After the Storm: Voices from the Delta - A Report by EAT and JHU CPHHR on human rights violations in the wake of Cyclone Nargis

In May of 2008, the world watched in horror as evidence mounted from Burma that
Cyclone Nargis had been an enormous storm resulting in great loss of life. Offers for
emergency assistance poured in from around the world as the numbers of the lost and the
missing rose into the tens of thousands. Yet the ruling Burmese junta, the State Peace
and Development Council (SPDC), proved reluctant to accept aid or allow skilled relief
workers into the flooded Irrawaddy Delta. Some ten months later, reconstruction of the
Delta continues and the survivors of the storm and their communities continue to face
huge challenges. Their voices, their experiences, and their eye-witness accounts of the
response to Cyclone Nargis have been missing from the international debate around the
relief effort. This report, After The Storm: Voices from the Delta, by the Emergency
Assistance Team and its partners, is the first independent assessment of the response to
bring forth the uncensored voices of survivors and independent relief workers.
Their accounts are stunning. Relief workers witnessed systematic obstruction of relief
aid, willful acts of theft and sale of relief supplies, forced relocation, and the use of
forced labor for reconstruction projects, including forced child labor. When the junta
allowed aid to reach survivors, it was often preferentially provided to members of the
Burman ethnic group. Survivors experienced SPDC controls on basic rights and
freedoms, and they were compelled to vote in the junta’s anti-democratic constitutional
referendum just weeks after the storm—before many had access to the most basic of
services.
While other reports have detailed the relief effort, the human rights dimensions of the
complex humanitarian emergency have been missing. This report demonstrates that the
SPDC continues to violate the rights of relief workers and survivors, just as it continues
to hold relief workers in its prisons for having dared to help their own people. The needs
of the people of Burma, especially the people of the Delta, are many. Among them is the
need for truth, for transparency, accountability, and respect for their human rights. The
crimes against the people of the Delta must stop, and those who have committed them
must be held accountable. After the Storm is a critical step toward that accountability.
These are findings which call for immediate action. The people of Burma deserve no
less.