Myanmar’s Earthquake: A Crisis Built On Oppression – OpEd

On March 28, as Myanmar’s Muslims knelt in prayer during Ramadan’s holiest Friday, the ground beneath them split open. A 7.7 magnitude earthquake tore through central Myanmar, flattening neighborhoods in Mandalay and burying entire communities. Two days later, survivors dig through rubble with their hands, hospitals lie in ruins, and the world’s silence is deafening. This is not just a natural disaster—it is the culmination of decades of systemic discrimination, militarized neglect, and global apathy.

The quake struck at the precise moment mosques were most crowded. Hundreds died instantly under collapsing roofs—structures the governments had long forbidden worshippers to reinforce. “We pleaded for years to repair cracks, to add beams,” said a Sagaing imam, his voice trembling as he gestured to a mound of debris where his mosque once stood. “They said no. Now my congregation is gone.” Nearly 450 deaths are confirmed, but survivors whisper the true toll is far higher. These were not random tragedies. They were political choices. Myanmar’s military junta, which has systematically targeted religious minorities for decades, turned places of worship into death traps. The earthquake merely finished the job.

There are no rescue teams, cranes, or hope in the aftermath. The junta, accused of ethnic cleansing and war crimes, has abandoned its people. Youth volunteers who once mobilized during crises have fled conscription or been jailed. “We have shovels and desperation—that’s all,” said a 24-year-old former teacher digging through the ruins of a monastery where hundreds of monks perished. Hospitals, already gutted by the regime’s neglect, lack even basic supplies. “We’re using torn curtains as bandages,” a nurse confessed, her hands stained with blood. The junta’s legacy is a nation stripped of infrastructure and empathy, where disaster response is an act of solitary defiance.

But this earthquake did not strike a blank slate. It shattered a country already fractured by civil war, where junta airstrikes have displaced millions and children learn to duck before they learn to read. Ancient cultural landmarks—the Ava Bridge, the Mahamuni Pagoda, centuries-old monasteries, churches, temples, and mosques—have crumbled, erasing history alongside lives. “These sites held our stories,” said an 82-year-old grandma, staring at the dust where her village temple once stood. “Now we are ghosts in our land.” The quake’s aftershocks are literal and metaphorical: trauma layered on trauma, magnifying grief. Families who escaped junta violence now sleep in fields, fearing landslides will finish what soldiers started.

The world’s response will define this moment. International aid agencies face a moral quagmire: collaborate with a murderous regime that steals aid or bypass it to support local networks operating in the shadows. History offers a grim lesson. After Cyclone Nargis in 2008, the junta diverted relief supplies, leaving over 100,000 to die. Today, the stakes are higher. Myanmar’s civil society—battered but unbroken—pleads for direct support. “Don’t wait for the regime’s permission,” urged a volunteer with an underground rescue group. “We’re drowning now.” Grassroots medics, community kitchens, and ad-hoc rescue teams need funding, not sympathy. ASEAN and the UN must act without the junta’s consent. Every hour of delay is a death sentence.

This catastrophe is a test of global conscience. To view it as merely a “natural disaster” is to ignore the man-made rot beneath: a regime that engineers suffering and a world that too often tolerates it. Myanmar’s people are not asking for pity. They demand solidarity—the kind that bypasses tyrants and empowers those fighting to survive. Donate to trusted local organizations. Pressure governments to reject junta-controlled aid channels. Amplify the voices of those the regime tries to silence. The earthquake was inevitable in a land stripped of its right to prepare; the suffering that followed was not. As survivors dig graves with their hands, the world must decide: Will it watch, or will it finally act