When a magnitude 7.1 earthquake decimated China’s Sichuan region, the Chinese government swiftly realized they had a major humanitarian disaster on their hands and were quick to let in foreign aid and also channeled their own resources to try and help their own people.
The Chinese government isn’t exactly thought of as having the best track-record on human rights issues but at least they were quick to admit that they had a problem and weren’t too proud or too scared to accept foreign aid. Whether this has to do with them wanting to look good for the upcoming Beijing Olympics really doesn’t matter, the bottom line is that they didn’t stand in the way of aid being delivered to their own people.
The Sichuan region of course isn’t out of the woods yet as the earthquake created such severe landslides that there is a serious risk of wide scale flooding caused by burst dams putting many more people at risk.
The situation in Burma however, is quite different although now more than three weeks later, they are finally starting to allow foreign aid workers into the Irrawaddy Delta the ruling military junta still shows little concern for its own citizens affected by the disaster. They also extended the house arrest of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Let’s hope that some of this aid reaches some of the people who need it most, but as this article suggests, a lot of Burmese people are used to going it alone, and many have never heard of foreign aid and are too proud to beg.
The Burmese government for its part are content to force people to dismantle their roadside huts built out of scraps and garbage and post signs warning people who have just lost everything “Don’t throw food on the roads. It ruins the people’s good habits.”
