A monk and other victims of the March 28 quake are treated under shelters outside Mandalay General Hospital. Credit: IPS
By IPS Reporters and Guy Dinmore
MANDALAY, YANGON, LONDON, Apr 11 2025 – Two weeks after a devastating earthquake hit central Myanmar, the military junta is directing flows of international aid to urban centres it controls while bombing civilians in areas held by resistance forces, breaking a ceasefire.
With the confirmed death toll from the March 28 quake approaching 4,000 people, foreign aid efforts are picking up, led by regime ally China and joined by other neighbouring countries, including India, Bangladesh and Thailand, as well as major relief agencies and the European Commission.
But the extent of the disaster, affecting an estimated two million people, has revealed the junta’s limits of resources and manpower after four years of civil war and with state structures around health and education severely weakened by the non-violent Civil Disobedience Movement.
“We have not received any assistance from the authorities. Assistance is almost non-existent. The authorities’ capability for rescue is very limited. Rescue groups reached affected communities very late, and so we’re seeing more losses than should have happened,” said Ko Soe, whose two-storey house in Myit Thar town in Mandalay Region is no longer habitable.
The ruins of a residential building in Pyinmana Township near the capital Nay Pyi Taw. Credit: IPS
“We’re hit with a huge financial burden because we cannot afford the money to repair our house. It hurts me to see other people who have lost their loved ones and their houses, and I feel guilty not being able to help,” he told IPS.
He and other survivors have accused the regime of not allowing healthcare workers who quit the state sector in protest against the 2021 coup to treat the injured. Private clinics and hospitals staffed by former state doctors and nurses had been shut down before the quake and are not allowed to reopen.
Prices of food, fuel and other essentials are rising, and people fear crime and looting. “With all these challenges, the military is also conscripting people against their will,” Ko Soe said.
In many areas the relief effort is driven by local individuals and charities, helped by donations and also money sent by the parallel National Unity Government (NUG), which was set up by lawmakers ousted in the coup and partly operates from outside Myanmar.
Destroyed bridges, roads, power supplies and telecommunications have already hampered relief efforts and the junta is exercising what controls it can.
Deputy military chief Soe Win declared on April 5 that aid organisations were not allowed to operate independently and required the regime’s authorisation. Many have been forced to abandon their missions. Unknown numbers of volunteers have been arrested, and some conscripted.
By April 6, with no hope of digging out more survivors, foreign search and rescue teams were leaving, including those from Singapore, Malaysia and India. Some donated equipment to the Myanmar fire service. Red Cross societies in various countries, including the UK, are mostly working through the Myanmar Red Cross, which is effectively a wing of the junta.
The regime’s State Administration Council, led by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, has prioritised relief and aid efforts in Nay Pyi Taw, the military stronghold and showcase city declared the capital in 2005, and Mandalay, the country’s second largest city, as well as Buddhist temples and monasteries.
Soldiers clear rubble from Mahamuni Buddha Temple, a symbol of Mandalay. Credit: IPS
“I lost my aunt and four-year-old niece when their house collapsed. Only one wall is left standing. Our town has many ancient buildings and many collapsed in the quake,” said Thin Thin from Yamethin town in Mandalay Region.
“The government [junta] is not offering us any help. Only people around the neighbourhood are assisting in clearing the debris. Everything we need to rebuild the house is now so expensive. What we need is cash assistance,” she told IPS.
David Gum Awng, deputy minister of international cooperation for the NUG, which is trying to coordinate relief efforts where possible, said the regime was restricting access to areas beyond the junta’s control, particularly in Sagaing Region, the epicentre of the 7.7 magnitude quake and where conflict has been acute for several years. Regime air strikes have continued there.
He told IPS that the NUG was collaborating with UN agencies and international relief groups to help expand their reach by providing safety, clearing routes and sharing information.
“The prospects for peace are in limbo as the junta hasn’t exhibited any sign or willingness for a lasting and positive peace,” he said.
“SAC [junta] troops are still engaged in active combat and offensives and drone attacks, making the relief efforts even more difficult,” he said. “If the junta is serious about sustainable peace, they can easily release all the political prisoners first and cease all their offensives. That would be a very good start, and it hasn’t happened yet.”
The NUG said that from March 28, when the quake struck, to April 8, the junta had carried out 92 air strikes and artillery attacks, killing 72 civilians, including 30 women and six children. Sagaing and Mandalay regions were most targeted.
The junta declared a conditional three-week ceasefire under international pressure on April 2, which it immediately broke, and has accused various ethnic armed groups and People’s Defence Forces of breaking their own ceasefire declarations. In remote western Chin State, an alliance of ethnic armed forces this week captured the military stronghold of Falam after a five-month siege, while there are reports the junta might wrest back control of Lashio, a key town in Shan State.
With the military stretched on multiple fronts and weakened by defections and casualties, the army has had little scope or appetite for quake relief.
“The far better-resourced army has, for the most part, only deployed small bands of soldiers to protect high-profile buildings, escort visiting generals and clear up debris at major Buddhist sites. Mandalay locals say the soldiers have failed to prevent looting in the city,” Frontier Myanmar, an independent media outlet, reported.
In the midst of war and post-quake chaos, the regime – which holds the main cities but only about one third of the territory – reiterated its intention to hold elections in four weeks spanning late 2025 and early 2026. A deadline of May 9 was set for the formation of new political parties. Many parties, including the National League for Democracy (NLD), which won the 2020 elections annulled by the military, have been outlawed already and are sure to boycott the polls. NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi remains in prison in the capital.
Min Aung Hlaing, who has been able to make just a few foreign trips since he seized power, took time to attend a regional summit hosted by Thailand in Bangkok on April 4.
On the sidelines, the 68-year-old general met Muhammad Yunus, head of Bangladesh’s transitional government who has pressed Myanmar to start repatriating some of the 1.3 million Rohingya Muslim refugees, most forced into Bangladesh in a wave of ethnic cleansing in 2017.
That same day, the Bangladesh government’s press office said Myanmar had confirmed that 180,000 Rohingya refugees were eligible to return.
The repatriation process has been stalled for years. Many refugees refuse to return as long as they are denied citizenship and other rights. In the meantime, the Myanmar regime has lost control over much of the border state of Rakhine to the mainly Buddhist nationalist Arakan Army, throwing into doubt the viability of any large-scale repatriation operation.
“While the people of Myanmar mourn the dead, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing is enjoying a bit of diplomatic sunshine,” commented Frontier Myanmar in an editorial, noting his first trip to a Southeast Asian country since early 2021 and his handshakes in Bangkok with Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and India’s Narendra Modi.
Junta-controlled media have highlighted the 20 or so countries sending aid to Myanmar, particularly how Min Aung Hlaing met Elliott Tenpenny, a US doctor running a field hospital in Zabuthiri Township near the capital for the International Disaster Response Unit of Samaritan’s Purse, a US evangelical Christian charity.
Min Aung Hlaing was quoted as thanking the US government and the American people for their help. No mention was made of US sanctions on his regime.
The Trump administration said it had allocated an initial $3m only for Myanmar quake relief. Reuters news agency reported that a three-person USAID team was notified while on the ground that they had been sacked under the administration’s dismantling of its official aid network.
The European Union has responded with 13 million euros of aid and called on “all parties” to grant unimpeded access. It said it had 12 European experts and two EU Liaison Officers on the ground to coordinate with “humanitarian partners”.
OCHA, the UN coordinating agency, estimates the quake added 2.0 million people to the 4.3 million in that central area already in need of humanitarian assistance. The agency estimated funding requirements of $375 million.
The NUG says it has supplied cash assistance of 1.6 billion kyat (about US$760,000 at the open market rate) to five quake-hit areas: Sagaing, Mandalay and Bago regions, southern Shan state and Nay Pyi Taw.
Even before the quake, the UN estimated that a total of nearly 20 million people in Myanmar were in need of humanitarian assistance and that 3.5 million were internally displaced by conflict.
International Crisis Group analyst Richard Horsey estimated that reconstruction costs will run into “tens of billions of dollars” – sums that impoverished and war-torn Myanmar can only dream of.
IPS UN Bureau Report,
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?’http’:’https’;if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+’://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js’;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, ‘script’, ‘twitter-wjs’);
