The inexplicable behaviour of Burma’s generals in the wake of Cyclone Nargis has provoked a crescendo of outrage from agencies struggling to save the two million people stranded by the storm from starvation and disease. For many the excruciatingly slow pace of the relief effort has been unbearable. One veteran aid worker from the French group Comité de Secours Internationaux, has described the junta’s response to the crisis as a “crime against humanity… like they are taking a gun and shooting their own people.” The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, formerly the founder of the aid agency Doctors Without Borders, even suggested the desperate measure of entering the country under the UN’s doctrine of ‘responsibility’ rather than wait for Burma’s notoriously inefficient government bureaucracy to grant formal permission.
