Feature - Upfront
Craig Strathern
by Matt Nippert
New Zealander Craig Strathern was one of the first Westerners to enter Myanmar after Cyclone Nargis ravaged the country and killed tens of thousands of people. Although a paranoid government has hampered aid agencies’ efforts to get personnel and supplies into the country, Strathern managed to secure a rare visa and is assisting the International Committee of the Red Cross. Originally from Timaru, he was interviewed via satellite phone from Yangon.
Is there still evidence of storm damage on the streets? Virtually every tree has been toppled, and the size of some the trees that fell onto buildings had to be seen to believed. All that has been pretty much cleaned up now, unless you look over the fences and see the stumps. However, on the outskirts of the city, it’s a different story. Clearly they’re prioritising their resources in the commercial area. Every day you see more traffic lights going back on. But you don’t have to travel too far outside Yangon to see the extent of the damage.
But you aren’t able to travel outside the city to see the most-affected areas, are you? I can’t talk from first-hand experience because, as everybody knows, foreigners are prevented from entering the Irrawaddy delta area. Foreigners are, by and large, restricted to Yangon. The Myanmar Red Cross is able to get trucks down to many of the affected areas, and then it’s a matter of transferring the goods onto boats. The vastness of the area, the network of waterways and the scattered communities mean that getting aid to everybody is such a huge task, a huge logistical task, which would be huge for any country, but particularly so for this one.
You worked in Aceh after the Boxing Day tsunami. How does Cyclone Nargis compare as a disaster? There are a couple of contrasts. In Aceh, even though it had suffered from a horrendous internal armed conflict, the government obviously let in international assistance very quickly, and it was a huge operation – so clearly there’s a big difference here in terms of international personnel being able to lend a hand. But there are a lot similarities as well: difficult access, and the issue of dead bodies. In Aceh, because of the Islamic influence, there was a religious, social and cultural need to bury the dead with dignity, or as much dignity as possible, as soon as possible. Here, we don’t have that, and it seems that no one is systematically trying to address the issue of bodies. That’s something that the Red Cross is attempting to do, but finding people who are willing to engage in this rather unpleasant task is a challenge.
What are the consequences if tens of thousands of bodies aren’t disposed of quickly and safely? We’re trying hard to dispel the myth that they create a major public health danger. That’s not the case. There is some degree of risk – for example, if you have a major concentration of dead bodies in a public drinking-water catchment – but the real impact is that it’s a very distressing and unpleasant sight to behold. People are avoiding the areas where bodies are concentrated, and what’s going to make the job even harder is that we’re on the point of the monsoon season and large parts of the Irrawaddy delta are going to be flooded in the next few weeks. Many roads will become impassable, and then we’re going to have to rely much more on boats.
Do you think an American in your position would have had similar success in getting into the country? I may well have a personal view on that, but one of the principles of the Red Cross is that we don’t speculate on political issues. But it’s true that, wherever I’ve worked in the world for the International Committee of the Red Cross, the advantage of having a New Zealand passport has been pretty significant. After being stopped in Serbia by a heavily armed checkpoint following the assassination of the prime minister, I pulled out my passport, and the guy with the black balaclava and the rather significant gun looked at it, turned to his mates and said, “New Zealander. Haka.”
Thank God for the All Blacks, eh? No. These guys knew the haka because of our basketball team.
