Latest news with #Myanmar-Thailand
CBC
03-04-2025
- Politics
- CBC
'Weaponization of aid': Myanmar accused of blocking rescue efforts after deadly earthquake
Mere hours after the devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit central Myanmar last Friday, the head of the military junta controlling the country, Min Aung Hlaing, pleaded for any and all international assistance to be sent quickly to the isolated country. Hlaing claimed he had "opened all ways for foreign aid," as he asked for countries and organizations to "come and help" with desperately needed rescue efforts after the quake buckled roads and toppled thousands of buildings, trapping an untold number of people. Nearly a week after the earthquake, the death toll was at 3,145 people, with more than 4,500 people injured and many more still stuck under debris. The actual numbers are expected to be much higher. Hlaing's appeal was an extremely rare move for the military leader, who seized power in a coup that deposed the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in early 2021, and promptly sealed the country off from the rest of the world. The power grab was followed by bloody crackdowns on dissent across the country, and an ongoing civil war. The call for help provided a tiny glimmer of hope among experts on Myanmar's political situation that this disaster might be different from previous ones to hit the country, such as 2023's Cyclone Mocha, when aid efforts were obstructed. WATCH | Crucial rescue window passes after Myanmar-Thailand earthquake: Critical 72-hour rescue deadline passes after earthquake in Myanmar, Thailand 3 days ago Duration 4:51 Rescuers freed four people from collapsed buildings in Myanmar early on Monday, Chinese media reported, as searchers raced to find more survivors in Myanmar and Thailand. But that hope quickly dissipated. Numerous aid organizations and human rights groups confirmed that rapid assistance earmarked for those in Myanmar who needed it most was being blocked, as the "golden" rescue window of 72 hours after a massive earthquake — in which you're most likely to find survivors trapped under the rubble — closed. "It has just turned out to be a disaster," Tom Andrews, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, told CBC News during an interview in Bangkok, Thailand, which also suffered damage more than a thousand kilometres from the quake's epicentre. (A skyscraper under construction collapsed, trapping more than 80 workers. More than a dozen are confirmed dead.) "We know that aid [in Myanmar] has been obstructed. We know there have been arrests and blockades at checkpoints in areas where they don't want aid to go," Andrews said. "There's a weaponization of this aid." 'I've seen this movie before' In the days following the earthquake — the worst the region has seen in a century — the military continued airstrikes and bombings on rebel-held territories. The junta currently controls less than a third of the country, with its power concentrated in the big cities. But on Wednesday, Myanmar's army leaders declared a temporary three-week ceasefire to support relief efforts, after the military government drew widespread condemnation for firing on a Chinese Red Cross convoy trying to deliver food and medicine to survivors. A junta spokesperson confirmed that soldiers shot at the vehicles because, he said, they hadn't been notified the convoy would be arriving. Rescue teams from the junta's allies — including China and Russia — were the first to enter the country to provide assistance, along with crews from countries like India, which has maintained cordial relations with Myanmar's army leaders. The ruling junta has been shunned and sanctioned by most Western countries. According to Andrews, the junta is following a familiar playbook by obstructing crucial aid, particularly in regions where armed resistance to the coup is strong. It's a tactic used in the past to consolidate the army's power in Myanmar. "I've seen this movie before and it doesn't have a happy ending," Andrews said. Pressure on junta He added that the continued airstrikes were also creating "a whole level of fear and terror" across the war-torn country, where some 20 million Burmese were already deprived of proper access to food and shelter before the earthquake hit. "We need all hands on deck in Myanmar. But instead they're being diverted away and instead of lives being saved, they're being taken," Andrews said. The disaster has raised questions about whether the junta will be able to hold onto power as resistance deepens. The earthquake caused extensive damage in the new capital of Naypyidaw, a heavily fortified city created by a previous military general to shore up the army's hold on Myanmar and insulate its leaders from popular dissent. The city's air traffic control tower toppled and several government ministry wings collapsed. One retired school principal told the New York Times that Myanmar has "a saying that a massive earthquake like this is nature's way of punishing a cruel and corrupt ruler." "After killing so many people, Min Aung Hlaing is now facing the judgment of nature," she added. In November, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Hlaing for crimes against humanity, related to the country's persecution and deportations of its Muslim Rohingya community. Desperation grows Six days after the disaster, there was chaos amid the hundreds of collapsed buildings close to the epicentre. Many residents are crowding parks and other open spaces at night, too terrified to enter their partially cracked homes, while others are unable to return to demolished houses. "In Mandalay city, most of us are doing it all by ourselves," said Khin Thazin Aung, 31, unable to fight back the tears as she described local rescue efforts. "We need everything — things like food and shelter. But [our government] cannot help us," she told CBC News, adding that she hoped the world knows how urgently Myanmar needs aid. Many residents are struggling with trauma, said Aung, who said she had seen some survivors shaking uncontrollably, as the smell of bodies trapped under rubble wafted through the air. In the shadow of a major bridge that collapsed in the quake, Tin, who only gave his first name to the Reuters wire service, was combing the river for his daughter's body. "I am searching for her myself, because there are no rescue operations here," he said. "No one is here to help me." Myanmar's military leaders have refused to allow foreign journalists into the country to cover the devastation. Some aid organizations have also had a difficult time entering Myanmar, said Mikhael De Souza, project director for Médecins sans frontières (MSF) in the former capital, Yangon. But he's still hopeful the scale of the devastation, on top of the international spotlight, will sway the junta to let in more aid. "We have teams and a lot of material just waiting to enter the country, and I have good hopes that it will happen very soon," De Souza told CBC News on Thursday. Still, he acknowledged Myanmar is a "difficult, complex country" whose military government has been challenging to negotiate with in the past. Damaged infrastructure is also impeding the speed of rescue and recovery efforts, with the drive from Yangon, the largest city, to Mandalay near the epicentre now taking double the usual eight hours. De Souza said the primary health concern is a lack of electricity and clean water in the disaster zone, with fears that the lack of infection control in damaged hospitals could provoke a cholera epidemic. Monsoon season is also around the corner, which will compound already catastrophic conditions in the central part of the country.
CBC
01-04-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Myanmar earthquake survivors without food and shelter, aid groups say
Social Sharing Aid groups in the worst-hit areas of Myanmar said there was an urgent need for shelter, food and water after an earthquake that killed more than 2,700 people, but said the country's civil war could prevent help reaching those in need. The death toll had reached 2,719 and is expected to rise to more than 3,000, Myanmar's military leader Min Aung Hlaing said in a televised address on Tuesday. He said 4,521 people were injured, and 441 were missing. The 7.7 magnitude quake, which hit around lunchtime on Friday, was the strongest to hit the Southeast Asian country in more than a century, toppling ancient pagodas and modern buildings alike. WATCH | Crews continue search for signs of life in Myanmar, Thailand after earthquake: Crews look for signs of life after Myanmar-Thailand earthquake 9 hours ago Duration 2:16 A crucial window to find survivors of the devastating earthquake in Myanmar and Thailand has closed, but crews continue to search for any signs of life in the rubble as families hope for a miracle. In Myanmar's Mandalay area, 50 children and two teachers were killed when their preschool collapsed, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. "In the hardest-hit areas ... communities struggle to meet their basic needs, such as access to clean water and sanitation, while emergency teams work tirelessly to locate survivors and provide life-saving aid," the UN body said in a report. The International Rescue Committee said shelter, food, water and medical help were all needed in places such as Mandalay, near the epicentre of the quake. "Having lived through the terror of the earthquake, people now fear aftershocks and are sleeping outside on roads or in open fields," an IRC worker in Mandalay said in a report. U.S. reponse hobbled, ex-official says The U.S. State Department on Monday said that a U.S. Agency for International Development team (USAID) was heading to Myanmar to help identify the country's most pressing needs but a former top USAID official said the overall response from Donald Trump's administration response has been hobbled by the huge fund cuts, contractor terminations and plans to fire nearly all staff. The response has been hurt by "a lot of internal confusion about capability to respond and willingness to respond," said Sarah Charles, who headed the agency's humanitarian assistance bureau until February 2024. Speaking at a daily briefing, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce rejected criticism that funding and personnel cuts were impeding USAID's response and said that Washington was working with partners in Myanmar to get help to affected people. Trump, through an initiative led by billionaire adviser Elon Musk, in February began the process of closing USAID and merging its operations into the State Department. Thousands of staff were placed on administrative leave, hundreds of contractors were fired and more than 5,000 programs terminated, disrupting global humanitarian aid efforts on which millions depend. On Friday, the day the earthquake struck Myanmar and Thailand, the administration told Congress that it was firing nearly all remaining USAID personnel and closing its foreign missions. The processes that trigger rapid USAID disaster responses "that were pretty automatic" no longer are, and the "process of getting approval to do things, the process of deploying people, is all being negotiated in real time," said Charles. According to Human Rights Myanmar, an aid group, the U.S. accounted for a quarter of all aid to Myanmar before Trump was inaugurated, and U.S. assistance was seen as crucial for the Rohingya refugees who fled the country and languish in camps in Thailand and Bangladesh. Military rule a complicating factor The civil war in Myanmar, where the junta seized power in a coup in 2021, has complicated efforts to reach those injured and made homeless by the Southeast Asian nation's biggest quake in a century. Amnesty International said the junta needed to allow aid to reach areas of the country not under its control. Rebel groups say the junta has conducted airstrikes after the quake. "Myanmar's military has a longstanding practice of denying aid to areas where groups who resist it are active," Amnesty's Myanmar researcher Joe Freeman said. "It must immediately allow unimpeded access to all humanitarian organizations and remove administrative barriers delaying needs assessments." The junta's tight control over communication networks and the damage to roads, bridges and other infrastructure caused by the quakes have intensified the challenges for aid workers. Thai officials said a meeting of regional leaders in Bangkok later this week would go ahead as planned, although the junta's leader may attend by teleconference. Before the quake struck, sources said the junta chief had been expected to make a rare foreign trip to attend the summit in Bangkok on April 3-4. Hopes dim at collapsed Thai building In neighbouring Thailand, rescuers were still scouring the ruins of an unfinished skyscraper that collapsed for any signs of life, but aware that as four days had passed since the quake, the odds of finding survivors lengthened. "There are about 70 bodies underneath ... and we hope by some miracle one or two are still alive," volunteer rescue leader Bin Bunluerit said at the building site. Bangkok Deputy Kamolvej said six human-shaped figures had been detected by scanners, but there was no movement or vital signs. Local and international experts were now working out how to safely reach them, she said. Search and rescue efforts continued at the site, as family and friends said they feared the worst. "The rescue teams are doing their best. I can see that," said 19-year-old Artithap Lalod, who was waiting for news of his brother. "However it turns out, that's how it has to be. We just have to accept that things will be the way they are," he said.
Yahoo
30-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Desperate search for survivors continues in Bangkok high-rise collapse from 7.7 quake
A desperate search for survivors continued Sunday -- from a collapsed high-rise building that was under construction in Bangkok, Thailand, to the rubble of ancient buildings in neighboring Myanmar -- as a series of powerful aftershocks from Friday's 7.7-magnitude earthquake made it precarious for rescuers digging through debris, officials said. The death toll in the Bangkok metropolitan region rose to 18 on Sunday, according to government officials. In Myanmar, the epicenter of Friday's earthquake, at least 1,644 people were dead and another 139 were officially missing. At least 3,408 people were injured in Myanmar alone, officials said. The number of deaths across the devastated region is expected to rise, officials said. MORE: Myanmar-Thailand earthquake live updates: Death toll climbs amid aftershocks In the Bangkok metropolitan area, home to more than 17.4 million people, search-and-rescue workers were focused on a collapsed high-rise building in the Chatuchak district of Bangkok. At least 11 people, believed to all be construction workers, have been confirmed dead and another 78 people remain missing in the rubble of the 34-story Sky Villa condominium, according to the Bangkok Metropolitan administration. More than 30 people were injured when floors of the building that was under construction began to pancake on top of each other around 1:30 p.m. local time on Friday, trapping construction workers in the debris and creating a large dust cloud that enveloped the area, officials said. The building collapsed about half an hour after the powerful earthquake, centered in Myanmar, struck. Family members of the missing construction workers gathered near the collapsed building as search-and-rescue crews dug through the pile of debris by hand, racing against time in a search for survivors. One brother and sister told ABC News their parents were among the workers who were in the building at the time of the collapse and are now among those unaccounted for. MORE: PHOTOS: See the destruction in Myanmar, Thailand from 7.7 magnitude earthquake American tourists Garret Briere and his wife told ABC News they never could have imagined that their first vacation to Thailand would end up being one of the most terrifying experiences of their lives. The couple from Washington state was in the mall across the street from the Sky Villa construction site when the massive earthquake hit. Briere said he watched in horror as the building fell in the quake's aftermath and described panicked people running for their lives away from the structure. Briere said a huge dust cloud enveloped the area. "We ran out of the building because it started shaking," Briere said. "I grabbed my wife's hand and I said, 'Don't let go.' Immediately, we were just covered in dust and debris, and we couldn't see, and there were thousands of people just in a panic." MORE: Video 'Everything started shaking': Earthquake eyewitness It took just several seconds for the entire building to be reduced to a 7-story-high pile of rubble, the couple said. The epicenter of the earthquake was in Mandalay, Myanmar, the country's second-largest city. Bangkok is about 600 miles from the epicenter. A series of aftershocks continued to shake the region Sunday. A 5.1 magnitude aftershock struck about 17 miles north of Mandalay on Sunday afternoon, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The USGS also recorded another strong aftershock as a 4.2 magnitude quake struck near Shwebo, which is about 68 miles northwest of Mandalay, earlier on Sunday. Several videos emerged Sunday showing rescuers pulling survivors from the rubble in Myanmar. The Myanmar Fire Services Department released a video overnight showing rescuers pulling a woman alive from a collapsed building. People could be heard cheering in the background as the woman was taken to medics for treatment. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted Friday about the potential U.S. response to the earthquake. "My prayers go out to the people of Burma and Thailand who are impacted by the earthquake," Rubio wrote in a social media post. "We've been in contact with these countries and, as @POTUS said, stand ready to provide assistance." Rubio also confirmed the State Department's teams in the affected countries were "safe and secure." The U.S. Embassy in Myanmar has suspended nonemergency consular services for the time being. The U.S. mission to Thailand has not reported any disruption in services. ABC News' Karson Yiu, Gamay Palacios and Preechaya Rassadanukul contributed to this report. Desperate search for survivors continues in Bangkok high-rise collapse from 7.7 quake originally appeared on
