Myanmar's Than Shwe one of world's worst

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By the time a semblance of normality returns to Myanmar after the destruction of Cyclone Nargis, the name of Gen. Than Shwe ought to be ranked as one of the most contemptible leaders of his time.

Shwe previously had escaped the sort of international notoriety reserved for dictators like Pol Pot in Cambodia, Idi Amin in Uganda and Joseph Stalin in Russia.

But history will hold him accountable for his actions in denying aid to an estimated 1.3 million left homeless, starving and threatened by disease in the wake of the cyclone that swept across Myanmar on May 2, as well as for failure to give adequate warning of the cyclone that may have killed 100,000 people.

For more than two weeks now, foreign aid workers have been ready in nearby countries to ship emergency supplies. Huge stacks of supplies are standing on a runway near waiting planes in Thailand. American and French ships loaded with food and medicine wait offshore.

Meanwhile, the military junta led by Shwe has rebuffed offers of help. The flow of aid has been limited to a trickle. Foreign aid workers have been denied visas.

Because the junta controls the media and has blocked international news media, news accounts of current conditions in Myanmar are sketchy and incomplete.

A few stories have leaked out. A story in the Los Angles Times offered a snapshot of conditions in the village of Wyat Mon, where the stench of rotting bodies hangs in the air. “It’s not 10, it’s not 100, it’s thousands of bodies,” Thon Tun said. “We gave up collecting corpses around here. It’s impossible to bury them properly.”

The 20 villagers out of 45 who survived the cyclone are among the lucky who have been supplied with rice. But the storm destroyed their seed rice and killed the water buffalo they use in the fields. Their future is grim.

Conditions may be even worse in more remote regions of the Irawaddy Delta. There are reports of survivors stricken by waterborne diseases. Those injured in the storm are dying of infection. Survivors huddle under makeshift shelter without furniture, clothing or bedding as rain continues to fall.

More than two weeks passed before Shwe and his clique of generals finally agreed to let the Association of Southeast Asian Nations lead an international aid effort, but even then the generals insisted on restricting the movement of aid workers.

Symbolic of the general’s insistence on retaining control was the practice early in rescue of efforts of plastering the names of the junta’s top generals on boxes of foreign aid before distribution.

Ultimately this tragedy will have names of the generals written all over it. At the top of the list will be the leader in the junta, Gen. Than Shwe, responsible for the deaths of untold thousands of his countrymen.