Guest contributor

Khin Ohmar

The devastating Sagaing earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28 added yet another layer of devastation to a country already in crisis. For many around the world, it may appear as the latest in a string of natural disasters. But for the people of Myanmar, it is another wound torn open in a nation already bleeding from the violence and oppression of a brutal military junta.

Any attempt to respond to this catastrophe must begin with a fundamental recognition: this is not simply a humanitarian emergency—it is a political one. There can be no effective, ethical recovery if the architects of the suffering are allowed to control the response while they continue to destroy lives through bombings and killings. 

And yet, some proposals—like the one recently published in The Jakarta Post by William Sabandar—suggest entrusting the military junta with a central role in recovery, so long as it demonstrates “transparency and accountability.” This is not only naïve; it is dangerous.

Aid must not flow through the junta

Since 2021, the Myanmar military has carried out a campaign of terror against the people, in the form of collective punishment, for categorically rejecting its illegal coup attempt. 

It has bombed schools and villages, burned homes, targeted medics, and blocked humanitarian access as a weapon of war. No amount of technical oversight or good intentions can sanitize aid delivered through this junta.

We have seen this before. During Cyclone Nargis in 2008, the then-junta initially blocked international aid and manipulated the crisis to consolidate power while Nargis aid allowed the military families and cronies to personally profit and accumulate personal wealth. 

The difference today is that this junta is a criminal entity fighting against the legitimate government of Myanmar and the people.

Sabandar argues that the junta must be engaged in disaster recovery and that “transparency and accountability” can ensure effectiveness. But Myanmar’s resistance movement and civil society know better. 

True transparency is impossible under a junta with an endemic history of corruption that murders children, rapes women, jails journalists, bombs civilians, and imprisons elected government officials. 

What the country needs is not engagement with the junta—it is a redirection of aid to where it is most effective: the community-based organisations, ethnic health providers, and cross-border humanitarian networks that have operated under fire for years and still manage to reach those in need.

ASEAN is not the answer

Calls for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to lead a regional recovery effort echo a familiar but failed strategy. Since the 2021 illegal coup attempt, ASEAN has invoked its Five-Point Consensus repeatedly while taking no meaningful action to enforce it. 

It has refused to recognise the root cause – the Myanmar military and instead, has given the illegal junta false legitimacy and undeserved space on the regional stage.

ASEAN’s ineffective consensus marked four years of failure on April 24. To now propose ASEAN as the lead actor in Myanmar’s earthquake response is to ignore four years of failure. 

Worse, it risks legitimising a junta that the people of Myanmar have staunchly and overwhelmingly rejected. A regional “leadership role” in this context would serve as cover for the military’s continuation of atrocity crimes and weaponization of aid.

ASEAN is not neutral—it has been complicit in the junta’s atrocity crimes. Even during and after the ASEAN chair met junta chief Min Aung Hlaing in Bangkok, both ground and aerial attacks against civilians continued in quake-hit areas and beyond, completely discounting the ASEAN call for a ceasefire. 

Since the earthquake, the junta has conducted at least 207 attacks, including 140 airstrikes and 24 artillery barrages, deliberately targeting civilians.  

Since its own “ceasefire” declaration on April 2, the junta has killed at least 161 people and injured nearly 300 more. Given the military’s long standing disregard for human life, it could not be clearer that this junta has absolutely no genuine political will for effective aid delivery or sustainable peace.

ASEAN, alongside the wider international community, must not exploit the earthquake disaster to normalize relations with the junta, lend it false legitimacy, endorse its sham election plan, or push forward attempts at ‘inclusive dialogue’ that will allow the re-legitimization of the military and prolong the crisis. 

Instead, ASEAN must provide aid through border-based channels directly through community-based organizations and frontline humanitarians in collaboration with civil society organizations, or CSOs, the NUG, and EROs.

Additionally, ASEAN and the wider international community must take immediate concrete action to end the junta’s ground and aerial attacks through a comprehensive global arms embargo, including aviation fuel and dual-use goods.

If we are serious about supporting Myanmar’s recovery and rebuilding, we must look beyond ineffective regional diplomatic formulas and listen to the people risking everything for their future. 

If ASEAN truly aims to achieve a long-term solution for Myanmar, the only way forward is to fully support the people’s tireless efforts to achieve a peaceful and sustainable future that is free from military tyranny.⁩

You cannot build back better under bombs

Sabandar suggests drawing lessons from Indonesia’s post-tsunami recovery in Aceh or its response to the 2005 Nias earthquake. But these comparisons are deeply flawed. 

Indonesia then had a functioning, legitimate government, willing to work with both domestic and international actors in good faith. 

Myanmar today is not ruled but ruined by a junta that is not only illegitimate but actively committing crimes against humanity and war crimes against the people.

The phrase “build back better” has meaning in a post-conflict or post-disaster environment where peace and stability exist. In Myanmar, the bombs are still falling. 

Entire communities are being displaced not by natural forces, but by airstrikes and ground assaults constantly and deliberately carried out by the junta. 

There can be no rebuilding—no better future—until the violence stops and the root cause of suffering is addressed.

Obstruction and weaponization of aid by the junta

The weaponization of aid by the junta cannot be judged by whether there are junta soldiers blocking the road with guns or taking away aid shipments. It is not as simple and straightforward as how Andrew Nachemson portrays it in Foreign Policy. 

It can be seen in many forms. By withholding aid, unfair distribution, restrictions, arresting aid workers, seizing or threatening to seize aid, extortion, and blocking information are all part of obstruction and weaponization.

Eyewitness accounts of the obstruction, manipulation, or weaponization of aid by the junta can vary depending on who has experienced or witnessed it, depending on different backgrounds of those individuals and organisations’ status, and most importantly who is willing to speak out. 

In this case, primary beneficiary or impacted communities’ experiences and accounts need to be seriously considered. We cannot superficially judge and state that the junta “may not be standing in the way of disaster aid, despite its poor track record” as the sub-headline of Nachemson’s article stated. Some in Sagaing and Mandalay have even spoken out about not receiving any aid. 

We also cannot set aside the junta’s weaponization and blocking of aid to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who are fleeing from its airstrikes and artillery attacks. 

To those saying that the military is not blocking earthquake relief, I ask: What about the emergency lifesaving aid to those IDPs fleeing from the bombings in the quake-hit areas such as in Sagaing? 

According to local reports, junta authorities in some areas have specifically instructed not to distribute aid to IDPs who fled from conflict areas.

We are seeing netizens sharing posts on social media and media reports including photos of quake-affected communities living in temporary sites where locally-produced tents, which are not meant for disaster relief, are distributed by local aid groups. 

Meanwhile we are seeing international relief tents being provided to survivors of the collapsed Sky Villa condo due to their high economic and social status.

Even the U.N. agencies are posting photos of people living under those locally used tents on their social media. Now the question should be asked: Where are the relief tents donated by the international community? 

The junta’s foreign affairs ministry has constantly posted about international earthquake relief donations both in cash and kind such as from Japan and the E.U. Should we not have the right to ask why our people are not receiving those donations? 

Calling for transparency and accountability, including fair and equal distribution of aid is not to make the matter worse as some might narrowly think but to ensure aid is delivered to the affected communities as intended to and should be. 

There is also bias and discrimination by international aid actors in their approach to local stakeholders. While these international agencies lack, or are afraid to put in place, monitoring mechanisms to ensure aid handed over to the junta is not exploited and manipulated.

This means these agencies unfairly make presumptuous decisions that aid going through the NUG, or CSOs, and community-based organizations, that are independent from the junta, will be utilized for other non-relief purposes. This approach is already breaching the humanitarian principles of impartiality and neutrality.

As 270 CSOs wrote in a statement, “We emphasize that these disaster relief efforts, through any implementing partners, must not be exploited, manipulated, or weaponized by the military junta for its political and military gain. We urge the U.N., neighbouring countries, and the wider international community to remember Myanmar’s painful history of the military’s manipulation of aid in times of natural disasters, and act resolutely to protect affected and vulnerable communities from exploitation and further suffering. The people of Myanmar deserve aid that alleviates suffering—not aid exploited in their name or weaponized against them.” 

A people’s response, not a junta-led recovery

So, what does a just and effective response look like?

It begins with recognition of who truly represents the people of Myanmar: the democratic resistance movement led by the NUG, the National Unity Consultative Council, Ethnic Resistance Organisations, women’s groups, youth leaders, and civil society actors. These are the voices that must shape recovery—not the generals who created the crisis.

For our civil society groups, human rights defenders and activists, we don’t wait; we mobilised ourselves and launched emergency relief missions in our people-to-people solidarity approach immediately within the first 24 hours of the quake, while we also alerted the international community and advocated solutions for effective response.

In the CSO joint statement, it recommended that aid be channelled through community groups, EROs, and the NUG, simply because most of the affected areas are under effective control of the resistance while the most severely hit cities like Naypyidaw, Mandalay, and Sagaing are under the junta control; some nearby areas are controlled by both. 

“Severely or significantly damaged” by earthquake cannot be measured by high fatality rates and how many high-rise buildings collapsed such as what the world saw in Mandalay or in Naypyidaw, where information about the destruction was blocked by the junta but later reported by brave citizen journalists and independent media. 

The point here is not which areas are hardest hit, but that areas beyond junta-control still experienced the earthquake, and international aid cannot and will not reach these areas through the junta. That is where we see the need for international aid to be channelled through local aid groups. 

International aid must be redirected through trusted local humanitarian networks that operate independently of the junta. Especially for the aid to reach communities in the affected areas under resistance control, the international aid actors must collaborate with the NUG, EROs and the People’s Defense Force (PDF) as many areas hit by the Sagaing earthquake beyond Sagaing and Mandalay cities are not under the junta’s control, but under control of the resistance movement with people-led administrations. 

Border-based ethnic service providers and local CSOs have proven time and again that they can deliver help efficiently, ethically, and with dignity.

Diplomatically, the international community must stop hedging. It must provide formal recognition to the NUG and increase support for mechanisms that hold junta leaders accountable—through sanctions, legal action, and referral to international justice processes like the International Criminal Court (ICC). A failure to act decisively is not neutrality; it is complicity.

This moment demands moral clarity

In the wake of such devastating geological disaster, it is natural to want to help—to rebuild, to heal. But in Myanmar, healing cannot come without justice; recovery cannot be done without accountability. Rebuilding cannot happen while the rubble is still being created by this junta. 

The people of Myanmar are not passive victims. They are leading their own resistance, organising their own relief and recovery, and envisioning and striving for their own future.

It is time the international community follows their lead—not the lead of the generals who brought this disaster upon them.

Khin Ohmar is a Myanmar human rights activist who was involved in organizing the 1988 nationwide pro-democracy uprising. She is also the founder of Progressive Voice, a Myanmar human rights organization.

DVB publishes a diversity of opinions that does not reflect DVB editorial policy. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our stories: [email protected]