Tears In Taiwan For Relatives Hit By Myanmar Quake

As pictures of destroyed buildings in earthquake-hit Myanmar flashed throughout her tv display screen in Taiwan, Yang Bi-ying might solely weep for her household there.

Yang, 76, has lived in Taiwan for greater than half her life and has a daughter-in-law within the central Myanmar metropolis of Mandalay, which was devastated by Friday’s large earthquake.

A minimum of 1,700 folks have been killed in Myanmar and neighbouring Thailand, and hopes of discovering extra survivors are fading quick.

Yang mentioned her daughter-in-law was protected and different family members in Yangon had been unaffected by the 7.7-magnitude earthquake and its aftershocks.

“I might solely cry. There was nothing else, simply tears,” the grandmother informed AFP at an eatery in a Sino-Burmese neighbourhood close to the capital Taipei.

“Each household has been anxious, particularly for these buried below the rubble. What might be achieved? Nothing. It is all within the fingers of destiny.”

Three days after the quake struck, many in Taiwan’s Sino-Burmese neighborhood nonetheless feared for his or her family members.

“A number of buildings close to my household’s house collapsed, many individuals died,” mentioned eatery proprietor Yeh Mei-chin, 48, exhibiting AFP a video of the injury on her smartphone.

It took hours earlier than Yeh was capable of attain her mom and sisters in Mandalay on Friday. They had been protected, however too scared to go house.

“I requested them the place they might sleep that night time and so they mentioned they had been nonetheless on the lookout for a spot however hadn’t discovered one but,” Yeh mentioned.

Individuals in Taiwan have been utilizing social media platforms, together with Line and WeChat, to contact household in Myanmar and monitor the state of affairs.

However web connection has been intermittent.

“On a fortunate day, we could possibly get by a number of instances,” Lee Pei, 66, chairman of the Myanmar Abroad Chinese language Affiliation, informed AFP.

“Normally, we are able to solely go away messages as voice calls hardly ever undergo. If we do handle to attach, the sign deteriorates after a number of phrases.”

The Myanmar neighborhood in Taiwan dates again to the tip of the Chinese language civil struggle in 1949.

Many members of Chiang Kai-shek’s defeated Kuomintang nationalist forces fled throughout the border to Myanmar and later went to Taiwan.

Over the many years, college students and other people fleeing anti-Chinese language sentiment in addition to financial and political turmoil in Myanmar have adopted.

Pei estimated Taiwan’s Sino-Burmese inhabitants at 160,000 and mentioned 10 p.c had been initially from Mandalay.

College scholar Aung Kyaw Zaw has been following developments on Fb the place he has seen studies that in Sagaing metropolis, close to the quake’s epicentre, there was a “stench… just like the odor of decaying our bodies”.

The 24-year-old mentioned he had exchanged messages with some associates in quake-hit areas, however “a few of them nonetheless have not come on-line”.

There have been additionally issues that donations despatched to Myanmar wouldn’t attain the individuals who want it.

“The junta solely cares about preventing wars or different issues, however they do not actually do a lot to assist the folks,” mentioned college scholar Yi Chint, 24.

“I feel little or no of it will really go to the folks.”