2023-05-19 12:49:31
In Burma, the death toll from Cyclone Mocha now stands at 145 dead, the vast majority of them Rohingyas, the country’s ruling junta announced on Friday, May 19. In Geneva, the UN said that 800,000 people affected by the cyclone in Burma need emergency food aid.
Cyclone Mocha hit Burma and Bangladesh on Sunday, with driving rains and 195 km/h winds that demolished buildings and turned streets into rivers. The strongest storm to hit the region in more than a decade has torn through villages, uprooted trees and cut communications across much of Rakhine state, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya live in camps for the displaced. following decades of inter-ethnic conflict.
“A total of 145 people were killed in the cyclone”the junta said in the statement. “According to the information we have obtained, 4 soldiers, 24 inhabitants and 117 Bengalis were killed in the storm”she clarified.
600,000 refugees deprived of access to health and education
« Bengali » is a pejorative term used in Burma to refer to the Muslim minority. 600,000 Rohingyas have lived for several generations in Burma, deprived of access to health and education,“under an apartheid regime”, according to Amnesty International. All are treated as foreigners and even have to ask for permission before traveling outside their village.
A Rohingya village chief said more than 100 people were missing in his village alone as a result of the cyclone. Another village chief near Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, said at least 105 Rohingya had died around the town, and the count was not over.
The junta’s statement also said that the reports released by the media on the death of 400 Rohingyas are “false” and that action will be taken against the media outlets that published them.
Since its coup more than two years ago, the junta has arrested dozens of journalists and shut down media deemed critical of its regime. Ships and the air force brought in thousands of sacks of rice and thousands of electricians, firefighters and rescue workers had been deployed in Rakhine state, junta-backed media reported on Friday.
Resumption of flights
Flights resumed as normal at Sittwe airport on Thursday, according to the official Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper. International aid agencies, including the World Food Programme, were working on the ground in the town of Sittwe this week.
Cyclones, known as hurricanes in the Atlantic and typhoons in the Pacific, are a regular threat to the northern Indian Ocean coasts, where tens of millions of people live.
By May 2008, Nargis had left at least 138,000 dead or missing in Burma, the worst natural disaster in the country’s history. The reaction of the then junta to the disaster was criticized by the international community. She was accused of blocking emergency aid.
#dead #Cyclone #Mocha #Rohingya