Burma, also known as Myanmar, was in the news earlier this year when Buddhist monks and citizens protested the 46-year military dictatorship, only to be suppressed and forced to flee the country or risk being jailed. Now, a new kind of human rights struggle has hit the Southeast Asian country. On May 3rd, a massive cyclone ripped through the impoverished country; the results have been devastating. Here are the facts:

Fact 1

A cyclone is similar to a hurricane, and has fast winds, flooding and heavy rain just as we saw with Hurricane Katrina. Tropical Cyclone Nargis, battered the country with winds of 150mph and 11.48 feet storm water surges.

Fact 2

A tidal wave that accompanied the cyclone was more deadly than the wind. The wave was up to 12 feet high, and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages.

Fact 3

Burma was once rich with mangrove forests which provided a natural floodwall along the coast. But cutting down these tropical forests to make room for farmland left land exposed to erosion and home to flooding.

Fact 4

The people of Burma were only given 48 hours warning, if they had radio access, to prepare. Many didn’t know anything was about to happen.

Fact 5

So far, the death toll is 22,000 (some have estimated as high as 63,000)and 41,000 missing. More than 10,000 people were killed in a single town that was demolished.

Fact 6

Based on a satellite map made available by the U.N., the storm's damage was concentrated over about a 30,000-square-kilometer area along the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Martaban coastlines, home to nearly a quarter of Myanmar's 57 million people.

Fact 7

One estimate by aid groups says that 90% of the homes in Burma were destroyed. In one area, only four homes remained from a total of 369. The U.N. estimates one million could be homeless.

Fact 8

By an unusual accident of timing, the cyclone ripped through the country just a week before the May 10 referendum that the military dictatorship hoped would go in its favor, despite a great deal of opposition from the country's pro-democracy movement.

Fact 9

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that five states hit hardest by Saturday's cyclone produce 65 percent of the country's rice.

Fact 10

The focus is to get food and water to those affected, cleaning up all the dead bodies, then moving to help rebuild. These goals have been difficult due to infrastructure problems like blocked roads. In addition, the military government doesn’t have social services in place, like the US's FEMA, to help the foreign aid workers.

Fact 11

By an unusual accident of timing, the cyclone ripped through the country just a week before the May 10 referendum that the military dictatorship hoped would go in its favor, despite a great deal of opposition from the country's pro-democracy movement.The cyclone has put the political process on hold, but the chaos could yield either a more harsh military dictatorship with no election, or a more free representative democracy. But first the survivors of Burma need aid.

Because Burma is so devastated and the government lacks he ability to rebuild its people’s lives, anything we can do can make a big difference to the cyclone survivors! What can you do?

Sources:
CNN
Washington Post
Tree Hugger