Despite repeated requests from the United Nations (UN) and cooperating civil society groups, the Myanmar junta has barred the international organisation from delivering emergency aid to areas affected by Cyclone Mocha.
Col Kyaw Thura, the Rakhine State minister of security and border affairs for the military council, announced on June 8 that an official revocation of local civil society and international organisations’ access to those areas had gone into effect the day before.
The ban was issued in the face of UN agencies’ and other organisations’ repeated pleas to the junta to allow them to supply urgently needed aid to natural disaster victims.
With heavy rain, tidal surges, and winds exceeding 130mph as it made landfall, Cyclone Mocha battered towns, villages, and displaced people’s settlements in Rakhine and Chin states, Magway Region, and other parts of Myanmar for three days in mid-May.
The storm may have resulted in hundreds of deaths, of which nearly 150 are confirmed. It directly impacted millions of people’s livelihoods, leaving close to 1.6 million in Myanmar in need of humanitarian assistance, according to a statement released by the UN earlier this month.
A source connected with multiple international humanitarian groups said that the order to impose the ban against the UN and cooperating organisations came directly from the military council in Naypyitaw, which had allowed the same organisations partial access after the storm in May.
“They revoked the travel authorisation permits, which have to be renewed monthly. It’s all about politics, of course. They did it to corner the Arakan Army,” the source claimed, referring to a Rakhine ethnic armed organisation that has been observing an informal truce with the military since last year.
The ban coincided with the premature end of talks between the Three Brotherhood Alliance—of which the Arakan Army (AA) is a member—and military council officials in Mongla, northern Shan State, reportedly convened under the sponsorship of the Chinese government.
Starting on June 1 and initially scheduled to run for three days, the meeting ended abruptly on the second day as fighting resumed in other parts of Shan State between junta forces and another member of the Three Brotherhood Alliance, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA).
Neither the military council nor any of the three member organisations of the alliance—the AA, the MNDAA, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA)—has made any public statements addressing the reasons for ending the talks ahead of schedule.
In a statement made during the meeting, however, AA spokesperson Khaing Thukha highlighted the issue of providing timely humanitarian aid to the victims of the cyclone in Rakhine State.
Khaing Thukha also responded to the junta spokesperson Gen Zaw Min Tun’s claim that the outcome of the first day of talks was “positive,” saying this would depend on the junta’s actions.
“It will be decided based on how the military acts after the meeting. It is still too early to guess,” he said.
The AA itself mounted a preventive rescue operation in Rakhine State, moving most of the residents of a Rathedaung Township village out of harm’s way before the storm hit.
According to a June 2 report by the UN, the prevention of health complications and malnutrition for Cyclone Mocha’s victims would only be possible if the military allowed aid workers to visit the people in Rakhine State most severely impacted by the storm.
According to Titon Mitra, the resident representative of the UN Development Programme in Myanmar, the storm had almost completely depleted the victims’ food supplies.
Making an urgent appeal for the “depoliticisation and the demilitarisation” of humanitarian aid, the UN official warned that the people of Rakhine State would face mounting difficulties in affording and accessing food without an effective response from the UN and other organisations.
After Cyclone Nargis, a storm that brought unprecedented destruction to Myanmar in May 2008, the previous military dictatorship also drew criticism for its general response to the victims’ needs, which included impeding the provision of foreign aid.
With more than 100,000 dead or missing after Cyclone Nargis, the regime had proceeded with plans to hold a constitutional referendum the same month, only postponing the vote by two weeks in selected townships.
According to a Rakhine State resident who spoke with Myanmar Now on June 9, the process of reconstruction and rehabilitation in Sittwe, the Rakhine State capital, and surrounding areas is far from complete.
“Local people are having a really hard time. The rehabilitation process is still unfinished in the urban parts of Sittwe Township, so it’s even worse for rural areas. All the bamboo plants were blown away by the storm and it’s even become hard to find the materials to put up a shelter,” the Rakhine State resident said.
He added that the military council had not only banned the humanitarian organisations from coming to storm-affected areas, but also sent additional troops to Rakhine State.
“Everyone’s afraid fighting will break out. They’re sending reinforcement convoys bigger than we’ve seen before. They’re also going to areas they didn’t used to patrol in their trucks,” he said.
According to a May 17 statement issued by the military council, a total of 148 people were killed in Cyclone Mocha. Most of the fatalities were Rohingya people staying in internally displaced persons’ camps in Rakhine State’s Sittwe and Rathedaung townships.
