Come to Burma's aid

Published on Saturday 10 May 2008 20:05

SOMETIMES we don't know how lucky we are that our news and political discourse can be dominated by something like the timing of a Scottish independence referendum. It may be crucial to our constitutional future, but the debate seems a luxury compared with the life-and-death questions facing millions of people in Burma this weekend.

Estimates put the number killed by last weekend's cyclone at 100,000. That toll will surely rise, given the disease and malnutrition faced by 1.5 million made homeless and destitute. The impact of this natural disaster has been even greater in Burma than the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

The world wants to help, and readers can use the details contained in our coverage today to give what they can. The World Food Programme, the Disasters Emergency Committee and other agencies insist they will do everything they can to make sure no aid is wasted or gets into the wrong hands. But much depends on the attitudes of the ruling junta, which yesterday went ahead with the farce of its own constitutional referendum. The fact that no one yet knows the fate of hundreds of thousands of potential voters just reinforces the belief that the poll is a fix.

We can only hope that those nations that are closest to the regime, especially China, India and Thailand, can convince its rulers to fully throw open their doors to unfettered aid. Once the people are fed and housed, then attention must turn to the vital, if more mundane, battle to bring them democracy.