No time to sit back
May 15th 2008
From The Economist print edition
China has shown up Myanmar's generals. But it is not too late for outsiders to help the Burmese
Eyevine
IT HAS taken another catastrophe, this one in China, to show the generals who run Myanmar how better to respond to a natural disaster. Ten days after a cyclone struck Myanmar (formerly Burma) on May 2nd, the xenophobic junta there had managed to ensure that aid from abroad was still only trickling in and most of what had arrived was not being distributed to those who needed it. The United Nations' estimates for the dead and vulnerable were rising dramatically. It was then that a devastating earthquake struck western China. President Hu Jintao at once mobilised soldiers and other workers in an all-out rescue effort. The prime minister, Wen Jiabao, arrived in the region within a few hours, making no attempt to play down this “severe disaster” and saying China would gratefully accept international help (see article). The contrast with Myanmar was telling.
So was the contrast with the China of 1976, when an even deadlier earthquake struck the city of Tangshan. The full awfulness of that event—at least 250,000 people died—was not revealed for months, and offers of foreign help were spurned.
China's rulers are still proud and sometimes prickly, but for reasons good and bad they have changed. They got a nasty shock, for instance, in 2003 when an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, showed how a virulent new plague, if uncontained, might impose huge costs on a modernising economy. This taught them that burying bad news is not always sensible. A fierce freeze-up this January showed how the weather could also bring paralysis, less economically damaging perhaps but awkward all the same over a great national holiday. This showed them the merits of occasionally admitting imperfection, and even of offering a prime-ministerial apology. Since then they have learnt that beating up their Tibetan citizens may not be wise just as they are trying to impress the world with an Olympic extravaganza.
Such lessons have helped China respond more openly to the country's latest natural disaster. But no similar enlightenment is in store in Myanmar, certainly not soon enough to save the 2m people whose lives may be at risk if they do not receive more help. These people might be surprised to learn that in 2005 a World Summit of the UN endorsed the principle of an international responsibility to protect oppressed people from their persecutors (see article). True, any action taken would require Security Council approval and, true, the principle was adopted with armed oppression in mind. But “crimes against humanity” were specified and, if, say, a third of the 2m now struggling to survive in Myanmar were to die in the coming weeks from hunger and disease because their government refused outside help, that surely would be such a crime.
It would certainly be a stain on the world's conscience, one indeed to rival the genocide in Rwanda, which claimed 700,000 lives. So what can be done? Legally, probably nothing. China and Russia would veto any resolution in the Security Council. Politically, too, any action that defied the generals would be controversial. Myanmar's neighbours are too morally insensible even to rebuke it in the councils of the Association of South-East Asian Nations. So the main task would probably fall to America, France and Britain, the only powers with ships nearby and able to act quickly in defiance of the generals.
As for the practicality of any action, that too is fraught. Unless, heaven forfend, an attempt were made to take over the administration of Myanmar, which would involve an armed invasion, the action would be confined to air drops. One difficulty is that the aircraft doing the dropping might be fired on unless they had military escorts, and that might lead to more fighting than anyone should want to see in a disaster zone. Another difficulty is that the effort to get food and medicines to people without the generals' consent might provoke them to halt even the pathetic flow of aid they are letting in.
Let them eat words?
Still, unless the generals relent, the attempt is worth making, because air drops might still save some lives, even though many are doomed. The first step should be a resolution in the Security Council. A veto would rob the action of strict legality, but paradoxically, by exposing the cynicism of the junta's apologists, help to gain it legitimacy. Then the drops should start.
More storms are forecast for Myanmar. If thousands more people are to die in the coming weeks, let those who oppose any action now, however modest its effect, then explain why they favoured a policy of doing nothing. And let them try to describe the circumstances in which the new-found responsibility to protect might actually be invoked if it is not just to join the UN's scrapheap of dashed expectations, broken promises and dismal betrayals.
[ 本帖最后由 qxy8329 于 2008-5-19 17:03 编辑 ] |
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看得我好累哦！不过总得支持一下~~