Seven days after an earthquake devastated Turkey in 2023, French volunteers used a suitcase-size radar to locate a survivor under the rubble. It was one of many lives the device helped save in the aftermath of the disaster.
The group also rushed volunteers to Myanmar after a powerful earthquake last month leveled buildings, bridge and centuries-old temples. But the volunteers were stuck at immigration control at the airport in Yangon for more than a day. They finally entered the country last Wednesday, only to have the authorities declare search and rescue operations ending the next day. The volunteers returned home without finding a single survivor.
Myanmar’s military government surprised many observers when it called for international assistance in response to the March 28 earthquake. It also declared a cease-fire against rebels in a civil war that has consumed the nation.
But less than two weeks after the calamity hit, aid groups and volunteers said, international relief is not reaching Myanmar’s beleaguered public as fast as it could. They blame the junta for delays and restrictions on distributing aid. Others cite a climate of fear — the military has resumed airstrikes on rebel areas despite the cease-fire and on at least one occasion fired on aid workers.
“Nothing was reasonable on the ground,” said Sezer Ozgan, a volunteer with the French nonprofit L’Espoir du peuple A.R.S.I.
Already ravaged by war, Myanmar continues to reel from the earthquake, which people have been calling “earth’s anger.” The official death toll has surpassed 3,500 and many more have been injured. But the full extent of the devastation remains hard to assess because of damaged roads and toppled phone towers.
Many rendered homeless and those too scared to return to their damaged houses are sleeping in the open. They are being rattled by regular aftershocks in the suffocating pre-monsoon heat, and have to line up for daily rations provided by local aid groups.
One reason for the delay in bringing in aid is that the government itself is in disarray, with many buildings in the capital, Naypyidaw, damaged.
But the military’s announcement that all assistance would be coordinated by it has left aid groups jittery. Relief organizations have long been subject to a fickle process of obtaining travel authorizations.
A year after seizing power in 2021, the junta almost entirely drained a disaster management fund by redirecting it for agriculture initiatives.
When Cyclone Nargis killed more than 130,000 people in 2008, an earlier coterie of ruling generals blocked emergency aid and infamously told aid groups that the survivors did not need their “chocolate bars” and could instead survive on “frogs and fish from ditches.”
Ruled by one brutal military regime after another for decades, the people of Myanmar are quick to support one another. But for local volunteers, fear hangs in the air as much as grief.
Phoe Thar, a volunteer rescue worker in Mandalay, said he was working less at night after hearing that an acquaintance had been forcibly drafted by the military. “We want to help more,” he said, “but fear is holding us back.”
Equality Myanmar, a human rights organization, said it had tracked almost 100 cases of forced conscription since the earthquake, calling the disaster an opportunity for the military to recruit troops.
Kiran Verma, a volunteer from India, said he was delayed for hours with local volunteers at a military checkpoint the day after the earthquake. He said he left after three days in the quake zone, feeling “scared.”
“I thought they would be welcoming anyone coming to rescue their people,” Mr. Verma, 40, said.
To some critics, the military itself could be doing more to help.
Ko Min Htet, a volunteer in Mandalay, said he had seen only few soldiers clearing bricks from public buildings. They should focus instead on helping people, he said: “Some soldiers and police sit at damaged sites, scrolling on their phones.”
Some would-be volunteers are afraid to return to cities like Mandalay and Yangon, which suffered the worst of the earthquake.
“We’re longing to be on the ground, to offer whatever help we can,” said Min Han, a physician who fled to rebel held territory after the coup, refusing to work as a civil servant under the junta. “But returning now would be like walking straight into a trap — we could be arrested or killed.”
The junta’s motives are clear, said Richard Horsey, an analyst with the International Crisis Group.
“Their first priority is regime survival,” he said. “not the well-being of the country and its people.” At the same time, he said, the junta’s response to the earthquake is marked by “chaos rather than malice.”
Lynn Maung was sheltering in a tent with his three children near the moat of the historic Mandalay Palace. On Saturday, he was taken by surprise when torrential rains and winds swept the tent away. There had been no weather warning.
“We can’t predict earthquakes, but we can predict rainfall,” he said. “The way the military junta is handling things is like trying to treat a cancer patient with castor oil.”
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