It cannot be in anyone’s interest to allow entire populations to plunge into starvation and disease

By Benedict Rogers for UCA News

Each year throughout the season of Lent, I fast every Friday, dedicating my prayers each time to a different country or region of the world that is on my heart.

Last Friday, I had already chosen to devote my fast to Myanmar, the country where I became a Catholic, in prayer for an end to its brutal civil war, a just and durable peace, the release of political prisoners, and a genuine freedom and true democracy.

I have worked on Myanmar for 25 years, traveled more than 50 times to the country and its borderlands, and visited the camps for internally displaced peoples inside its conflict-ridden jungles and the refugee camps along its borders dozens of times.

I have written three books about Myanmar and have been deported from the country not once but twice.

I pray for Myanmar every day throughout the year, so my Lenten Friday fast is not some new spiritual venture but rather a renewed endeavor.

It was that very day, as I was fasting, that I received news reports of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in the country and a U.N. forecast that a third of Myanmar’s population faces acute food insecurity. It seemed remarkably apposite.

U.N. human rights experts have expressed alarm at the worsening crisis, in which an estimated 19.9 million people need humanitarian assistance.

As a consequence of the February 2021 military coup, approximately 15.2 million people — almost a third of the population — have been plunged into food insecurity.

The U.N. experts — who include the special rapporteurs on human rights in Myanmar, violence against women and girls, the human rights of internally displaced peoples, and well as for the right to food and the right to adequate housing — state that: “As the junta continue to lose territory to armed resistance groups, it has retaliated by blockading aid, and restricting humanitarian access, limiting trade routes, and targeting humanitarian workers, further compounding an already dire crisis.”

Soon after the U.N. experts’ statement was released, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that more than one million people in Myanmar face being cut off from lifesaving food assistance from next month as a result of critical funding shortfalls. These cuts come just as increased conflict, displacement, and restrictions on access are creating further pressure on food aid.

The impending cuts will, the WFP’s Representative in Myanmar Michael Dunford claims, have a “devastating impact on the most vulnerable communities” — including internally displaced peoples, children, pregnant women, and people with disabilities.

Myanmar’s deepening crisis is caused by a combination of factors. But the cuts could not come at a worse time.

Myanmar’s military has destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of its citizens, as it pursues its relentless campaign of bombardment, burning, looting, pillaging, rape, torture, killing and destruction.

As the U.N. experts report, Myanmar’s military has “destroyed agricultural equipment, and contaminated farmland with landmines and unexploded ordinance, exacerbating challenges for local food production.”

Even where land exists, the massive displacement of people has resulted in a shortage of workers.

Since the coup four years ago, at least 96 percent of Myanmar’s townships have experienced armed conflict. The cost of basic food staples has increased significantly — projected to rise by 30 percent this year — as a consequence.

The repressive and aggressive brutality of Myanmar’s illegal, inhumane junta is the primary cause of this current crisis.

But the recent draconian spending cuts in aid by Western donors, especially the United States and the United Kingdom, further exacerbate the challenge.

Let me be clear.

I want international aid funding from foreign governments to be spent well.

I want taxpayers’ dollars or pounds or euros spent in aid budgets to reach those in most need.

And I am all in favor of a review of government aid budgets.

I wholeheartedly support efforts to cut out waste, eliminate bureaucracy, counter corruption, and rid our aid budgets of useless “woke” spending on projects that do little to promote human life, human dignity, and human liberty and much to undermine them.

But not at the cost of human life or starvation.

The recent U.S. presidential executive order suspending U.S. aid has had devastating consequences on some of the world’s most vulnerable, particularly those in Myanmar and along its borders.

It was stupid, ill-thought-out, and heartless. A review of budgets could easily have been conducted without putting lives on the line.

I am all in favor of government efficiency.

And a debate about the way the international development and aid sector works is one worth having.

Let’s review, let’s reform, and let’s revise. But let’s not kill people in the process.

The U.S. Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE) is led by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.

He is a very clever man, perhaps a genius.

He is an impressive entrepreneur and innovator.

But he now has blood on his hands.

He may have slept on the floor of his factories, but he has never lived in a refugee camp.

He has never had to run for his life through the jungle, dodging landmines and rapist soldiers.

He has never been imprisoned, tortured, or enslaved.

He and his officials need to remember those who have — and who endure such suffering and persecution even now.

At the same time, while I welcome the U.K. government’s increase in defence spending — which is needed, given the war in Ukraine, the increasing threats from Russia, and growing challenges from China — significant cuts in the U.K.’s aid budget are cause for profound concern.

The U.K. — which led the world in overseas aid spending until recently — has foolishly thrown away this leadership and undermined our values and security in doing so.

It cannot be in anyone’s interests to allow entire populations to plunge into famine, starvation, disease, epidemic, or other humanitarian crises.

Such crises, if they are not born out of conflict — which in Myanmar’s case they are — will simply sow future conflict.

And it is about more than just preventing starvation and disease. It is in our interests to see stable, free societies around the world grow, flourish, and prosper.

Cutting the free flow of information — by, for example, jeopardising media outlets such as Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, two of the free world’s best outlets to counter the propaganda of authoritarian regimes and allow for independent reporting into closed societies such as China, North Korea, Myanmar and Vietnam — is not a wise, intelligent, well-informed or well thought-out idea.

Mr. Musk, President Trump: you are simply handing Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, and Myanmar’s General Min Aung Hlaing and his military junta a golden weapon.

It is stupidly stupid.

It is time to rethink, please.

Do you wish to lead the free world, Mr. Trump? Or the authoritarian world?

Myanmar’s military dictator Min Aung Hlaing recently traveled to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin.

Of course, they are chums. Birds of a feather flock together. And Putin, like Xi, is facilitating Min Aung Hlaing’s genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes across Myanmar.

We need to wake up to the fact that Myanmar is Asia’s Ukraine.

It is the frontline of the battle between freedom and authoritarianism, between human life, liberty and dignity and atrocity crimes, between the rule of law and war.

As we wrestle with the big global crises of our time — in Ukraine and the Middle East — we must not forget, ignore, or abandon Myanmar.

While many may not know about Myanmar, it is a cause that has caused my conscience to ache for 25 years or more.

And my conscience aches even more today.

I completed my fast and ate a good meal. But I did not do so easily, for in my mind and on my heart was the knowledge that potentially millions of people in Myanmar face starvation tonight.

If we’re to take Lent seriously, then fasting and prayer aren’t enough.

Instead, we must stand up and speak up for the people of Myanmar — and urge the international community, including the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada, and Australia — to act.

And to do so now, immediately, before it is too late.

As I have said many times before, we must cut off the lifelines that sustain the illegal dictatorship in Myanmar.

And we must provide the freedom-loving people of Myanmar a lifeline to sustain, revive, and rebuild their shattered country.

Now.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.