In Mandalay, civilians dig bare hands at victims

« Are we going to die dad? » Asked the 3.5 year old Mon While the world growl and trembled. The rest of the family had also gathered there. Sitting on the floor in the spacious compound, they saw the further on the buildings. Fire and smoke filled the air. « It seemed as if the end of time had arrived. We are so grateful that we are still alive, » says Win Moe.

Now they exchange messages about dead, missing and other disaster. A building in their residential area collapsed and there are still many dead under the rubble. Monks who were busy with their exams in large groups died. Muslims also lost life. Mandalay has countless mosques and when the earthquake started many were busy with Friday prayer. If a family member from abroad succeeds in reaching the family, she says emotionally on the phone: « I ask you to tell me who is still alive, don’t tell me about the dead. »

The death toll is on Sunday at more than sixteen hundred and is still rising. Messages from eyewitnesses in the disaster area fear that the number is in reality many times higher. There will only be information from the disaster area because the telephone connections are damaged. Access is difficult, because roads and airports also got hits. The country has hardly any professional rescue workers and is not prepared for earthquakes or offering emergency aid.

Citizens dig for hours with their bare hands in attempts to find victims. According to sources with contacts in Mandalay, they desperately beg for excavators and other equipment.

Cramped buildings

For the time being, the second city seems to be the most affected. Parts of the city have changed into a provisional refugee camp. In long rows people camp on the verges and on the sidewalks. Others roam around dazed, without realizing that their loved ones are dead or missing. Some are so heavily traumatized that they can no longer say a word.

Mandalay grew rapidly from a pleasant rural place to a trade center of one and a half million inhabitants. With cheap materials and without any building regulations, block boxes and other cramped constructions that now collapse all too easily. After decades living under a corrupt military regime that invests mainly in Defense, the population has a long experience with self -reliance. « We do not survive thanks to, but despite the authorities, » is a common saying. Restaurants in Mandalay offer free meals. Cooking is done together.

The earthquake affects a society that was already very vulnerable anyway. When the army protests against the state grip of 1 February 2021 with great violence, an armed popular uprising started. In large parts of the country there is fighting between the regime and resistance groups. According to the UN, more than 3.5 million people are displaced and about a third of the population depends on food aid.

The medical care, which is just so crucial in the acute phase of a disaster, had heavy blows. « A total catastrophe, » a care provider with a long track record in Myanmar calls the system of health care. Since the coup, the hospitals and clinics lost around 70 percent of their doctors. In February 2021, the medical sector took the lead at strikes in protest against the grip. Many then joined the resistance, went to work in the private sector or fled abroad.

Poverty in Myanmar has increased enormously after the coup. « People have been living on the verge of a disaster for years. With financial and social misery and then that earthquake comes on top. They have no buffer, » says the care provider. Also across borders, the earthquake takes its toll among Myanmarese. Many labor migrants from Myanmar worked on the skyscraper under construction in Bangkok. There were killing, dozens are still stuck in the rubble.

Showpall

The Global New Light of MyanmarThe mouthpiece of the Junta, which is notorious for concealing bad news, reports extensively about the earthquake. On the front page, juntal leader Min Aung Hlaing is in uniform while visiting the victims in a hospital in the capital Nypyitaw. He also makes a call for international help.

« The soldiers are now also seriously affected, » explains Arts, writer and political analyst Ma Thida that unusual cry for help. The capital where the administrative center and the military headquarters are also suffered, there was considerable damage and there were killing.

Far from the population, the soldiers were in the center of the country in 2005 and thought they were safe. Naypyitaw, which means seat of the kings, is the flagship of the army top and was erected from nowhere. Roads as wide as runways, a parliament building with vast wings and an army museum to get lost in, showed the megalomaniac ambitions of the generals. Because of the cheap materials and the enormous corruption, cracks and the roads appeared after a few months. But when the Cyclone Nargis made tens of thousands of victims in 2008, the military leaders remained unharmed.

The state television shows General Min Aung Hlaing between debris in a collapsed stairwell of the pompous presidential palace. It is a public secret that the juntal leader aspires to presidency. He has announced elections, although that planning always shifts to the horizon.

Mooring

Ma Thida tries to imagine his state of mind now that the center of power has also been hit. She points to the major role of superstition in Myanmarse culture. Min Aung Hlaing and his supporters are also guided by predictions of fortune tellers and astrologers. According to the Almanak who consult many Myanmarese, an earthquake would announce the end of a kingdom on a Friday. That undoubtedly plays through the heads of the generals, she says. On social media it is full of rumors about this omen. And the Mahamuni pagoda, one of the most famous temples in the country, was badly damaged. The prediction is that with the collapse of this renowned sanctuary the king would come to an end and that a new leader would get up. In the midst of all their need, even the family in Mandalay speculates about the future of the regime.

Ma Thida has a reputation of resilience. Mentally unbroken, she came out of prison in 1999 after six years. Never before she sounded so excited as after Friday’s earthquake. Just like for many other countrymen, it now feels like her country was born for fate. « I’m so tired of the sadness, » she says from exile. The tragic images of dead and destruction keep her out of sleep. But her grief is also about what her country awaits.

A excavator is looking for victims near the Maharmyatmuni pagoda in Mandalay. There is a great defect in such equipment.

From Europe, she closely follows developments after the coup. Also in a few ethnic areas where minorities have been fighting for equal rights and more autonomy for decades, the battle flared up again in the last four years. The resistance of a range of old and new armed groups that is financed by Myanmareers from home and abroad holds up, and even gains ground. As a result, Ma Thida dared to hope for a change, even though the population pays a high price for the resistance.

Bombing

Ma Thida warns that calling for peace that sounds all the louder here and there now that the country is in such a need, can turn out to be wrong. Also about ten years ago when a period of early transition started, millions of projects and international effort had to put an end to the conflicts. It never got further than a truce with a few small ethnic minorities, and in the meantime the army benefited. « The soldiers are not interested in peace. » Her emotion is audible when she says: “When the weather goes like this, our country is not only the present, but also the future.

The Junta has lost control in a large part of the country. Never before in its history, the army was in such heavy weather. Now that it has to fight so many fronts at the same time, the troops are lacking. That is why more and more use of bombers, artillery and drones. In addition, civil goals such as hospitals, schools, religious buildings and villages are the target.

The government of National Unity that was founded after the coup by deprived members of parliament and other politicians and operates from resistance areas and abroad has announced a two-week ceasefires to perform rescue operations.

A commander of one of the armed resistance groups writes that a fighter plane carried out near a bombing, while the earthquake imitated. There are also reports from other parts of the country that the regime continues with violence from the air while the country is struggling with the consequences of the earthquake.

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