The recent visit of a Thai prime minister to Myanmar raised an eyebrow when, upon returning to his home turf, he revealed that the miltary regime carried out effectively its own relief management efforts without hitches.
The good prime minister must have been closing his eyes on what really happened to the rest of Myanmar, especially in the delta region, where hundreds of thousands were misplaced, with most of them dying of hunger and thirst due to lack of better food and safe water to drink.
I don’t think it was proper for him to listen to what the evil generals said to him. Of course, it was the junta’s way of pleasing a head of state by breaking pleasant words that are to the junta’s advantage in so far as political image building is concerned. But before the eyes of the world, the military junta’s continues uncaring attitude towards the Burmese people, particularly the hundreds of thousands affected by the cyclone, can never be forgotten. It’s an outright violation of international human rights because the military regime deprives the affected victims their rightful assistance that they deserve to get from the government itself.
The foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will meet next week in Singapore. I’m not sure if the Myanmar official attending this meeting will not be bombarded with explosive questions on human rights violations and neglect of the Burmese people who are now suffering because relief goods from international humanitarian missions have remained undistributed to the victims of cyclone.
Perhaps, they (ASEAN) can collectively scold and reprimand its rogue member country who can’t live up to the positive expectations of the hapless victims of the cyclone. The worst that they can do, perhaps, is expel Myanmar from the Asean membership, if it continues to ignore the United Nations call to open up its gates to international relief agencies to help its suffering people.
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