BEIJING: It's only five months into the year and it has been a pretty difficult one already for the Chinese. Massive snowstorms caused havoc earlier this year, then there was the turmoil in Tibet and the aftermath following the Olympic torch relay around the world, lately this EV71 virus that has killed over 30 and sickened thousands -- and now this major earthquake. The updated news on the massive 7.8 earthquake yesterday in Sichuan near the city of Chengdu is that close to 10,000 have died in an area populated by ethnic Han Chinese, Chinese Tibetans and Hui Muslim Chinese. The number of deaths will likely surge throughout the day and heavy rains are starting to make rescue efforts difficult. Premier Wen Jiabao's words just a little while ago don't sound very promising.
Here in Beijing at about 2:30pm yesterday I suddenly felt sick, like a bad case of food poisoning, and wondered if it was something I'd eaten for lunch. My wife messaged me that she thought it was an earthquake, and growing up in Taiwan she's had a lot of experience with them. That's when I noticed all my coworkers looking around at each other trying to figure out what was going on. People started saying an earthquake had hit so we filed out of the building and stood outside for several minutes before coming back in. When I found out the quake was in Sichuan I knew it must have been pretty bad. Beijing is pretty far away for us to have felt that much of it.
Through the afternoon I followed the data on the USGS website. Some interesting maps over here and according to their tally, there have been 25 aftershocks after the main earthquake, the latest being only a couple of hours ago and registering 4.8. That's not big, but I worry that even these small ones could bring down buildings already damaged by the main quake. With heavy rains starting to hit the area, the threat of landslides will certainly be a problem.
Some coincidences? I'm not superstitious but some of my Chinese friends are. One sent me this photo of frogs massing on Sunday in Jiangsu province, a day before the quake. I later found out that there is an old Chinese earthquake device called the "dragon jar" which has frogs on the sides that catch a ball in their mouths which corresponds to the direction the earthquake came from. As for numbers, which mean a lot in China ... usually the number 8 is a lucky number, but not yesterday. According to the Chinese calendar it was the 8th day of the 4th month of the year and 88 days before the Olympics. Add in that it was Buddha's birthday and you have a perfect storm of superstition going on.
Thankfully the Three Gorges Dam is safe. The rescue effort is ongoing and will likely take a while. Offers for assistance from the rest of the world are coming in.
So the reason I meant to write this in the first place was to point you to a few places where you can donate and also follow what's going on in Sichuan. If you want to help, there's information on how to do so at China Crossroads and Shanghaiist.
The latter also has a good timeline of coverage from yesterday starting after the quake until early in the morning. Also check in at Global Voices, which has translations of bits of news from the area.
Early on, much of the news was coming across not through major media but via YouTube and Twitter. See coverage of this here, here and here.
Follow Michael Standaert on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mstandaert
As human beings we should always reach out to help others in need no matter where they are from.
Remember that the victims of Katrina also live in a "rich" country that is loathed by much of the world for its government, which was elected by its citizens.
The Burmese case is different. The generals there have also been imprisoning and torturing monks, but the general population has not been supporting that (unlike the Chinese public, which seems wholeheartedly behind the suppression of Tibet and its monks). The Burmese people deserve and badly need our help.
We have enough problems of our own and China isn't the poor underdeveloped country it once was and you can thank China for helping to push the price of gas to 4 bucks a gallon too.
Let them take care of their own unless they need specialty teams for search and rescue, but they don't need our money AT ALL. And they don't need our food and blankets.
BUSH, CHENEY, and Clinton before have all acquiested in China's seizure of manufacturing capacity thus abetting that country's dominance in global markets.....
In Sri Lanka it is commonly believed that much of the aid offered following the Tsunami went amiss, and this was with the encouragement of all of the oversight on offer. Whatever corruption the Burmese government has in mind, it will probably end up being on par with those nations whose leadership had a chance to see the aid workers coming. Christian mercy, as well as common sense, dictates that the aid be given without strings; if nothing else, as witness.
b. We need to stop acting as if we can solve the world's problems. Let the UN deal with
this issue. Our constant intervention makes us appear to be a bully (see Somalia).
c. China is the greatest threat to our way of life. Their authoritarian government seeks to undermine our economic stability at every turn. We need to see them as the threat they are and to deal with them as we dealt with the Soviets.
Either way some enforced intervention must surely be planned. The British aid minister, Douglas Alexander, said last week it would be "incendiary". He did not explain why a "dump-and-run" of emergency supplies in the delta would be incendiary - compared, for instance, to his antics in Afghanistan.
It may be the case that diplomatic pressure on the regime might soon force it to reverse its negligence - though at present this is unlikely. Indeed the west's policy of merely hurling abuse at it looks counter-productive. A regime that turns away the Red Cross, will not take calls from the UN or even listen to its friendly super-power China seems immune to pressure.
On Friday the British and French foreign ministers, David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner, announced that "we look to the regime" to lift restrictions on aid distribution. Nobody "looked to" Milosevic to stop slaughtering Kosovans or the rebels to stop the killing in Sierra Leone. We intervened.
The Foreign Office remarked last week that there was "no excuse" for delay and then thought of one. The British chairman of the UN security council, John Sawyer, claimed that the 2006 resolution referred only to "acts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity rather than government responses to natural disasters." But in 2001 there was no evidence that the Taliban were committing such acts, yet Britain intervened. And what is happening in Burma if not an "intentional denial of humanitarian assistance."
This catastrophe is not past but ongoing. A western world adept at intervening elsewhere on a humanitarian pretext is suddenly inert. Why? I suspect the reason is that it has too much intervention on its plate already. The Burmese must die because we are too busy pretending to save Afghans and Iraqis. To such cynicism has liberal intervention sunk. "
In Burma, the airlifting of supplies from offshore vessels to stricken areas would indeed be an offence against the sovereignty of Burma. But the intervention would not constitute an attack on a government or occupy its territory. Indeed it would be occasioned strictly because of the lack of government in a particular territory. It would be to save the lives of people abandoned to their deaths by their rulers.
This was reinforced when the Security Council in 2005 and 2006 imposed a responsibility on the international community to protect people whose governments failed to do so. It castigated in particular the "intentional denial of humanitarian assistance". Such an extension of the concept of military intervention was advocated by Tony Blair in his Chicago speech of 1998, when it was dismissed by the Americans (pre-9/11) as irresponsible. Today it is widely regarded as legitimate, even by those opposed to much of the belligerent militancy that ensued under Blair and George Bush.
It is hard to think of a more glaring application of the humanitarian principle than today's Burma. In none of the above interventions was anything like the same number of lives at risk as the 2m now threatened in the Irrawaddy delta. This is eight times the 230,000 reckoned to have died in the 2004 tsunami.
I totally agree with you that it made my heart stumble. But at the same time I just can't stop to feel even more resentment against both the Myanmar (Burmese) Junta as well as towards the Chinese Communist party who rejected the call from the world to help put pressure on said Burmese Junta.
or if I can quote a snippet from HuffPost contributor Hanna Ingber Win's article:
"Cyclone Nargis wiped out entire villages along the Irrawaddy delta and left Rangoon in shambles, but the ruling junta has prevented relief efforts from barely making a dent in the recovery process."
We are talking about 40 something children in the valley where the cyclone hit who are still without water and shelter. HOW come the UN, the USA and them Brits that have been so macho for interventions now are acting like little chickens scared of some sort of ghostly Fox? Because the fox is none other then the nowadays so economically mighty China.
Suffering surpass all religions, race and political boubdaries.
May they all have a speedy recovery.