Earthquake could hasten fall of Myanmar's dictator

Denied democracy by a military regime and devastated by natural disaster, Myanmar’s suffering people are in their biggest hour of need and deserve help, says Annabel Venning

- Annabel Venning

A group of Buddhist monks in saffron robes are gathered beside a shrine lying collapsed on the ground but seemingly intact, as if someone has pushed it over. They are not looking at this but at a mid-rise, primrose-yellow building a few hundred yards away.

As the monks film on their phones - the building, seemingly solid one moment, suddenly collapses into itself, the upper storeys disappearing in a cloud of dust as the monks flinch, crouch and then quickly resume filming again. One can only hope that everyone inside had already got out.

Meanwhile, the top of the spire of Shwe Sar Yan pagoda near Mandalay, near the epicentre of the earthquake, snaps off as onlookers scream and weep at the demise of this thousand-year-old pagoda. In Mandalay, the exquisite royal palace, built in the 1850s, has suffered damage, too.

Buildings across the country, from apartment blocks in cities to bamboo homes in refugee camps, have collapsed, with thousands of casualties likely trapped inside. It could not come at a worse time for Myanmar with the repressive military regime engaged in a brutal war against the population. Since the coup in 2021, five million people have been forced to flee their homes, and at least 6,000 have been killed by the country's military, who have carried out bombing campaigns on villages, schools and hospitals, executed prisoners, and carried out massacres.

Mark Farmaner, the director of Burma Campaign UK, says: "There's a feeling in Myanmar of, 'Not this, after everything else that we have suffered.""