Myanmar, or Burma as it used to be known, has experienced far more than its fair share of tragedy over the past 75 years or more. The death and destruction caused by yesterday’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake is the latest in a litany of suffering which this beautiful but benighted South-East Asian nation has endured.
I have visited the areas close to the epicentre of the earthquake many times in the past. I have been in Sagaing, Mandalay and the capital, Naypyidaw. The scenes of the devastation there are heartbreaking, because they are scenes of devastation affecting places and people I know well.
Roads, bridges and buildings have been destroyed in a poverty-stricken and conflict-ridden country with poor infrastructure
The exact death toll is unknown, not least because independent media and civil society are so repressed and the country closed off to outsiders by the ruling military junta. But it can be assumed that hundreds, probably thousands, of people have been killed.
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