The UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar Mr Tom Andrews sat down recently for an exclusive interview with Mizzima to discuss the Myanmar crisis and the challenges of delivering aid to a “skyrocketing” number of people in need.
Mizzima: Can you tell us about the areas in Myanmar facing humanitarian crisis and which areas are most in need?
They are immense, right across the board. People are starving, the level of malnutrition has steadily increased. There are 18.6 million people who we know are in dire need of humanitarian aid right now. That compares with 1 million in need of humanitarian aid before the coup. Think about that – 18.6 million versus 1 million. We know what is driving this humanitarian aid crisis, and so we need to do two things. We need to address this massive need by getting the attention of the international community and letting them see and hear how life and death the situation is, and then we have to address what is driving this humanitarian aid need, and that is this military junta and their assaults on the people of Myanmar that continue unabated.
So it is two pronged, we need to address this escalation of humanitarian need, 18.6 million and skyrocketing, and we need to address the source of this, what is driving this great suffering in Myanmar. Mizzima: Currently ASEAN is dealing with the military junta and delivering aid through the Myanmar Red Cross, but that aid is not going to the areas of ethnic resistance. So, what would be the solution? Well, I draw an analogy. If you are a physician and you have a patient who is sick, the first principle is to follow the hypocritic oath which is to do no harm, so do nothing in the name of help that is actually going to hurt, that is going to harm. And I think that the … I am deeply concerned by putting aid in the hands of the military junta that is responsible for these atrocities. The likelihood of that aid being weaponized is great. This idea of the junta continuing to try to legitimize itself creates this impression of what they don’t have is real legitimacy by manipulating this aid and this requirement for MoUs and other documents, both of those are very dangerous and they, I believe, are not helpful. I think what we have to do is, as any good physician would seek to do is not only address the symptoms, and alleviate the symptoms, but cure the disease and the disease is the living hell is what the military junta of Myanmar is causing for the people of Myanmar. That’s what we have to cure.
So how do we deal with the enormous human suffering, go to where it is, directed towards those with the greatest capacity to deliver that aid that are accountable to the people to whom they are delivering that aid. And that we are rapidly expanding areas that are in these conflict zones, and rapidly expanding needs, and that is what I think we need to be focusing on, energy and attention.
Mizzima: When it comes to the international community, the United Nations is transferring the responsibility to ASEAN which has the ASEAN Five-Point Consensus that humanitarian aid is going through. Actually this Five-Point Consensus is not really working well, so in that sense, where is the international community?
Well I think the … first of all, ASEAN nations and Thailand is particular have a great deal of stake in what is going on inside of the country, and from the perspective of the number of people who are seeking to get out of the country because of this humanitarian crisis, now the wave of young people that are likely to come because of this (military) conscription, the increased suffering that will be caused by that, young people who are needed by families, particularly rural families, to provide, them leaving. So that’s a huge problem for Thailand, for the region, and the international community. But look at these scam centers, these massive criminal enterprises that are in Myanmar, that are allowed to exist, allowed to pray on people, not just in this region – 40 countries in the world – we are talking about thousands and thousands of people who are being trafficked into these centers, scamming people from all over the world, making billions and billions of dollars. This is a huge problem and this is another reason why this crisis inside Myanmar is not just a Myanmar crisis, it’s a regional crisis, but even beyond the region.
And I will tell you something else. The United States Justice Department released findings, they just released a report not too long ago of a sting operation that they engaged and they found these criminals were selling uranium and yellow-cake plutonium – materials that are used to build nuclear weapons – and they were trying to sell this. The sting operation worked, they caught the bad guys, but the fact is those materials used to produce a nuclear weapon came from Myanmar.
So, we are talking about something – of course the people of Myanmar are suffering the most – but this has great regional implications, has great international implications, and we are all at risk, no matter where we live by this lawlessness that continues to run apace and run amuck inside the country.