BANGKOK (AFP) – Protesters displayed a banner calling Myanmar’s junta chief a “murderer” as he joined a regional summit in Bangkok yesterday, a week after a huge earthquake killed thousands, leaving desperate survivors pleading for food and shelter.
More than 3,000 people are confirmed dead after the 7.7-magnitude quake, and the United Nations estimates that up to three million may have been affected in some way – many left without shelter after their homes were destroyed.
Many nations have sent aid and rescue teams, but on the ground in some of the worst-hit areas there is little sign of Myanmar’s ruling military helping survivors.
Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing held talks with leaders from Bay of Bengal littoral nations at a plush Bangkok hotel yesterday.
The decision to invite him drew criticism, and outside the venue protesters hung a banner from a bridge reading: “We do not welcome murderer Min Aung Hlaing.”
The latest death toll in Myanmar stands at 3,145, with 4,589 injured and 221 missing, according to state media. In Bangkok, 22 people were killed, most of them crushed when a tower block under construction collapsed.
In Sagaing, the Myanmar city close to the epicentre of last week’s quake and where an estimated 80 per cent of buildings have been damaged, AFP journalists witnessed desperate scenes in recent days as hundreds of exhausted, hungry survivors scrambled for supplies.
Teams of citizen volunteers from around Myanmar piled into Sagaing in trucks laden with water, oil, rice and other basic necessities.
With so many homes in Sagaing and neighbouring Mandalay left uninhabitable by the quake, survivors have been sleeping in the streets for a week, and are badly in need of proper shelter.
