Cyclone Mocha, which hit Sunday, killed at least 41 people in Burma in the west of the country, where the Muslim Rohingya minority lives.
In Burma, villagers are left to fend for themselves, amid the ruins, two days after Cyclone Mocha struck which, according to local officials, left at least 41 dead and more than 100 missing in Rakhine State ( West) where the Rohingya Muslim minority lives, stateless and persecuted.
With winds blowing up to 195 km / h, Mocha fell on Sunday between Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State, and Cox’s Bazar in neighboring Bangladesh where there is a maze of camps for Rohingya refugees who fled the violence of the Burmese army.
In Khaung Doke Kar, 24 villagers died and 17 perished in Bu Ma, near Sittwe, according to local officials and residents. The latest count established Monday by the junta reports five dead and an unspecified number of wounded. It is unknown if any of the deaths of Bu Ma and Khaung Doke Kar are included in this tally.
“There will be more deaths as over a hundred people are missing,” warns Bu Ma chief Karlo. Mocha, the region’s biggest storm in more than a decade, has ravaged villages and Rohingya camps, felled trees and electricity pylons and destroyed fishing boats.
Not far away, Aa Bul Hu Son, 66, has just buried her daughter, the ninth member of her family killed by the cyclone. “I was not in good health before the cyclone, we were slow to decamp,” he explains.
“We were going to leave, suddenly the waves came up and swept us away,” he recalls. “I lost my wife, four daughters, three sons and a granddaughter.”
“Here is the last corpse, that of one of my daughters. I have just found her body in the village lake and I buried it immediately”, he confides, “I did not of words to express my loss”.
close to apartheid
Communications are slowly recovering on Tuesday in Sittwe, home to around 150,000 people, as roads were cleared.
The Muslim Rohingya minority is the target of travel restrictions inside Burma, where they live in near-apartheid conditions, according to human rights groups.
Although settled in the country for generations, most Rohingyas have no access to citizenship, health or education, in this predominantly Buddhist country that the army has governed since the coup. Status as of February 1, 2021.
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it is seeking to confirm reports that Rohingya in displacement camps died in the storm.
UNHCR “is trying to carry out detailed assessments in IDP camps and at different sites in order to get a clearer picture of the situation”, he said.
Without help or food
In Burma, photos released by state media showed aid intended for Rakhine State being loaded onto a ship in Yangon. But according to Rohingyas, nothing has yet reached them.
“No government, no organization has come to our village,” said Bu Ma resident Kyaw Swar Win, 38.
“We haven’t eaten for two days (…) we haven’t received anything and no one has come to ask about us”.
According to the organization ClimateAnalytics, rising temperatures induced by climate change may have contributed to Mocha’s intensity. In 2008, cyclone Nargis devastated the Irrawaddy delta in Burma, killing at least 138,000 people.
The government at the time faced international criticism for its handling of the natural disaster, accusing it of blocking emergency aid and denying access to humanitarian workers and supplies.
