Myanmar needs a lasting humanitarian ceasefire and the establishment of Myanmar Fund for Earthquake Relief and Reconstruction
The 28-March earthquake that struck Myanmar at 12:50 pm local time, left a number of cities, towns, villages in the heartland of ethnic majority Burmese or Bama, severely damaged. Sagaing, the closet to the epic centre, is reportedly 80% destroyed. And large segments of Mandalay, the second most populous city with roughly 2 million residents, are left in ruins. The earthquake didn’t spare the junta’s neo-totalitarian, fortress-capital, fitted with N. Korea-designed underground tunnels, said to be large enough to conceal fighter-jets. The head of the military junta, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, admitted to the local media, that he had to crawl under his office desk during the earthquake. And Vice Senior General Soe Win and other cabinet members including the Foreign Affairs Minister Than Swe have been rendered office-less by the earthquake. The land-locked capital was built out of Myanmar military leaderships’ twofold-signature of xenophobia and paranoia: then ruling dictat...