According to an article in the Sun the death toll from Cyclone Nargis which ravaged Burma’s Irrawaddy delta on Saturday could be as high as 500,000 if aid does not get in quick. If these numbers are accurate then, as the article suggests, it could “dwarf the 230,000 deaths across South East Asia in the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.”
According to the article:
Sources said 200,000 people were already dead or dying.
But the figure could rise to HALF A MILLION through disease and hunger if the nation’s hardline army rulers continue to block aid for the devastated lowlands of the Irrawaddy Delta.
The sad part about all this is that although the military junta controlling Burma has called for foreign aid in order to help it deal with the crisis, it is still refusing to allow many foreign aid workers into the country to provide critical assistance.
Many members of the media have also been denied entry into Burma. BBC reporter Paul Danahar, one of the few foreign journalists currently inside Burma reports on the absolute devastation caused by the cyclone’s aftermath. Danahar says:
A full six days after the cyclone slammed into this country, there is so much aid sitting on the borders; there are so many needy people. And the two are not getting together.
So the people who have survived are living with thousands of corpses, polluting their environment, polluting their water supply, and the risk of disease taking hold is getting worse and worse by the day.
Danahar also said when reporting on this disaster, he has to hide from Burmese government officials who wish to hide its full scope, saying:
Normally you are welcomed as a journalist by the government that is trying to cope with a disaster. They want the world to know, because they want the world to give help.
Yet we are having to hide from the government here. We are having to send our material out while hiding in paddy fields. It’s an absurd situation. So we go into a village but we can’t stay long, because if the army does come round the corner we may be arrested and we may be sent out.
Normally when you cover a natural disaster the roads you are going down are choked with relief effort - with refugees going one way and with aid going the other. The roads we have been going down, straight into the Irrawaddy delta, are empty.
While it is far more critical at this stage for aid to reach those who have been devastated by the cyclone than it is for members of the media to be allowed to enter the country to report on it, we must also remember that it was the images of the devastation from the Indian Ocean Tsunami, coupled with the fact that one of the areas the Tsunami hit an was popular with many western tourists. There was also a lot of western media coverage there as well. Those images along with many stories about western tourists who were devastated by the storm helped bring the story international attention.
Many television news outlets had sent their anchors to the devastated areas to broadcast live.
During that story, much of the media coverage from the Tsunami centered on the damage which occurred in Thailand, which according to the United Nations Inter-Agency Standing Committee there were 5,246 deaths reported. A large part of that might have to do with the fact that of those deaths 2,463 were foreigners, many of them western tourists.
According to those same figures Indonesia and Sri Lanka each suffered a much larger death toll although there were less foreign casualties. Indonesia was the hardest hit with reports of 94,081 deaths, the reported deaths in Sri Lanka were 30,196, more staggering was the fact that according to this same data 850,201 people were left homeless.
In Burma, the number of people displaced by the cyclone could be in the millions. Many foreign aid workers have still not been permitted to enter the country.
There are also U.S. aircraft carriers in the area ready to provide assistance, but they have as of yet been denied permission to enter Burma.
To make matters worse, the Burmese government plans to hold a referrendum despite the level of devastation that has been caused by Cyclone Nargis.
Not only that, the media coverage provided to this disaster while still significant, has been far less than the coverage given to the Indian Ocean Tsunami.
Part of this may be that so few foreign reporters have been allowed into Burma. Anderson Cooper reported last night that he is currently trying to get a VISA to enter Burma but as of yet he has been unsuccessful. Many other foreign reporters have also tried unsuccessfully to get VISAs.
Much of the Burmese Junta’s reluctance to allow the flood of foreign aid workers and reporters into the country could have to do with the fear that they may lose grip on their continued hold on power.
However, as U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack stated:
“While there may be differences with the regime, this is a humanitarian issue. Clearly, there is a substantial humanitarian need here. You have thousands and thousands of people who have been killed by this; many times more than that … have been affected by it [the cyclone]. So there’s a great need and we’re ready to help along with the rest of the international system.”
CNN Digital producer David Reisner brought the story a little closer to home with some sobering facts in a blog post titled “What 100,000 people means…” keep in mind, as stated previously, one report places the casualty toll at 200,000 and growing.
