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Tuesday, July 8, 2008 |
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20°C
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20°C
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46%
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Hyperdisaster |
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Written by -- Associate news editor Rodney Venis
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Wednesday, 14 May 2008 |
To paraphrase, Winston Churchill, what's happening in Burma is a horror wrapped in an outrage inside a calamity.
It's a hyperdisaster, what UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon might describe as a "cascade of related crises." Cascade in particular does a nice job describing the suddenness, scale, volume and momentum of cyclone Nargis and its suite of consequences. The word fails, however, to convey the symphonic elegance of how each piece of the tragedy is working in harmony with the whole.
It's the perfect hard-news story -- rich in detail, body count; gradually developing; and with easy themes (villainous junta against a caring Western international community). At first, it seemed so ordinary -- a random natural disaster in a reasonably interesting corner of the world, with a few hundred deaths and few thousand displaced. Normally, it's the kind of tale back pages are built on, with a colour picture of suffering as its anchor and a gaudy number in the headline.
Such stories are supposed to have a limited shelf life. But then the death toll started rising -- from the hundreds to the thousands to the tens of thousands. Then it became clear the dead were the lucky ones. After all, it's one thing to be engulfed in a tidal wave; it's quite another to die of thirst and neglect surrounded by floodwaters, waiting for help that never comes.
Now, more than a week after cyclone Nargis hit Burma with the force of a category four hurricane, it's becoming more apparent that the storm isn't drawing its strength from wind or water but the sheer force of the absurd.
The junta that rules what it calls Myanmar is trying to steal every dollar of aid it can while keeping every foreigner out. The international community is caught trying to help the people of Burma today without inadvertently funding a regime that will cause them even more suffering tomorrow.
So, for days, there were negotiations, diplomacy, red tape, customs to clear, visas to secure and generals to placate. Then, just when it looked like help would start to flow, the first boat carrying fresh water and food to the area sank.
The irony of politics, greed and corruption being more deadly than the storm itself apparently wasn't enough; the fates had to inject a little slapstick as well.
It's ridiculous, really. We've constructed a world where we can't really help each other even when we want to.
-- Associate news editor Rodney Venis
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 14 May 2008 )
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