Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta on May 2-3, 2008, becoming the country's worst natural disaster. By May 8, with survivors facing starvation and disease, the junta's continued obstruction of international relief efforts — including visas for aid workers — sparked accusations of crimes against humanity and rare talk of invoking the UN's 'responsibility to protect' doctrine.
Cyclone Nargis made landfall with winds exceeding 130 miles per hour, sending a storm surge more than a dozen miles inland across the low-lying, densely populated Irrawaddy Delta, Myanmar's rice-growing heartland. Entire villages were erased; the death toll eventually climbed past 138,000, with more than 2.4 million people affected.
What turned a natural catastrophe into a political scandal was the junta's response. Suspicious of foreign influence and unwilling to allow international scrutiny inside the tightly controlled country, General Than Shwe's government slow-walked or denied visas to foreign disaster relief experts, refused entry to U.S. Navy ships loaded with supplies, and insisted on distributing aid itself — even as it pressed ahead, days later, with a long-planned constitutional referendum widely seen as a sham.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner controversially argued the UN should consider forcing aid through under the 'responsibility to protect' principle normally reserved for mass atrocities, a suggestion that went nowhere but underscored the desperation of the moment. The junta eventually relented somewhat, allowing limited foreign assistance weeks later, but the delay is widely believed to have cost thousands of additional lives.
Key people: Than Shwe