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Cyclone Mocha inflicted devastation in Arakan in the midst of a ceasefire between the military State Administration Council and Arakan Army. In this commentary, Border News Agency analyses the impact, how the different authorities responded and the continuing fall-out. In a country in conflict, new paradigms in aid delivery need to be developed through local community, civil society and non-state armed groups if relief and recovery support are to be delivered to the suffering peoples.
These commentaries are intended to contribute to a broader understanding of the many challenges facing the country and its peoples.
See the complete list of all the Myanmar commentaries.
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Assessing What is Happening in Arakan
One month after Cyclone Mocha
A Myanmar commentary by Border News Agency*
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Rathedaung town from a nearby hill, 25 May 2023. / Credit: BNA
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Update on the ground-level situation
One month after the ‘extremely severe’ Cyclone Mocha strike on the coast of Arakan (Rakhine State) in western Myanmar on 14 May 2023, immense and tragic consequences are still unfolding in its aftermath. Like many other parts of the country, Arakan is a territory where a parallel governance – in this case between the Myanmar military junta and the United League of Arakan (ULA) – exists in a politically-contested social landscape. Despite having reached an ‘informal and humanitarian ceasefire’ in late November 2022 between the regime, known as the State Administration Council (SAC), and the Arakan Army (AA), the ULA’s military wing, the effective cooperation between the two authorities is still difficult, with another layer of humanitarian emergency caused by the cyclone added on top of other crises that remain unresolved.
On 18 May, the SAC released a statement reporting the total number of affected people to be around 1.16 million, with 136 lives lost and 62 people injured. The regime also announced that total damages amounted to nearly 47 billion kyats. Later, the number of total deaths was revised to 148, which included 117 Rohingyas. Prior to this, the Humanitarian and Development Coordination Office (HDCO), a branch of the ULA, released a statement on 17 May reporting that around 1.5 million people could be affected, and more than 400,000 buildings were severely damaged. But the statement did not mention the total number of deaths and the total estimated cost of damages, possibly due to data insufficiency or to avoid controversy.
Up till now, the latest data on the disaster has been released by the Cyclone Mocha Emergency Rescue and Rehabilitation Committee (ERRC), which is the key responsible body of the ULA for humanitarian emergencies and chaired by Dr Nyo Twan Awng, second chief of the ULA-AA. On 14 June, the ERRC released a statement stating that only 30 percent of the total affected population have received emergency relief provisions, such as food and shelter. For the first time, the ULA also released the total number of deaths as 164, with the highest number reported from Sittwe (104), followed by Rathedaung (41), Pauktaw (9), Buthidaung (5), Ponnagyun (4), and Kyauktaw (2). The number of deaths reported by ULA and SAC did not differ significantly.
Both of these figures suggest that the news reporting of over 400 Rohingyas dying in the cyclone is not realistic or may be exaggerated. However, in reply, many local media and civil society organisations (CSOs) have cautioned that the total extent of the disaster impact still cannot be assessed due to the lack of comprehensive and reliable pre- and post-cyclone data. And any chance of gaining a more informed picture of rehabilitation needs and humanitarian loss is compounded by the restrictions on travel, communication and access imposed by the junta authorities throughout the affected areas.
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* The author is founder, editor and journalist from Border News Agency (BNA), which was established on 8 August 2020 in commemoration of the 8888 movement, a significant popular pro-democracy uprising in 1988 in Myanmar. The key prioritized areas of the media agency include the rights of minority groups in Arakan and Myanmar, the rights to land and property ownership, and freedom of expression and media.
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