bad policies.>> She goes on to make the important point that due to climate change, floods and natural disasters of this magnitude seem likely to increase in frequency. With that in mind, Robert Kaplan had an interesting piece in the Jan/Feb ‘08 Atlantic Monthly, entitled “Waterworld” about how Bangladesh is dealing with climate change. – Karen Latest News: UK tops interntional aid contributions at US $ 10 million According to a Burmese online news magazine, The Irrawaddy, foreign governments have collectively pledged more than US $ 30 million for the Burma cyclone response effort. UK tops the list, assuming monetary responsibility for one- third of the amount by pledging US $10 million. The next pledge amount is a tie between the U.S. and the European Union at US $ 3 million. Surprisingly, Japan is way down on the list with a pledge amount of US $267,570. Of Burma’s two big neighbors – China and India – the former pledged US $500,000 in cash, plus supplies such as tents, blankets and food and India sent two naval ships containing food, tents, blankets, clothing and medicine sent to Rangoon. Two aircraft carriers with supplies are to leave for Burma on Wednesday. From the Field: Update from a Burmese refugee camp in Thailand My friends Justin & Zoe have been teaching photography to Burmese refugees in Mae Sot, Thailand, for the past few months. Mae Sot is a small town just across the border from the Karen state of Burma. I had just sent them a worried email when I saw their latest blog post. They say Mae Sot was hit with heavy rains but there’s been no real damage, and no one has yet arrived in Mae Sot from the interior of Myanmar. Also of interest: their beautiful project, Unseen Mae La. Lessons and Theory: Does state sovereignty trump humanitarian intervention by international community? (via Sree Sreenivasan, Dean of Students, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism) The Carnegie Council for International Intervention has compiled a useful synopsis of some key lessons on humanitarian intervention in the wake of the Burma cyclone disaster. It draws comparisons to the Tsunami response and also one clear distinction: ” … in the case of the tsunami, the affected governments not only welcomed international humanitarian relief, they literally pleaded for it. Not so in Myanmar. What began as a purely natural disaster has quickly become exacerbated by the lack of cooperation–even the obstruction–of the country’s ruling Junta.” The news digest goes on to pose a critical question: “Does the sovereignty of the state trump the responsibility of the international community to take action when the peoples of a nation are at risk?” The think tank says it has been trying to answer the complex question by engaging some of ‘the brightest minds and most profound thinkers on this topic.’ The result is a comprehensive sampling of works from their journal – Ethics and International Affairs, that explore the boundaries (and beyond) of humanitarian intervention from a variety of perspectives. See a list of work samples below: ———————- Toward a Realist Ethics of Intervention The Moral Basis of Humanitarian Intervention [Abstract] Humanitarian Intervention: An Overview of the Ethical Issues [Excerpt] Intervention: From Theories to Cases [Full Text] ———————- Legitimizing the Use of Force in Kosovo [Full Text] Humanitarian Intervention: Which Way Forward? [Abstract] Special Section: The Politics of Rescue [Abstracts] ———————- Whither the Responsibility to Protect? Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect or Trojan Horse? The Crisis in Darfur and Redefining Sovereignty and Intervention [Full Text] – Divya
Donations: Contribute through Google checkout You can send money to UNICEF or Direct Relief International using Google checkout here: http://www.google.com/myanmarcyclone/index.html Event: Candlelight Vigil for Burma Cyclone Victims The New York Burmese community will gather in Union Square tomorrow night. Event: CANDLELIGHT VIGIL FOR BURMA CYCLONE VICTIMS Latest News: TOP OF THE AGENDA:Myanmar crisis devolves (via Ann Cooper, Columbia Journalism School Faculty) A U.S. diplomat said the death toll in Myanmar following a cyclone could reach 100,000 (WashPost), a number sharply higher than initial estimates. Myanmar government figures put the number of victims at 22,000, with another 40,000 missing. But al-Jazeera reports the situation on the ground has become increasingly grave and that many initial survivors of the cyclone now face life-threatening circumstances, particularly given a lack of clean water. Myanmar’s government has agreed to allow UN aircraft to fly in aid supplies (BBC). But relief organizations maintain that their efforts to assist the cyclone’s victims are still being hampered by the country’s military. France’s Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner yesterday invoked a UN doctrine called the “responsibility to protect” (IHT) as a way to possibly circumvent the military government. The 2005 doctrine says the international community has the right to intervene when a government could not or would not protect its civilians. Media: BBC reporter deported from Burma By Andrew Harding A fallen tree and damaged houses in Rangoon I flew into Burma on Monday morning from Bangkok. The smart new airport in Rangoon had finally reopened two days after the cyclone. Low clouds obscured the vast wetlands of the Irrawaddy Delta but, as we came in to land, I caught a glimpse out of the window. My mind flicked back to December 2004, flying into Aceh in Indonesia immediately after the tsunami, staring down at miles of pulverised coastline. At this stage on Monday, the size of Burma’s disaster was not yet clear. Over the weekend, the military authorities – safe in their brand new capital city far from Rangoon – appeared to be playing things down. A few hundred dead perhaps, the state newspapers still overwhelmingly preoccupied with plans to hold a national referendum the following weekend. The headlines full of the usual semi-threatening calls for a big Yes vote. But the cyclone’s impact was already looking ominous. There should have been a bright green jigsaw of rice paddies and villages below. Instead I saw a grey-brown smudge of water and ragged trees.
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For Burmese Nationals in the U.S., the First Cyclone Came from the U.S. Departments of State and Justice
Students of Burmese history will tell you that the current regime, neither derived power from, nor the admiration and respect of the population most severely affected by and at greatest risk of perishing from what is essentially a natural disaster. It should be noted that the regime has been at war with and targeted, both for persecution and worse, a significant percentage of its population since coming to power, particularly those whom the international community now seeks to assist. The regime regards this natural disaster as a nothing short of supernatural blessing. What it could not do and hide as an act of commission – Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the Genocide Convention against those within its borders whom it detests, it has come to embrace the long awaited hand of nature to do for them, with its acquiescence.
To appreciate the underlying motivation behind the regime’s acts of omission, focus upon their response, both to the effects of the cyclone, international community now at its door step, and the net effect resultant from what they are not doing. While their technique may appear novel, their objectives remain anything but.
In light of the fact that the High Contracting Parties to the Genocide Convention have yet to find merit to intervene to prevent Genocide, as mandated pursuant to Article 1 of the Convention when premeditated acts of commission (delayed action in Bosnia and Kosovo, none whatsoever in Rwanda, and little more then rhetorical gymnastics regarding the issue of national sovereignty in Darfur, to name but a few), any serious student of history will tell you that there is no hope for those ethnic minorities whom the Burmese regime has long regarded as inconvenient, persecuted, and written off as disposable. Now sit back, listen to the silence and observe the inaction, and feckless response of our respective governments.
Headline: White House Throws a `Hail Mary Pass,’ Calling in the One Remaining Vestige of Morality it has Left – First Lady Laura Foregoes Another Reading of `My Pet Goat’ to George W., Jeopardizing Timely Completion of First Daughter’s Wedding Plans, Steps to the White House podium to Decry the Burmese Government’s Inaction on Behalf of its Cyclone (political and otherwise) Victims.
While the U.S. Department of State expresses difficulty securing landing rights from the Burmese Government for the delivery and dissemination of life saving humanitarian aid and visas for aid workers to distribute it, the U.S. Department of Justice’s refoulement agreement (forcible repatriation of refugees to the country from which they fled persecution into the hands of their persecutors) with the regime remains intact, uninterrupted, on schedule, and is given priority over humanitarian assistance.
According to the Burma (April 2007) Profile of Asylum Claims and Country Conditions Report (designed with intent to undermine the plausibility of all meritorious asylum claims involving Burmese nationals), authored (authors names and credentials withheld) and disseminated by the Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor to any U.S. asylum officer and immigration judge gullible enough to buy it, the Burmese regime, while somewhat eccentric, respects and defends the human rights of its people. Omission of references to `persecution’ coupled with State’s peddling the regime as one on fast track for and the inevitable attainment of Jeffersonian Democracy (note the post-cyclone impromptu national elections, distribution and sale of western emergency aid items to the regime’s ethnic kinsman, and political supporters), proves the Department of State no less effective in achieving through rhetorical gymnastics and historical revisionism regarding the status of human rights in Burma, what the cyclone achieved to the immutable strategic benefit and advancement of the regime through `natural means.’
Where the need presents, but the regime is unwilling to accept material assistance to save lives, the Department of State stands prepared to intervene to spare the regime’s reputation and defend its signatory status to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
In its conditional ratification of the Convention, the regime maintained that, `with reference to Article VI (of the Genocide Convention), the Union of Burma makes the reservation that nothing contained in the said Article shall be construed as depriving the Courts and Tribunals of the Union of jurisdiction or as giving foreign Courts and tribunals jurisdiction over any cases of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article III committed within the Union territory.’ Translation: no prosecution of a Burmese Government official for genocide unless they themselves opt to prosecute them.
p.s. Anyone ready to the take to the streets over the price of milk and whole wheat bread?
Michael Pellerin
By Michael Pellerin · Posted on Jun 3, 11:31 AMPolitical Asylum Research
and Documentation Service (PARDS)
Princeton, New Jersey 08542 U.S.A.