AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We turn now to Burma, also known as Myanmar, where the death toll from Friday’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake has now topped 3,000, including 50 children who were killed when their preschool collapsed. In neighboring Thailand, where at least 21 people have been killed, more than 70 are believed to still be trapped under the rubble.

A video filmed by a teenage girl in Burma Saturday shows her ordeal as she was trapped with her sister and grandma in the wreckage of their apartment building in Mandalay, the epicenter of the quake. One of the girls can be seen banging on the rubble, crying out for help, with her grandmother’s face covered in blood.

BURMESE GIRL: [translated] Hello? Is somebody there? We are stuck in here! Please help us! I beg you! Please, pull us out!

AMY GOODMAN: The girls and their grandmother were later rescued, but the civil war that’s raged since the 2021 military coup has complicated efforts to allow aid to reach all those affected by the quake, as rebel groups accuse the junta of conducting airstrikes even after the earthquake. Amnesty International said the military junta needs to urgently allow humanitarian groups unimpeded access to all areas of Burma.

China, Russia, India, Vietnam and Thailand all quickly sent rescue teams and emergency aid. The Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID has slowed the U.S. response. The day the earthquake struck, the administration said it was firing nearly all remaining USAID personnel and closing its foreign missions. On Monday, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce confirmed that a three-person assessment team from USAID will travel to Burma this week.

TAMMY BRUCE: The United States will provide up to $2 million through Burma-based humanitarian assistance organizations to support earthquake-affected communities as an immediate response to the March 28th earthquake. A USAID team of humanitarian experts based in the region are traveling to Burma now to identify the people’s most pressing needs.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Maung Zarni, Burmese dissident, human rights activist, scholar of genocide, co-founder of Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia, or FORSEA, a grassroots network of pro-democracy scholars and human rights activists across Southeast Asia. He’s from Mandalay, the epicenter of the earthquake and Burma’s second-largest city.

Zarni, welcome back to Democracy Now! Explain the situation.

MAUNG ZARNI: Well, it is really a triple whammy, Amy. You know, the coup came on the heel of COVID-19. The country was reeling from the lack of serious healthcare infrastructure and massive death tolls and spread of COVID. And then the coup triggered this civil war, which came on top of a low-intensity anti-junta resistance movement that had been going on for 60 to 70 years, depending on the ethnic regions. And then, on top of that, in the fourth year of the civil war, we were hit by earthquake. And the earthquake hit, importantly, the heartland of Burmese Buddhist majority, of the Dry Zone, including the capital of the junta. So this is really a triple whammy.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Zarni, how has the continuing civil war and the military checkpoints all around the country affected the ability of search and rescue operations to get to people trapped under the rubble?

MAUNG ZARNI: Well, three things affect negatively search and rescue missions by even the locals. Number one is the infrastructural damage to freeway, highways and local lanes that have hampered movement of, you know, the rescue teams or goods and services to the affected areas. The Sagaing and Mandalay are two major cities, and then the capital, Naypyidaw.

And then, the second is, the military junta is, rightly, paranoid for its survival, because it’s losing massive territorial control across the country. So the military junta step up, you know, obstacles. They’re putting up obstacles for, you know, movement of people, particularly at nighttime. And then, like, they’re continuing aerial bombardment in areas that the junta has lost control. And so, on top of the earthquake, the military junta is bombing, you know, large villages, towns and cities in different parts of the country. And then there also groups like Arakan Army, that is also accused of committing atrocity crimes against Rohingya in western Myanmar, are taking advantage of the situation and attacking some of the junta outposts.

And so, it’s a really demoralizing and very, very dark scenario we are looking at. You know, there is no state as such. You know, there is not a single actor in Burma that can be considered representative of Myanmar as a state. And the civil society has been largely very much weakened by decades of civil war and political repression, massive poverty, mismanagement, corruption. All of that has compounded the society’s effort to come to rescue.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Also, you are from Mandalay, Burma’s second-largest city. What is the situation there, the epicenter of the earthquake?

MAUNG ZARNI: Well, we are across — you know, we are across the river, Irrawaddy, from the epicenter, which is near another — a Dry Zone city called Sagaing. And the people are very afraid of tremors, aftershocks. And these aftershocks seem to be taking place, you know, daily and nightly. So, a lot of people are sleeping on the streets in tents under 100-degree Fahrenheit scorching heat. And then, there are like, you know, an uncountable number of people buried and presumed crushed under the rubble, so the smell coming from the, you know, sadly, shelters seem to be, like, really, really strong. And, you know, Mandalay is about 2 or 3 million population. And more than 50% of the city structures have been destroyed. And then, the Sagaing, our neighbor city across the river, 90% of the Sagaing is completely crushed. And then, the aid is not reaching there.

AMY GOODMAN: Zarni —

MAUNG ZARNI: And then the — yeah. Go ahead, please.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m wondering about aid and international aid. You know what’s going on in this country. You were a student at the University of Wisconsin. You have China, Russia, India quickly sending emergency teams. And a meager three-person team from the U.S. hasn’t even arrived yet. On Friday, some workers at USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance received layoff emails while they were preparing to respond to the earthquake. What are you calling for when it comes to international aid from the United States, but also from all over the world?

MAUNG ZARNI: [inaudible], you know, every type for humanitarian assistance from any quarter of the world that wishes to help. The military, you know, to my initial excitement, has said they would receive any international assistance from any country, whether hostile to the junta or not. So I was quite excited to hear that statement from the junta head, Min Aung Hlaing.

But I think, like, aside from how the military responds to the international offer of assistance, I think we’re not even talking about the USAID help or the American taxpayers’ money. There is one billion U.S. dollars frozen as a result of the February 2021 military coup by the Biden administration. That money, if there is any time that is, you know, good for that money to be unfrozen, it’s now. You know, I understand that, like, the Biden and Trump administration did not or do not want to release the money and then, like, put fuel into the raging civil war, but that money should be set up internationally and handled by an international party. One billion dollars for earthquake rescue and relief funds, that is something that the Trump administration and the Congress should seriously consider.

This is the darkest hour of need for the Myanmar people. Forget the regime. Forget the resistance. Forget the civil war. We need to get some kind of humanitarian ceasefire, for, like, say, a hundred days, by every actor involved in the conflict and get the rescue and reconstruction begin.

AMY GOODMAN: Maung Zarni, we want to thank you so much for being with us. We will continue to cover this disastrous 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Burma, the epicenter your home city of Mandalay. The numbers of dead are 3,000 and counting. Maung Zarni is a Burmese dissident, human rights activist and scholar of genocide.

Up next, we look at the alarming rise in censorship on U.S. campuses. We speak with a professor, a former international head of Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders, after NYU canceled her presentation. She was talking, among other things, mentioning Gaza and also USAID. Stay with us.