Statement on the catastrophes in Burma & China

//REVOLUTION International Council// 2008-05-21

After the devastating earthquake that rocked China on 12th May, the official figures show 19,500 dead and the real toll could be as much as 50,000, while the search for trapped people continues. The government is mobilising 30,000 extra troops to Sichuan province, which was hit worst, to help the 50,000 already searching. But relatives of those missing are also taking the search into their own hands – including parents at Juyuan Middle School about 50km from quake’s epicentre, where around 900 children were in the rubble.

In total around 10 million people have been affected. Many are now in refugee camps, without proper shelter, food or clean water. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies have issued an emergency appeal for medical help, food, water and tents and the scale of the crisis means China is having to accept help from Japan and even her rival, Taiwan.

This follows closely from a cyclone in Burma on 3rd May with even more dramatic effects - up to 2.5 million dead with an official toll of almost 38,500. Despite the general reluctance of the military dictatorship to allow outside aid workers into the country, they have been persuaded to accept 160 by international pressure - such as the UN’s proposal to send an envoy who will try and persuade the military rulers to accept aid. Until now, the government has delayed granting visas for relief workers and aid agencies continue to criticise the military regime for not properly distributing supplies and blocking access to worst affected regions such as the Rangoon province.

The position of the Burmese junta is fundamentally that they can handle the crisis alone, without outside help. But Burma’s own vast police and army have themselves been absent from disaster areas, such as Yangoon city in Rangoon where the water is knee high and drinking water, electricity and telephones have all been cut off. The crisis could spread throughout the country: if farmers cannot return to the fields in the next three months, before the monsoon season.

The local bourgeoisie and middle class have also shown how little they care for the plight of ordinary people, as businesses of all sizes increased prices of essential goods by 200% to 400% just after the cyclone. We can have no faith in these forces, or their representative Aung Sun Suu Kyi, to resolve Burma’s crisis. Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), far from being concerned with the plight of the poor, would revoke one of the only measures of the current government that helps them, namely subsidisation of petrol and oil.

The NLD is in a worse position after the referendum held on 10th May: military rulers claim it approved their new proposed constitution to entrench military power by 92.4% on a 99% turnout. The vote was taken in 2/3 of the country and postponed to 24th May in the areas worst hit by the cyclone.

Human Rights Watch said the result was “an insult to the people of Burma” who would not have voted overwhelmingly to support a document that they hadn’t even been given a chance to read. Additionally, given the mass protests against the Junta in October last year and the vicious and bloody way the government suppressed them, it is obviously very unpopular so that the supposed result is certainly a fraud. Nonetheless, it will make it easier for the government to continue to stall relief efforts, as it can claim it has popular support.

This obstruction to relief efforts must clearly be condemned for the huge suffering it is causing and because it is clearly aimed at shielding the Junta from outside criticism. But we must also criticise the Western governments’ use of the cyclone to try and force Burmese junta to “open up” - in truth, not just to aid but also to investment and foreign capital. In contrast, China - a significant trading partner for the imperialists - is praised for being efficient and open, although it is not actually allowing in foreign aid workers either.

There is also some hypocrisy in the huge focus on Burma, which in actual fact is not by any means the only country where relief efforts are prevented getting through by regime. The same very often happens in the imperialists’ very own puppet states, Iraq and Afghanistan, but we hear very little in the mainstream media about the ongoing tragedy there. Nor is as much attention given to Gaza, where the siege that has intensified since November 2007 means that not only aid workers but also all food, fuel and medical essentials are prevented from entering the country. This is caused by the imperialists’ own ally, Israel, and could be instantly stopped by the US which provides massive funding to Israel.

While supporting outside relief efforts in disaster zones like Burma and China, we must unequivocally demand that aid is without “strings” such as privatisation of public services. We also need to learn the lessons from previous disaster relief efforts such as that following the horrific Tsunami of 2004, in which huge amounts of funding were lost to corruption. To prevent this occurring again, trade unions, workers’ and peasants’ organisations should from emergency action committees. All relief funding and resources, as well as disaster warning systems, should be under the democratic control of these committees - not the local bourgeoisie and landowners or the state, which have little concern for the awful plight of the workers and poor.

Likewise, workers’ and peasants’ organisation should aim to play a role in the rebuilding of devastated areas (houses and infrastructure etc). It is very clear that the effects of natural disasters strikes double as hard against the poor as a result of the lack of for example properly built housing that lacks the quality to withstand great storms, tsunamis, earthquakes etc. An independent investigation should be carried out by the workers’ and peasants’ movement as to find out where responsibility for insecure buildings lays. Workers’ and peasants’ organisations also need to put demands on the necessary resources for rebuilding in a way which minimises the effects of future disasters, which is often made worse by the massive inequalities caused by capitalist globalisation. Such resources should be made available through taxing the multinational corporations and the rich.

Not all “natural” disasters are entirely natural – many, particularly cyclones and hurricanes, are in large part due to climate change wreaking havoc in weather systems, and will therefore become increasingly frequent and intense as the global temperature continues to rise. Therefore, to protect the world’s most vulnerable people from the effects of these disasters, it is essential to build a mass movement of workers and poor to demand radical measures to stop and reverse climate change.
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