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    Why Earthquake Relief Is Slow to Reach Myanmar

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    Critics say the country’s often-incompetent military government has delayed and restricted the arrival and distribution of crucial aid.Seven days after an earthquake devastated Turkey in 2023, French volunteers used a suitcase-size radar to locate a survivor under the rubble. It was one of many lives the device helped save in the aftermath of the disaster.The group also rushed volunteers to Myanmar after a powerful earthquake last month leveled buildings, bridge and centuries-old temples. But the volunteers were stuck at immigration control at the airport in Yangon for more than a day. They finally entered the country last Wednesday, only to have the authorities declare search and rescue operations ending the next day. The volunteers returned home without finding a single survivor.Myanmar’s military government surprised many observers when it called for international assistance in response to the March 28 earthquake. It also declared a cease-fire against rebels in a civil war that has consumed the nation.But less than two weeks after the calamity hit, aid groups and volunteers said, international relief is not reaching Myanmar’s beleaguered public as fast as it could. They blame the junta for delays and restrictions on distributing aid. Others cite a climate of fear — the military has resumed airstrikes on rebel areas despite the cease-fire and on at least one occasion fired on aid workers.“Nothing was reasonable on the ground,” said Sezer Ozgan, a volunteer with the French nonprofit L’Espoir du peuple A.R.S.I.Already ravaged by war, Myanmar continues to reel from the earthquake, which people have been calling “earth’s anger.” The official death toll has surpassed 3,500 and many more have been injured. But the full extent of the devastation remains hard to assess because of damaged roads and toppled phone towers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Asian countries riven by war and disaster face some of steepest Trump tariffs

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      Developing nations in south-east Asia, including wartorn and earthquake-hit Myanmar, and several African nations are among the trading partners facing the highest tariffs set by Donald Trump.Upending decades of US trade policy and threatening to unleash a global trade war, the US president announced a raft of tariffs on Wednesday that he said were designed to stop the US economy from being “cheated”.“This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history,” said Trump on Wednesday. “It’s our declaration of economic independence.”He hailed the moment as “liberation day”, but the tariffs are likely to be met with loud protests from some of the world’s weakest economies. One expert said Trump was likely to be targeting countries that received investment from China, regardless of the situation in that country. Chinese manufacturers have previously relocated to countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia not only due to lower operating costs, but also to avoid tariffs.The tariffs come as many countries in south-east Asia are already grappling with the fallout from the cuts to USAID, which provides humanitarian assistance to a region vulnerable to natural disasters and support for pro-democracy activists battling repressive regimes.Cambodia, a developing economy where 17.8% of the population live below the poverty line, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is the worst-hit country in the region with a tariff rate of 49%. More than half of the country’s factories are reportedly Chinese-owned, with the countries exports dominated by garments and footwear.Next worse-hit is the landlocked south-east Asian nation of Laos, a country heavily bombed by the US during the cold war, with 48%. According to the ADB, Laos has a poverty rate of 18.3%.Not far behind is Vietnam with 46% and Myanmar, a nation reeling from a devastating earthquake on Friday, and years of civil war following a 2021 military coup, with 44%.Indonesia, the biggest economy in south-east Asia, faces a 32% tariff rate, while Thailand, the second-largest, has been hit with a rate of 36%.Major US rival and trading partner China has been hit with a 34% reciprocal tariff, on top of the 20% levy already imposed.Dr Siwage Dharma Negara, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said the tariffs on south-east Asian nations were intended to hurt China.“The administration thinks that by targeting these countries they can target Chinese investment in countries like Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia. By targeting their products maybe it will affect Chinese exports and the economy,” he said.“The real target is China but the real impact on those countries will be quite significant because this investment creates jobs and export revenue.”Tariffs on countries such as Indonesia, he said, would be counterproductive for the US, and the detail of how they would be applied remained unclear.“Some garments and footwear [companies] are American brands like Nike, or Adidas, US companies that have factories in Indonesia. Will they face the same tariffs as well?” he said.Stephen Olson, a former US trade negotiator, said countries in south-east Asia would be forced to reconsider their relationships with Washington. “A closer tilt towards China could be the result. It’s hard to have constructive, productive relations with a country that has just dropped a ton of bricks on your head,” said Olson, a visiting senior fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.“The world’s largest importer has now essentially hung a sign on its border saying ‘closed for business’,” he added. “We are now faced with two plausible scenarios: Either the impacted trade partners hold firm and retaliate in the hope that Trump will be forced to back down, or they look to cut deals with Trump in order to avoid the tariffs. It is unlikely that either scenario will end well.”Other nations among the hardest hit are several nations in Africa, including Lesotho – a country that Trump claimed “nobody has ever heard of” – with 50%, Madagascar with 47% and Botswana with 37%. Lesotho, a small mountainous kingdom surrounded by South Africa, has the second-highest level of HIV infection of the world, with almost one in four adults HIV-positive.In south Asia, Sri Lanka is facing a 44% tariff. In Europe, Serbia faces a 37% rate.In addition to the reciprocal tariffs on a few dozen countries, Trump will impose a 10% universal tariff on all imported goods. That tariff will go into effect on 5 April, while the reciprocal tariffs will begin on 9 April.The US president has justified the changes by saying they are retribution for countries that have long “cheated” America, and the levies will bring jobs back to the US.But economists have warned the sweeping changes will raise costs, threaten jobs, slow growth and isolate the US from a system of global trade it pioneered, and furthered over several decades.“This is how you sabotage the world’s economic engine while claiming to supercharge it,” said Nigel Green, the CEO of global financial advisory deVere Group.“The reality is stark: these tariffs will push prices higher on thousands of everyday goods – from phones to food – and that will fuel inflation at a time when it is already uncomfortably persistent.” More

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      in Elections

      Volunteer Rescuers in Mandalay Sift Through Earthquake Rubble

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      In Mandalay, near the epicenter of the quake that rocked the region, volunteer rescue workers raced against time as they combed through the ruins of apartments, monasteries and mosques to find survivors. Others struggled to come to terms with all they had lost.Downed power lines, destroyed roads and a lack of equipment made rescue work even harder in a city already enduring a repressive military government and a civil war that is now in its fourth year.“There are at least a hundred people still trapped inside,” said Thaw Zin, a volunteer who was sitting in front of a destroyed condominium. “We are trying our best with what we have.”The earthquake, which struck at about 12:50 p.m. Friday local time, was only the third of such magnitude to hit the region in the past century. The extent of the catastrophe remains enormous: the Myanmar military junta declared a state of emergency in six regions. These include rebel-controlled areas where there is little internet and millions of displaced people.The earthquake caused the collapse of Mandalay’s Maha Myat Muni Pagoda, also known as the Mahamuni Buddha Temple.EPA, via ShutterstockSu Wai Lin managed to escape with her husband and mother-in-law when the earthquake struck, but her husband ran back into their apartment building in Mandalay to save their 90-year-old neighbor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Earthquake Devastates Myanmar’s Cultural Sites

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      The powerful earthquake that shook Myanmar on Friday took a considerable toll on historic and religious sites across the country, toppling pagodas, collapsing sections of Buddhist monasteries and reducing centuries-old monuments to rubble, according to photographs and videos shared by witnesses and verified by The New York Times.In its latest count on Saturday morning, Myanmar’s government said that over 3,000 buildings had been damaged, including about 150 mosques and pagodas.Southwest of Mandalay, the 200-year-old Me Nu Brick Monastery appeared to be largely destroyed. Tiers of the building’s distinctive balconies had collapsed around the bulky interior walls.Southeast of Mandalay, a video showed the ornate golden spire of the Shwe Sar Yan Pagoda toppling over, to the screams of onlookers.Verified video, via ReutersIn Mandalay city, a large pagoda that stood on the palace walls was left tilted at a sharp angle; elsewhere, a section of the walls crumbled.To the west of the city, a video showed Buddhist monks gathered around the ruins of a decorative clock tower that had served as a centerpiece of the New Masoeyein Monastery.@Ashin Tikkhanyarna Linkara/Facebook, via AFPSeconds later, video showed their five-story monastery building collapsing before them. Dozens of monks who lived at the monastery slept out on mats in nearby streets on Friday night. One of them, Moe Nat Ashin, photographed the scene.@Bar Ku/Facebook, via AFPPhotos shared by the Burma Human Rights Network showed fallen minarets and domes of mosques in several parts of the country. The online news outlet Mizzima, citing local officials and residents, reported that 490 people were killed in mosque collapses on Friday.In Pindaya, 70 miles from the epicenter, Buddhist monuments known as stupas that adorned a large monastery were toppled, and cracks split the foundations of others that survived.All around the stupas, the remains of golden spires and the red bricks common to the region littered the ground.In one witness video, onlookers wailed as the top of the monastery’s largest stupas crumbled in an aftershock.Ko Ye Win Naing, via TikTok“Pindaya felt some earthquakes before but not so strong like today’s,” said Tun Tun Aye, the administrator of a Facebook page for the monastery. He said that the stupas were believed to be more than a century old, and that he did not know how the monastery would be restored.In Nepal in 2015, billions of dollars were pledged toward reconstruction after two earthquakes devastated the country. Initially hampered by bureaucracy, the restoration led to a resurgence in traditional craftsmanship in the country.But in Myanmar, which is ruled by a military junta that has terrorized civilian areas as it battles a rebel movement, establishing a unified and internationally supported reconstruction effort is likely to be more challenging. More

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      in Elections

      Myanmar Earthquake Pushes a Hospital in Mandalay to Its Limits

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      In the parking lot of Mandalay General Hospital, dozens of patients — many with their heads and arms bandaged — were lined up on stretchers, or cardboard, in 100-degree heat. Many more lay directly on the concrete.“More injured people keep arriving, but we do not have enough doctors and nurses,” said Dr. Kyaw Zin, a surgeon at the hospital. “The cotton swabs have almost run out.”He said the hospital was so jammed with injured people after the 7.7-magnitude earthquake on Friday that “there is no space to stand.” Phone lines were down so he has not been able to contact his parents. “I’m very worried about my parents,” he added. “But I can’t go back home yet. I have to save lives here first.”Even before the quake, the health care system in Myanmar had been pushed to its limits. The military junta that has led the country since a 2021 coup has cracked down on doctors and nurses, who have been at the forefront of a nationwide civil disobedience movement that has opposed the regime. Myanmar is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a health worker, according to New York-based Physicians for Human Rights.Dr. Kyaw Zin said that he was about to start surgery when the earthquake struck. Everybody, including patients, ran outside. On Friday afternoon, ambulance sirens shrieked. The injured kept coming. Nurses checked on patients in the parking lot, some of whom were hooked up to intravenous drips. People moaned for help. The smell of blood hung in the stifling heat.The junta said it did not have the full death toll. Damage to infrastructure could hinder access to regions that have already been struggling amid a bloody civil war. The epicenter of the earthquake, the Sagaing region, has been a focus of resistance to military rule. The World Health Organization said information was still hard to get because of aftershocks and disruptions to communications systems. The agency added that it was looking to send trauma supplies from its logistics hubs to support Myanmar. More

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      in Elections

      U.N. Sees ‘Human Rights Abyss’ in Myanmar as Military Kills Civilians

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      Three years after the military staged a coup, intensifying a civil war, civilians continue to pay the price, according to a coming United Nations report.Thousands of civilians in Myanmar have been “killed at the hands of the military,” the United Nations said on Tuesday, including hundreds who have died from torture and neglect in the junta’s prisons.“Myanmar is plumbing the depths of a human rights abyss,” James Rodehaver, the head of the U.N. human rights team monitoring the crisis, told journalists. He described a vacuum in the rule of law that was being filled by summary killings, torture and sexual violence.The casualties attest to a chaotic civil war that escalated sharply after the military staged a coup in February 2021. Now, three years later, pro-democracy forces and ethnic militias are battling the junta’s soldiers in a conflict that has displaced more than three million people and left close to 19 million in need of humanitarian aid, according to the U.N.But the military’s ferocious tactics, including an ongoing campaign of airstrikes and mass arrests, also reflect its shrinking hold. The military now controls less than 40 percent of the country and is constantly losing ground to armed opposition groups, Mr. Rodehaver said.The military killed at least 2,414 civilians just between April 2023 and the end of this June, including 334 children, according to a report by the U.N. team monitoring Myanmar that it will present to the Human Rights Council next week. About half of those deaths occurred in military airstrikes or in artillery bombardments.Another 759 people died in the junta’s custody in that same time period, the U.N. report will say. And they are only a portion of those who have died in detention since the coup, according to the report. Military authorities have arrested around 27,400 people since February 2021, including some 9,000 people in the 15 months that the U.N. report covered.What’s Happening in Myanmar’s Civil War?Questions you may have about the ongoing war in Myanmar, explained with graphics.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      China to Hold Live-Fire Drills Near War-Torn Myanmar’s

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      Beijing likely wants to signal to Myanmar’s junta leaders that they should return to peace talks and de-escalate the conflict, analysts said.China will hold live-fire military drills near its border with Myanmar starting on Tuesday, fortifying its boundaries with a southern neighbor that has been engulfed in a civil war for more than three years.China’s People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theater Command said on Monday that it would conduct both land and air exercises in the southwestern province of Yunnan to test the “joint strike capabilities of theater troops and maintain security and stability in the border areas.” China conducted two similar drills in April.The patrols, which will last until Thursday, come less than two weeks after China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, visited Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital, and reaffirmed Beijing’s support for the ruling military junta, which seized power in a coup in 2021. Analysts say that despite Mr. Wang’s pledge of support, Beijing is using the drills to send a signal to the junta that it would like the military to return to Chinese-led peace talks with rebels and refrain from intensifying the conflict.Myanmar, a country of about 55 million long fractured by ethnic divisions, has been thrown into fresh chaos as the military resumed control. Thousands have been killed and tens of thousands detained by the junta, which has been accused of committing atrocities and killing civilians by bombarding the country with airstrikes.The junta’s violence has led to the emergence of a resistance movement made up of both civilians from Myanmar’s urban areas who had become rebels and battle-hardened insurgents in the border regions who have been fighting for autonomy for decades. Together, they control about two-thirds of the country, mostly along its frontiers, while the military government holds the major cities located in the central lowlands of the Irrawaddy Valley.Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, reaffirmed Beijing’s support for the ruling military junta in Myanmar earlier this month.Tang Chhin Sothy/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      A Poet Goes to War

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      Deep in the sweltering jungles of Myanmar this spring, a rebel commander stood in front of 241 recruits for Day 1 of basic training. The troops — part of a resistance fighting an unpopular military dictatorship — were organized in rows by height, starting at less than five feet tall. A spotted dog patrolled the ragged lines before settling in the dirt for a snooze.The commander, Ko Maung Saungkha, has raised an army of 1,000 soldiers. But his background is not military. Instead, he is a poet, one of at least three who are leading rebel forces in Myanmar and inspiring young people to fight on the front lines of the brutal civil war.“In our revolution, we need everyone to join, even poets,” Mr. Maung Saungkha said.He amended his statement.“Especially poets,” he added.To his new recruits, though, Mr. Maung Saungkha delivered a lecture devoid of literary embellishments. The soldiers, roughly half from Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar, may have been lured by his social media presence, curated to appeal to romantic notions of resistance, or by the junta’s ordering conscription for all young men and women in the country. But no rhyming couplet — no matter how deft — would save them in battle. For that, they had to learn how to shoot and fight.The jungle simmered. Over the next few hours in Myanmar’s eastern Karen State, more than a dozen enlistees would collapse from the heat, exhaustion or simply nerves. Ko Rakkha, Mr. Maung Saungkha’s chief drill sergeant, kept the soldiers moving. Otherwise, he said, they would not be ready for the front lines in three months’ time.“Whether you’re a doctor or a lawyer or a poet, forget your past, forget your pride,” said Mr. Rakkha, himself a poet. “The point of training is to learn how not to die.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      U Tin Oo, Embattled Pro-Democracy Leader in Myanmar, Dies at 97

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      Once one of his country’s most powerful figures, he helped found its main opposition party. “I had to face up to the harm I did to people when I served in the army,” he said.U Tin Oo, a former Burmese armed forces chief and minister of defense who turned against his country’s repressive government to become a leader of the pro-democracy movement there, died on Saturday in Yangon, Myanmar. He was 97.His personal assistant, U Myint Oo, confirmed his death, in a hospital. He said that Mr. Tin Oo had a weak heart and died of kidney failure and pulmonary edema.Once one of the most powerful figures in what is now Myanmar, Mr. Tin Oo founded the National League for Democracy, the country’s main opposition party, with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi during a violent failed pro-democracy uprising in 1988.Three years later, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize while under house arrest. She is again in detention, and it was not clear whether she had been informed of Mr. Tin Oo’s death.Mr. Tin Oo stood with Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi outside her home in Yangon in 1996.Stuart Isett/Associated Press“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would be deeply saddened to hear of his passing, as she has lost a trusted confidant,” Mr. Myint Oo said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More