In my long UN career, I worked in places that will go down in history as emblems of man’s inhumanity to man, where mass killings were a regular occurrence - the Balkans during the war in the early 1990s, Gaza, the West Bank and Syria from 2006 to 2020.

The press release about the recent visit to Myanmar by OCHA’s boss, Martin Griffiths, is proof positive of the UN’s institutional amnesia.

Aid deliveries dominated the agenda, rather than the humanitarian disaster being inflicted by the junta.

In its account of Mr Griffith’s meeting with coup leader, Min Aung Hlaing, it says in addition to the ‘need for expanded access’, Mr Griffiths raised ‘protection risks facing civilians’.

This is perhaps the only reference to the gravest threat facing the people of Myanmar – the military. Reading this release, you might not have guessed that since the coup in February 2021, security forces have killed nearly 4,000 people and arrested over 24,000, according to the most conservative estimates, nor that massacres, mass arson attacks and indiscriminate aerial bombardments against civilians are a near daily occurrence.

So what must the international community do?

Put the people of Myanmar front and centre. Their immediate needs mut be met, but they want their rights, full political rights not just UN handouts. Aid is not a replacement for justice and dignity.

  • livus@kbin.socialOP
    3·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for caring and commenting. Yes, I think the aerial bombardments of civillians in particular should be covered better.

    There’s a western news story doing the rounds right now about Chinese investment in Myanmar, which is all very well except when I looked up direct foreign investment in Myanmar I saw it is still coming into Myanmar from a bunch of countries like Singapore, Japan, even Switzerland, the UK and US.