Carrying torrential rains and intense gusts of wind, Cyclone Mocha devastated Burma. The death toll now stands at 145 in the country, the junta announced in a statement on Friday. In Geneva, the UN said that some 800,000 people need emergency food aid.
Cyclone Mocha hit Burma and Bangladesh on Sunday, with driving rains and 195 km/h winds that demolished buildings and turned streets into rivers. The strongest storm to hit the region in more than a decade has torn through villages, uprooted trees and cut communications across much of Rakhine state, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya live in camps for the displaced. following decades of inter-ethnic conflict.
The Rohingyas, the first victims
“A total of 145 people were killed in the cyclone,” the junta’s information team said in the statement. “According to the information we have obtained, 4 soldiers, 24 locals and 117 Bengalis were killed in the storm,” she said. “Bengali” is a pejorative term used in Burma to designate the Muslim minority.
Some 600,000 Rohingyas have lived for several generations in Burma, deprived of access to health and education, “under an apartheid regime”, according to Amnesty International. All are treated as foreigners and even have to ask for permission before traveling outside their village. A Rohingya village chief told AFP that more than 100 people were missing in his village alone as a result of the cyclone.
Junta denies 400 Rohingya dead
Another village chief near Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, told AFP that at least 105 Rohingya had died around the town, and the count was not over. In neighboring Bangladesh, officials said no one died in the cyclone, which passed near huge refugee camps housing nearly a million Rohingya. The junta’s statement also said that media reports of the deaths of 400 Rohingyas are “false” and that action will be taken against the media outlets that published them.
Since its coup more than two years ago, the junta has arrested dozens of journalists and shut down media deemed critical of its regime. In May 2008, Nargis left at least 138,000 dead or missing in Burma, the worst natural disaster in the country’s history. The reaction of the then junta to the disaster was criticized by the international community. She was accused of blocking emergency aid.