A year after a large cyclone destroyed the Irrawaddy Delta of Myan­mar peo­ple there are still rebuild­ing. Some of the phys­i­cal dam­age has been restored, and Farm­ers have gone back to grow­ing crops after some loans and donations.

Most of the rebuild­ing was done by aid groups that were reluc­tantly allowed in by the gov­ern­ment. The mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment of Myan­mar tries to con­trol every­thing in the coun­try. The cyclone was too much for the gov­ern­ment to con­trol, so they allowed oth­ers to do the work of rebuilding.

In this New York Times arti­cle we learn of an aid group that uses help­ing peo­ple to be sub­ver­sive to the gov­ern­ment. Min­galar Myan­mar was a begun by a fam­ily with a his­tory of oppos­ing the gov­ern­ment. In this piece we see how build­ing houses and feed­ing peo­ple peace­fully opposes a military.

“The gov­ern­ment always believes every­thing will be solved by giv­ing orders,” said Daw Yuza Maw Htoon, who founded Min­galar Myan­mar with her hus­band, U Phone Win. “It failed. They rec­og­nize the fail­ure. It’s much beyond their capacity.”

When Cyclone Nar­gis struck the Irrawaddy Delta in May 2008, killing upwards of 130,000 peo­ple, a num­ber of local orga­ni­za­tions ral­lied to offer assis­tance. After ini­tial resis­tance, the gov­ern­ment agreed to let groups like Min­galar dis­trib­ute aid inde­pen­dently in the delta. To date, Min­galar alone has reached 700 vil­lages, spent $3 mil­lion in the delta and grown to 80 employ­ees from 5. In Nauk Pyan Toe, the vil­lage was rebuilt using financ­ing from the Swedish and British gov­ern­ments, a Malaysian char­ity and a Bud­dhist organization.

With a $300,000 dona­tion from the Sin­ga­pore Embassy and Sin­ga­porean busi­nesses, Min­galar also built 1,500 boats for the vic­tims of the cyclone.
…

The gov­ern­ment has announced elec­tions for next year, the first in two decades. Although it appears likely they will be rigged in favor of the mil­i­tary, some for­eign observers believe they may also lead to a devo­lu­tion of some respon­si­bil­i­ties and power to civic groups like Min­galar Myanmar.

Mingalar’s work is not polit­i­cal, the orga­ni­za­tion tells the author­i­ties. And yet in the top-down, yes-sir con­text of four-and-a-half decades of mil­i­tary rule in Myan­mar, it is dif­fi­cult to see the group’s work as any­thing but a chal­lenge to the sta­tus quo.

Mingalar’s sem­i­nars in remote vil­lages encour­age col­lec­tive deci­sion– mak­ing and community-based activism, ideas that have been eclipsed by a gov­ern­ment that instills fear in those who step out of line.

“The idea is that you have to give pri­or­ity to people’s opin­ion,” said Ms. Yuza Maw Htoon.

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