Within a week of the cyclone, a coalition of local religious
leaders, ethnic minority groups, student unions, labor organizers, and artists
distributed aid to some 4,000 victims and quickly expanded ongoing relief to
over 70,000 people. The volunteers described the junta’s attempt to intensify
its control of aid handouts, confiscating supplies and cutting off access to
the devastated southern Delta region. International aid groups may be easy
marks, but local volunteers and civic groups have also been targeted. FPB has received ongoing reports of interference
by military personnel and police. Outside one of the makeshift refugee camps in
Rangoon’s
satellite communities, “a soldier informed us that we could not give supplies
to the shelter, and should instead give the money and food to a local
government official,” a local volunteer said in a statement released last month
by the FPB. In another instance, an armed official confiscated the notebooks of
local volunteers who were trying to create a census of the dead, Jones says.
In response, the ad hoc coalition has continued aid delivery
under the cover of night--at times quite literally. On Saturday, May 10, one
team attempted to bring clean water and medical supplies to a small hospital in
one of the devastated towns beyond Rangoon.
(The organizers declined to specify the exact location.) The hospital, one of
the few operating in the region, had victims with broken bones and
gangrenous-looking wounds waiting in a line that stretched past the doors. None
had received treatment within in a week’s time. The medical director tried to
hurry the volunteers away, saying “You can’t do it right now, you can’t do it
right now or they will take it away--please come back after dark,” the group
reported. Later that evening, the volunteers snuck back into the hospital to
drop off the supplies.
Burma’s
civic groups and community leaders have spent years learning how to maneuver around
such crushing restraints. “They have faced controls on their movements, on
goods and money, on their general freedom for so long, they have learned how to
rely on some of these backdoor and relationship systems,” said Jones. “They
know how to get things done in this environment.” Because most foreign aid
workers still face visa blockades and are prohibited from entering the
hardest-hit regions, the coalition has recruited local doctors and nurses to
tend to victims. Only a modest flow of aid from abroad has been allowed into
the country, so the volunteers rely on well-connected businessmen to procure
chlorine tablets and temporary toilets from local suppliers. Low-level military
officers helped secure access to the Irrawaddy Delta, the epicenter of the
disaster. And the civic groups have turned to blogs and fundraising
newsletters to convince potential donors that their contributions won’t go
straight into the hands of the junta.
Given the magnitude of the devastation, however, even the
most enterprising and resourceful grassroots efforts can only go so far. By the
government’s count, 134,000 people have died or are missing, and the U.N. says
that 2.5 million are still in need of aid. The logistical hurdles of reaching
the entire Delta region are beyond the scope of any small-scale operation. But
though their reach may be limited, the ability of civic groups to persist with
their work is evidence that the junta’s control is less than total, according
to Bridget Welsh, a Southeast Asia expert at Johns Hopkins
University. “The fact
that they let them have a space, that they have let people act, shows that
[officials] on the ground believe the military is not capable of addressing the
issues,” She says. Such cooperation between local officials and organizers
“serves to build trust and networks that bridge divides in the community that
the military foster to hold onto power.”
In the long run, these kinds of internal networks and
linkages are key to any hope for a more open society. As Joshua Kurlantzick argued
on this site, neither popular revolt nor international condemnation has led the
junta to budge in the past. Over the past month, the generals have acted true
to form, limiting foreign aid for fear that “destructive elements” will undermine
their grip on the state. By working outside of official channels to deliver
humanitarian relief, domestic civic groups have created unlikely alliances
within Burma’s highly militarized and stratified society: between monks and low-level
officials, Delta villagers and city residents, community organizers and
military cronies. However precarious these relationships, their potential
impact should not be discounted. For ultimately, some analysts say, the
catalyst for long-term reform will have to come from within the regime’s ruling
cadre itself--prompted not only by internal discontent among officers, but also
by sympathy for other factions of Burmese society. “The military’s mid-level
officers would need to see that people are all are suffering, the same as them,”
says U Win Min, a Burmese exile and political analyst based in Thailand.
