Where the propeller meets the water

After all, there are no roads left for tires to carry relief to some devastated regions of Burma. Death estimates are around 100,000 and probably higher. The toll will go higher until people are rescued, treated and fed.

Local aid workers started distributing water purification tablets, mosquito nets, plastic sheeting and basic medical supplies.

But heavily flooded areas were accessible only by boat, with helicopters unable to deliver relief supplies there, said Richard Horsey, Bangkok-based spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid.

“Most urgent need is food and water,” said Andrew Kirkwood, head of Save the Children in Yangon. “Many people are getting sick. The whole place is under salt water and there is nothing to drink. They can’t use tablets to purify salt water,” he said…

Local aid groups were distributing rice porridge, which people were collecting in dirty plastic shopping bags. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared getting into trouble with authorities for talking to a foreign news agency.

They are in a massive humanitarian crisis, and people are not allowed to talk about it. The world is loading up relief supplies and crews bringing medial assistance, ships are steaming toward the cyclone-struck region with food and water and blankets and experts in disaster aid, and there’s an incredible barrier to their delivery in the military junta that is more concerned with its death-grip on the nation than anything else.

Internal U.N. documents obtained by The Associated Press showed growing frustrations at foot-dragging by the junta, which has kept the impoverished nation isolated for five decades to maintain its iron-fisted control.

Meanwhile…

Relief teams and aid material are waiting to deploy from Thailand, Singapore, Italy, France, Sweden, Britain, South Korea, Australia, Israel, U.S., Poland and Japan, according to minutes from a U.N. relief meeting in Geneva that were obtained by the AP.

The scope of this disaster is unimaginable. 

CNN’s Dan Rivers, the first Western journalist into the devastated town of Bogalay, said Wednesday that it was difficult to find the words to describe the level of destruction.

“Ninety percent of the houses have been flattened… the help that these people are getting seems to be pretty much nonexistent from what we’ve seen.”

Story after story carries the horrible details, but none has reported a possible resolution to the relief holdup. Everyone’s waiting for clearance, visas, the OK from the junta. The military regime there is clearing roads, but not caring for people.

The United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights is worth the paper it’s written on in places like this.

When Pope Benedict recently addressed the UN in recognition of that declaration’s 60th anniversary, he repeatedly urged the UN to recall its beginnings and its intent of protecting human rights.

The United Nations embodies the aspiration for a “greater degree of international ordering” (John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 43), inspired and governed by the principle of subsidiarity, and therefore capable of responding to the demands of the human family through binding international rules and through structures capable of harmonizing the day-to-day unfolding of the lives of peoples. This is all the more necessary at a time when we experience the obvious paradox of a multilateral consensus that continues to be in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few, whereas the world’s problems call for interventions in the form of collective action by the international community.

Today in St. Peter’s Square, Benedict said “I make my own the cry of pain and the call for assistance of the dear people of Myanmar who without warning saw so many lives, and so much property and means of sustenance destroyed by the terrifying violence of the cyclone Nargis.” And he called on the international community to collaborate in bringing relief. They’ve done that. But where the rubber meets the road, the decisions of a few strongmen in Myanmar are still blocking it from reaching the people.

What to do?

In the view of the Burmese, who hold superstitious beliefs like many other Asian peoples, when a natural disaster strikes the country it is a sign that the government in power has lost its “divine mandate”, and therefore must be replaced.

That this military junta needs to be replaced by a government that takes care of its people has been clear for decades. What to do while they continue to block relief to hundreds of thousands of human lives? Pray for true divine intervention and mercy.