I see that China Hand has posted an excellent analysis of the western MSM’s highly politicized (and sometimes just plain inaccurate) reporting on the “Western aid workers and Myanmar” story, that is considerably lengthier, and better authenticated in terms of good hyperlinks, than the few notes I penned here yesterday.
China Hand comments:
- the whole idea that Western aid workers are indispensable to disaster relief in the initial rescue period (and their absence is evidence of criminal and callous incompetence by the government of the afflicted region) is wrong and misleading, as well as something of an insult to the local people and organizations who, in any disaster, provide the bulk of first-responder disaster relief…
My own point, exactly.
CH further comments:
- We might have an effective Myanmar policy—one that doesn’t force it even deeper into China’s sphere of influence–if accurate reporting allowed us to understand the weaknesses, strengths, and priorities of the regime in light of the challenge of Cyclone Nargis and design a joint response to the disaster.
But based on the instinctive and intellectually lazy junta bashing in the Western press encouraged by the posturing of the US, UK, and France, I’m not holding my breath.
I am delighted to see that, in CH’s research, s/he finds that one bright spot is provided by The Christian Science Monitor (yay! the CSM!). CH links to and quotes from this fascinating report by the CSM’s Simon Mortlake
Note to China Hand: always good to name reporters who do good work if you can?
Mortlake writes about the Myanmar-related work of
- The Tzu Chi Foundation, the largest NGO in the Chinese-speaking world and a rising player in global disaster relief, [which] has sent 15 volunteers from neighboring countries to Burma to work with more than 100 local staff to distribute aid, says Her Rey-Sheng, a spokesman for the group and a full-time volunteer.
Tzu Chi also got permission this week to set up a distribution center at a Buddhist temple in Rangoon and work with monks there. It’s planning a fund-raising drive for reconstruction projects.
Taiwanese relief organizations face some of the same logistical and political constraints in Burma as their Western counterparts…
Still, Taiwanese aid workers say their low-key, hands-off approach [note: I think that means, “non-judgmental engagement”] to countries like military-ruled Burma, which has been lambasted by Western countries, pays off in times of crisis. Even Burma’s close political ties to Beijing, a fierce diplomatic rival of Taiwan, didn’t appear to intrude.
In fact, Tzu Chi has even been able to win the trust of the Chinese government. In 1991, after flooding along the Yangtze River. Chinese authorities were suspicious of offers of help from Taiwan, over which it claims sovereignty, while some Taiwanese attacked the group for aiding “the enemy.”
Its volunteers eventually got permission to work there. This year, it became the first NGO with a foreign legal representative to be licensed in China.
Its bedrock belief, prescribed by Master Cheng Yen, the Buddhist nun who founded Tzu Chi in 1966, is that all charitable work should be grounded in gratitude to the needy to ensure selfless giving. “Every volunteer feels the same way. By going to help others, they feel blessed,” says Mr. Her.
While Tzu Chi has 10 million members in more than 65 countries and annual donations of $300 million, homegrown Asian NGOs don’t yet match the size of Western humanitarian organizations, and the idea of cross-border humanitarian work is relatively new.
Oh my gosh! Do you mean that we’re going to have to start to think that “aid workers” might not all be like Angelina Jolie and the huge crowd of western lookalikes who populate the way that most westerners– including very lazy and self-referential western media people– have thought about “aid workers” until now?
You mean (gasp!) that the “west” doesn’t have a complete monopoly on good intentions and good implementation??
This is hard to believe.
Okay, irony alert in the last three paras, folks…
But nice reporting there, Simon Mortlake. Thanks.
Finally, China Hand takes on the question of the Chinese government’s much more expert handling of the western Big Media with respect to its coverage of the horrible, horrible earthquakes.
His comment there:
- Actually, I’ve got a hot story for Western newsies in China. And you’re right on top of it!
Here it is: Chinese government cynically diverts precious disaster relief facilities to arrange unnecessary junket for scoop-hungry foreign journalists to death zone in order to obtain favorable coverage!
Wonder when we’ll read about that in the papers.
Point well made.
And MSM-ers, your response to that??
Update 11 a.m.:
I just saw China Hand’s small earlier post, which is a hilarious update on the complete ineffectiveness of French FM Bernard Kouchner’s threat/promise to deliver aid to Myanmar whether the Burmese leaders wanted him to, or not.
Kouchner, who has long been one of the west’s strongest supporters of aggressive (including armed) western intervention in humanitarian crises, told reporters with great fanfare some ten days ago that the French navy already had a ship, the Mistral, sailing in the Bay of Bengal… and that it would be diverted immediately to deliver aid to Myanmar.
Except it turns out that… oops! … the Mistral had no spare rice or other needed goods aboard at all.
So it had to sail back to Chennai, India, and as of Wednesday was still loading the rice there… And according to this clip from aboard the ship that you can get from France’s English-language t.v. website, it hopes to arrive back in Burma this Sunday.
China Hand’s comment:
- somebody tell Bernard Kouchner.
Next time you order up a humanitarian invasion…don’t forget the rice.