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Myanmar junta stops Christian-Buddhist cyclone aid

As Christians cooperate with Buddhists to bring much-needed aid to the most badly hit victims of the May cyclone disaster, the ruling junta in Myanmar is clamping down on such inter-religious collaboration on fears that it would arouse popular revolts, an insider source told AsiaNews.

Even though four months have passed since the disaster, there are still families in Yangon that are eking out a survival ‘without any certain access’ to basic necessities such as food and water, and help offered by Christians and Buddhists is ‘fundamental’ to them.

But the government, ‘afraid of this joint commitment’ because it could foster other ‘popular revolts that might overthrow the ruling dictatorship’ is stopping them and increasing controls across the country including churches, temples, streets and even transportation.

The source says that the government has even used refugees, sheltered in centres set up by the churches, to rebuild roads and structures damaged by the cyclone.

In spite of the urgency of the situation, the government ‘prefers to arrest volunteers and send out spies and policemen to every corner of the country. We have many cases in which aid was not handed out or was sent back to the sender only because it came from the international community.’

The rulers seized supplies ‘without distributing directly to the population.’ People are told to ‘earn their daily meal by working for the dictatorship’ and are given ‘a bowl of rice’ as ‘the puny reward they get in exchange for it.’

Their justification? The junta says that the aid is ‘just a Western pretext to undermine its power’.

Sensitivities have also risen with the bloody repression of the monks’ revolt in September 2007, the growing economic crisis and the possible observance of the 20th anniversary of the massacre of pro-democracy activists on August 8, 1988, worsening the ‘military’s obsession with security’ and leading them to snuff out any voice that opposes the regime.

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