Episode #327: Between the Rubble and the Regime
“We get calls consistently throughout the day, asking people, asking, ‘Can you help find these people? Here’s their name, here’s their photo,’ and in some cases, we have found their bodies,” says Meredith Bunn, founder of Skills for Humanity (SFH). “There are just a lot of people who are missing but still lying next to a dead body... The number of missing is incalculable.”
Bunn joins Insight Myanmar to discuss the staggering humanitarian crisis unfolding in Myanmar following the massive 7.7 magnitude earthquake. Beyond the unimaginable devastation, this disaster struck in the shadow of an ongoing conflict, further deepening the suffering of civilians already displaced and traumatized by years of military violence. Bunn, who has operated in Myanmar for years, offers both a ground-level view of the devastation and a scathing critique of the international response—particularly the risk of funneling aid through the military junta.
It is hard to describe the scope of the disaster. Entire towns, like those across Inle and Sagaing, have been reduced to rubble. Medical facilities are either destroyed or overwhelmed. Access to clean drinking water, food, and shelter is severely limited. In Mandalay, which received a large influx of internally displaced persons (IDPs) prior to the earthquake, the combination of overcrowding and infrastructure collapse has created a disaster within a disaster, with concerns about outbreaks of cholera, giardia, and other waterborne diseases.
Bunn paints a harrowing picture of her teams’ efforts to rescue the trapped and treat the wounded and recover the dead. Many buildings have collapsed entirely, leaving survivors buried alive. Makeshift rescue missions are underway with whatever tools are at hand—ropes, gloves, even bare hands. In some areas, volunteers have recruited hundreds of additional helpers just to lessen the physical and emotional burden. But they are racing against time.
Bunn stresses the fact that children are particularly harmed by the quake: many were already suffering from malnutrition and trauma before this disaster struck. Now, separated from families or orphaned altogether, they are stranded in IDP camps without access to food, medical care, or education. She says that some are trapped in collapsed buildings, and others are lying beside the bodies of their loved ones. She emphasizes the long-term, psychological impact this will have, calling for trauma-informed care and support systems tailored to young survivors.
What makes the situation even more tragic is the lack of coordinated communication. With several organizations pulling bodies from the rubble and no centralized way to report the dead, many families may never learn what happened to their missing relatives.
Bunn comes down hard on the junta, describing how it is exploiting the chaos and trauma for its own twisted ends, as it has done so often before. Rather than ceasing hostilities in the wake of the disaster, the junta has doubled down in an attempt to recoup some of the strategic ground that they had been losing to resistance forces like the People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) and various ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), bombing and attacking areas devastated by the quake. Aid workers, including SFH teams, have been forced to flee sites where they were rescuing the buried and treating the injured due to military assaults.
Beyond the abuse of the disaster for military ends, the junta’s policies are directly inhibiting aid, despite their propaganda to the contrary. Bunn bemoans the fact that relief workers face violence and detention from the very regime that claims to be managing the crisis. Volunteers risk arrest or conscription at military checkpoints. First responders have been beaten, detained, or forced into hiding. Journalists are especially at risk. And she stresses that any aid channeled through the junta is more likely to fund military operations than humanitarian relief. The military, she explains, has a history of diverting aid for its own use, often to feed and equip soldiers rather than civilians. “We cannot keep this monotonous situation of consistently going through junta-approved situations, because I think it’s about time people in the international community realized—it’s a military coup. They’re killing their own people … It’s not a government. We’re talking to a war criminal!”
Bunn does not spare the international aid system in her critique, either. Characterizing it as overly bureaucratic, she describes how it is ignorant of Myanmar’s complex ethnic and political landscape, and often complicit in propping up the junta. She says that large organizations don’t understand what’s happening on the ground. For example, Bunn knows of some that have attempted to deliver seeds to farmers whose land has been bombed, illustrating a lack of basic situational awareness. Others are forced to work through junta-approved organizations, which legitimizes the regime while denying assistance to those in opposition-held territories.
Bunn pleads for international agencies to route aid through trusted, community-based organizations and resistance-aligned networks, such as her own. “My organization is able to get to areas which are thought of as unreachable because we go through ethnic armed organizations and political parties. We garner that trust,” she says. “If international organizations spoke with these groups, aid would reach the people who actually need it.”
When asked what’s most urgently needed, Bunn names two things: funds and supplies. Financial donations help relocate people from danger zones, cover medical treatment, and provide basic shelter and nutrition. But specific supplies are also critical, especially clean water filtration systems like LifeStraws, medical kits, electrolyte packets, safety gear, solar chargers, and long-shelf-life food. She urges listeners to support trusted organizations already operating in Myanmar. She warns that there will be some scams, but stresses that “legitimate groups like Better Burma, Sonne International, and Skills for Humanity are working together to get aid to those who need it.”
A common question she hears from supporters abroad is whether they should travel to Myanmar to assist. Bunn discourages this because of the political instability, and also because more foreigners on the ground means more mouths to feed, more shelter needed, more people to protect—and more risk of drawing attention from the junta. She advises people interested in helping to do so remotely, through donations, fundraising, advocacy, and creating awareness materials.
Turning to governments and international institutions, Bunn makes a series of specific appeals. The first is for Thailand to stop deporting refugees, reduce its collaboration with the junta, and engage with border-based, civil society organizations. Another is that ASEAN and the AHA Centre should avoid giving cash and instead provide material aid like medical kits, food, and shelter items that are harder to repurpose for military use. As far as the United Nations is concerned, especially agencies like UNICEF and WHO, she says that they should deploy trained staff rather than handing over funds to junta-aligned organizations. Long-term mental health, nutrition, and physical rehabilitation programs will be crucial. Finally, Bunn reminds listeners that the United States recently cut aid to Myanmar and downsized its USAID team to just a few individuals. While there’s talk of restoring aid, Bunn warns that even well-intentioned funding must be carefully managed to avoid empowering the junta. She also raises concern over the country’s worsening tuberculosis crisis, particularly the disruption of treatments along the border.
Bunn also emphasizes the role of media. Because the earthquake has brought attention to Myanmar, she stresses that it is crucial to keep a spotlight on the junta’s war crimes. Independent journalists, working at great personal risk, are crucial to that effort. She urges the international community to amplify the voices of independent journalists in Myanmar, recognize their bravery, and take their reporting seriously.
Despite the overwhelming destruction and heartbreak, and the feelings of helplessness that sometimes arise in the face of such a disaster, Bunn and her team continue working tirelessly. “No matter how many people we help, there are thousands more, there are millions more, that need help” she says.