Burma's Blockade

A HORRIFIC CRIME is being carried out by the clique of generals that rules Burma, with the world as witness. According to the United Nations, some 1.5 million people near the country's southern coast are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance following Cyclone Nargis last weekend. Tens of thousands are dead, and 1 million or more are homeless. The few reports reaching the outside world from the Irrawaddy Delta region, where 2,000 square miles are underwater, speak of thousands of refugees camped in the open without food, medicine or clean water amid the stench of rotting bodies.

A huge corps of rescuers -- teams from the United Nations, the International Red Cross and dozens of other groups -- has been waiting for days to tackle this daunting challenge. The U.S. Navy has ships and helicopters ready to execute search-and-rescue missions and fly supplies beyond washed-out roads and bridges. Burma itself is unable to mount such an operation: It has, for example, only half a dozen or so working helicopters.

Yet the generals are blocking the rescue of their own people. While about two dozen planes from Asian countries and the United Nations have been allowed to land in the capital, Rangoon, during the past few days, the junta has denied visas to relief workers. Insisting that it will distribute all the aid itself, it has impounded much of the supplies at the airport. The United States has been granted permission to land a single planeload of supplies -- and that only next Monday, 10 days after the cyclone struck.

This criminal delay and denial of humanitarian aid is likely to cause the death of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, more people. Experts say epidemics of such diseases as cholera are likely to break out because of the absence of clean water, and starvation is another danger. U.N. officials have been issuing increasingly dire warnings. Yet Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has literally not been able to get the top general, Than Shwe, on the telephone; for two days his calls have been unreturned. Judging from its public statements, the regime -- incredibly -- remains focused on the referendum it plans to hold today on a new constitution that will institutionalize military rule. Rather than offering the hope of relief, Burmese media yesterday reminded citizens of their "patriotic duty" to vote.

Three years ago, the United Nations adopted a doctrine to deal with exactly this sort of situation. Known as "right to protect," it foresaw the Security Council authorizing a humanitarian rescue operation even without the cooperation of the national government. Yet France's attempt to raise Burma's case before the Security Council on Thursday was opposed by China, Russia, South Africa and other developing countries, which apparently cherish the ideology of nonintervention more than the lives of hundreds of thousands of Burmese. Burma's neighbors and Western governments will share responsibility if this man-made catastrophe is allowed to continue.

The United States, France and Britain should support a Security Council resolution demanding the admission of aid and relief workers and insist that it be urgently and publicly debated. Under such pressure, and with the Olympics approaching, China -- Burma's most influential neighbor -- may find that its interest lies in supporting humanitarian intervention. If it wishes to defend the junta at the cost of thousands of innocent lives, it should at least be made to do so on the record.