Published: Saturday 17 May 2008 19:01 UTC
Last updated: Saturday 17 May 2008 19:01 UTC
Foreign diplomats and aid workers have been taken for the first time to the disaster area in Myanmar, which was hit by Cyclone Nagris at the beginning of the month. At least 78,000 people were killed in the Irrawaddy delta. The foreign guests were taken by helicopter to the delta, but they said the tour was too quick and too selective to form a proper picture of the situation.
Meanwhile the military regime is under increasing pressure to allow foreign aid workers into the country. US President George W Bush has extended sanctions against the military regime and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called the treatment of the disaster victims "inhumane".
France has also strongly criticised the junta for refusing to allow a French navy ship to enter the country's territorial waters with aid for the victims. The French ambassador to the United Nations says the Myanmar regime is on the verge of committing a crime against humanity.
I got it from here.
Cyclone Nargis
May the generations learn how to protect from the disaster...
May the generations learn how to work together as Burmese
Citizens, as we do now for the Cyclone Nargis's relief.
May the generations know the world is with us..........
May the generations know the darkness can't overcome the Light....
May the generations realize that they are part of history......
May the sky of Burma free from darkness cloud.
We shall not forget this sadness movement.
** You can almost find ever thing here and here about Cyclone Nargis relief works.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Foreigners taken to Myanmar's disaster area
International Pressure on Myanmar Junta Is Building
YANGON, Myanmar — International pressure on the ruling military junta in Myanmar continued to grow over the weekend as a senior United Nations envoy was due to arrive in Yangon on Sunday to talk with government officials about what the United Nations has called a slow response to international aid offers after Cyclone Nargis.
John Holmes, under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, has talks scheduled with top members of the government, although diplomats in Yangon said it was unlikely that Mr. Holmes would be allowed to meet with the junta’s leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe. The general has remained in the remote capital of Naypyidaw, far from the storm-damaged delta in the south.
In the two weeks since the cyclone hit, the junta has allowed in a modest amount of supplies from a number of nations, but relief workers say it is far short of what they need to fend off starvation and disease. The United Nations says only 20 percent of the survivors have received even “rudimentary aid.”
In some of the harshest comments, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain told the BBC on Saturday that a natural disaster “is being made into a man-made catastrophe by the negligence, the neglect and the inhuman treatment of the Burmese people by a regime that is failing to act and to allow the international community to do what it wants to do.”
The French ambassador, Jean-Maurice Ripert, warned on Friday that the government’s refusal to allow aid to be delivered to people “could lead to a true crime against humanity,” according to The Associated Press.
The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations also called an emergency meeting of its foreign ministers for Monday in Singapore.
The association has asked to see a disaster report from the junta and wants to discuss the regime’s refusal to accept more aid and its refusal to allow foreign relief experts into the country. Traditionally, however, the bloc’s political clout with individual members has been weak; one of its founding principles is “non-interference in the internal affairs of one another.”
A French government statement said a navy ship was waiting about 15 miles outside Myanmar’s territorial waters on Saturday, hoping to go in and unload its cargo of 1,000 tons of food — enough to feed 100,000 people for 15 days. The aid also includes shelters for 15,000 people, according to the statement.
France is negotiating with Myanmar on delivering the aid, Rear Adm. Alain Hinden, the ship’s commander said, The A.P. reported.
India also sent 50 Army doctors and paramedics, along with medical supplies to set up emergency medical clinics, to Yangon on Saturday, although it is unclear if they had government approval to travel to affected areas.
All foreigners have been expelled and banned from the hard-hit Irrawaddy Delta, even humanitarian aid workers with long experience in Myanmar. Impromptu aid convoys by local groups and private citizens — often with supplies donated by Burmese companies — have been turned back at military checkpoints.
“These guys are xenophobic,” Shari Villarosa, the senior diplomat at the United States Embassy in Yangon, said in a recent interview, referring to the military leadership.
The government said that almost 78,000 people have died and nearly 56,000 more are missing. The Red Cross put the possible death toll at 128,000.
Ms. Villarosa was able to tour parts of the delta on Saturday with Myanmar’s foreign minister, Nyan Win, riding in one of the government’s few working helicopters. They left Yangon at 7 a.m. and returned early in the afternoon; it was the first chance for an American diplomat to see the area since the storm.
“It was a show. That’s what they wanted us to see,” Ms. Villarosa told The A.P. in a telephone interview.
In addition to roadblocks and checkpoints, the junta’s shutdown of the country has included an Internet firewall that blocks most e-mail access. It also has disabled access to a number of computer programs that can evade firewalls, as well as access to dissident Web sites run by exiled Burmese.
Many residents of Myanmar get their daily news from the Burmese-language radio services run by broadcasters like the BBC and Voice of America. They listen to shortwave radios at home, away from neighborhood snitches. If they are discovered listening to the foreign stations, several Yangon residents said, they could be detained or beaten, or they could lose their jobs.
Parts of Yangon, Myanmar’s main city, were still without power Saturday night, two weeks after the storm, and water supplies were sporadic. Gasoline was still being rationed and prices in the market continued to rise — along with civic anger and frustration.
A large banner was hung on the outside of a seven-story apartment building in Yangon that read: “We don’t want gold, we just need water.” In the Burmese language, the written words for gold and water are nearly identical. The banner also took a swipe at General Shwe. In Burmese, shwe means gold.
When a soldier passing through the neighborhood saw the sign, a local resident quickly tore it down.
Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from New Delhi.
I got it from here.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Myanmar Votes as Junta Curbs Cyclone Relief
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: May 11, 2008
YANGON, Myanmar — The military junta continued to restrict foreign aid shipments to survivors of last week’s devastating cyclone but forged ahead on Saturday with a constitutional referendum intended to cement its power after a campaign of arm-twisting and intimidation.
The junta is refusing to grant entry to foreign aid workers that relief officials say are crucial to preventing further deaths from disease among an estimated 1.5 million victims.
By Saturday, the military had not released two United Nations World Food Program aid shipments that arrived on Friday, according to a spokesman for the program. Several aid flights have landed in Yangon or are en route, the spokesman said, and supplies from other countries were also on the way. But the aid amounted to about one-tenth of what is needed, along with a major logistical operation, said Paul Risley, a spokesman for the World Food Program.
The focus for the military junta was on the referendum for a constitution that is designed to legitimize and perpetuate military rule. Residents said the vote followed a campaign of coercion mixed with propaganda. The military appeared to be diverting some resources from cyclone victims to the referendum. A resident of Yangon, speaking by telephone, said that refugees seeking shelter in schoolhouses were evicted so they could be used as polling places. She said refugees had also been evicted from other buildings. In Datgyigone, a farming village 35 miles north of the capital, a precinct captain burst into laughter when asked if he thought most people would vote for the constitution. “Everyone will vote yes,” he said after he had controlled himself. “Of course yes. Hundred percent.”
But he said most of the voters had no idea what they were voting for, and that neither he nor most people he knew had actually read the proposed constitution.
“The government says vote, so we vote,” he said with a shrug. He spoke openly, but asked that his name not be used for fear of government retribution.
Most villagers, when asked about their votes, declined to speak. A man selling batteries, combs and flip-flops from a small pushcart hurried off when he was asked about the referendum. “I cannot speak about this,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m afraid.”
There were a number of reports of “pre-balloting,” in which employees of enterprises or government offices were required to vote ahead of time under the eye of their supervisors.
The product of a 14-year stop-and-start convention, the referendum is intended to lead to a multiparty election and a nominally civilian government. But it allots 25 percent of parliamentary seats to the military, gives the military control of key ministries and allows the military to seize control in a time of emergency. It would also bar Aung San Suu Kyi, an opposition leader whose party won a general election in 1990, from public office. She has been under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years.
There was no obvious police or military presence in Datgyigone or at another dozen polling stations visited during the day.
The polls closed at 4 p.m., just as a torrential rainstorm was lashing the area.
Thousands of soldiers were on the roads and in towns near the village, using axes, machetes and two-handled cross-cut saws to clear trees from towns and roadways. Long convoys of green Chinese-made military trucks hauled away stumps and branches.
Small groups of residents in the main city, Yangon, banded together to distribute aid, but one of them said authorities were sometimes confiscating their relief supplies.
The Yangon resident said that some victims sheltered in Buddhist monasteries, which had been a target during the violent suppression of protests, led by monks, last September. Monks cooked and distributed donations of fish and rice.
The United States was preparing to send in its first aircraft with relief supplies on Monday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross sent its first aid flight to Myanmar on Saturday, loaded with pups, generators, water treatment material and medical equipment.
But these deliveries were tiny in the face of a such widespread destruction. Relief officials warned of an epidemic of cholera and said there is generally a 10-day window after a disaster before the death rate rises steeply.
While major shipments of supplies remained blocked, the local staffs of international agencies struggled to coordinate their work and to distribute the limited emergency stocks available in the country.
State television showed military officers handing out supplies, to the applause of bystanders. It also broadcast a video of two women singing a pop song whose lyrics translated as: “Let’s go to cast a vote. With sincere thoughts for happy days. Let’s go to cast a vote.”
The government mouthpiece The New Light of Myanmar devoted much of its front page to photographs of military leaders distributing aid and comforting survivors, under the headline: “Lt.-Gen. Myint Swe provides food, medicines to storm-hit regions.”
But above the pictures was a reminder: “To approve the state constitution is a national duty of the entire people today. Let us all cast ‘Yes’ vote in the national interest.”
got it from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/world/asia/11myanmar.html?ref=world
In Flooded Delta, a Want as Pervasive as Death
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: May 10, 2008
BOGALE, Myanmar — The water has not receded fully, and few aid trucks have made it here. Only one helicopter, from the Myanmar military, was spotted all Friday, dropping off packages of instant noodles around a devastated delta that needs much more. Win Kyi, a mother looking for a lost son, was crying, her body shaking and her arms outstretched for food, money, water — anything.
“I have nothing,” she said, shuffling in a state of shock. “Everything is gone.”
Six days after a cyclone churned through the coastal plain of Myanmar, it was clear that the damage was great and that little aid had made it to the thousands of Burmese villagers along the sea south of the largest city, Yangon. The smell of rot and death was in the air here, part of a single district where the military government says 10,000 people died.
It is difficult to assess the actual human toll, even in a landscape of toppled trees and houses and bloated farm animals that resembles the devastation of the 2004 tsunami, which killed 181,000 in Asia. Along the 70 miles of road — the only one — from Yangon to Bogale, there was not a single human body visible. Still, aid groups and the few reporters in the country have had little access to some of the areas that were reportedly hardest hit, especially directly on the Andaman Sea.
And people spoke of villages wiped off the map, the damage tallied not by the dead but by the survivors, so few they were easier to count.
In the village of Day Da Nam, 33 miles from Yangon, residents said the remains of 28 farmers killed by the storm were still floating in the falling floodwaters. Thein Tun, a 44-year-old bus driver who is out of work because all the buses were destroyed, said food was scarce and the well water was contaminated.
“The diarrhea is coming,” he said, echoing a grave concern among aid officials that the death toll could rise quickly if clean water and medicine do not arrive here soon.
Lacking alternatives, villagers are eating waterlogged bananas and other rotting fruit, he said. “Normally we have two meals,” Mr. Thein Tun said. “Now we eat only once.”
Yet of the two dozen people interviewed in the flattened villages and flooded rice fields along the road, none said they were starving. Most rice reserves were soaked during the storm, but villagers have laid the grain on large plastic mats to dry. The rice has a musty smell, but farmers say they have no choice but to eat it.
“It tastes bad, but if we can eat it we will,” said Than Tun, 43, a rice farmer. “If not, we will throw it to the pigs.”
Like hundreds of other farmers here, he has lived in an A-frame, three-foot-high bamboo structure along the side of the road since his house was destroyed. Many villagers fled to the relative safety of the road when the storm came because it rests on an embankment higher than the surrounding countryside.
But the water has not completely pulled back to the sea. It is brackish, a problem for humans, but not so much for rice: A little salt, they say, does not hurt the plants. The more long-range problem is that many farmers have no seeds.
“Everything is gone with the wind,” said Zaw Win, a farmer in Leyaim, a half-hour drive from the city limits of Yangon. His rice reserves, which would have lasted him until November, were blown and washed away by the storm. The main crop is normally planted in May and harvested in November.
To help with immediate needs, the monastery in Painal Kone village distributed rice from its stocks on Friday. Some villagers, especially in areas farther south, said the government was also giving out rice rations.
“Anyone with a broken roof gets one or two cups of rice,” said Htayl Lwin, a trader in duck eggs. At the entrance to his stilt house, built on the river that runs beside Bogale, his smudged and still-damp account books were laid out to dry. He counts himself lucky that no one from his family died.
In the days after the storm, several bodies floated past his house.
Mr. Htayl Lwin said the areas affected worst were along the coast. In one village, Kyme Kyoung, only two people survived. The police were limiting access to that area.
About 400 people without homes have sought shelter in the prayer hall of a local monastery, including Ms. Win Kyi, who was separated from two sons when the cyclone hit. She also lost her house and all her water buffalo.
Every day since then she has traveled to the police checkpoint to scour the list of names of the dead. On Friday, the police told her that one of her sons had been located, injured in the storm. When they were united, they hugged for a long time, she said.
“He told me, ‘I’m alive. My whole body hurts. But I’ve come back to Mama,’ ” she said.
For the other son, she is still waiting.
I got it from here.
Burma's rulers not irrational
May 10, 2008 04:30 AM
Thomas Walkom
That Burma is ill-served by its military government is a given. This resource-rich Asian country should be thriving. But since a 1962 military coup, it has been a backwater, victimized by the venality, brutality and sheer ineptitude of its rulers.
Tourists find it delightful (or at least, they did so before last week's cyclone). But to visit Burma is to be shocked by the immense gap between what is and what could be. It is like North Korea but without any of North Korea's excuses.
Nonetheless, Western countries have to get over their distaste for Burma's odious regime and work with it to alleviate the humanitarian crisis caused by Cyclone Nargis. The United Nations, the United States and some aid agencies complain that the Burmese government is holding up foreign relief teams trying to get into the country. These may be legitimate beefs. But public squabbles with Burma's government do nothing for the Burmese people.
The assumption in the Western press is that the junta is just being perverse by not opening its doors to foreign aid workers. But it is not. It is behaving perfectly logically for a dictatorship. It knows the West disapproves of its existence. So it is understandably wary when countries like the U.S., Canada and France offer to have their troops deliver aid.
It is not even being unusually paranoid in its suspicion of the UN. The world used to belittle Saddam Hussein's claim that some UN weapons inspectors sent into Iraq after the first Gulf War worked for the CIA. But, as former American weapons inspector Scott Ritter revealed in his book, Iraq Confidential, Saddam was correct.
So when the Burmese junta demands that UN workers entering the country have proper passports that it can check out, it is not simply being obstructionist. Self-interested maybe. But not irrational.
Moreover, although the junta is obstructing foreign relief workers, it is quite willing to let foreign relief supplies in.
Two Indian naval ships loaded with aid arrived in Burma on Tuesday, while China sent in 60 tonnes by air. Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Laos and Bangladesh have also successfully sent in supplies. The Red Cross has made at least three flights into Burma, as have other aid groups. As of Thursday, at least 11 chartered planes had unloaded relief aid in the capital, Rangoon.
The UN, which has publicly criticized the regime, says it is having trouble with Burmese authorities. The Red Cross, which keeps a lower profile, says it is not. A spokesperson for Save the Children told CBC Radio this week that his staff, already in-country before the cyclone, is getting full co-operation from the regime. All of this may tell us something.
The West could continue to huff and puff. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has condemned Burma's abuse of human rights. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has blasted the Burmese regime as "obscene." These play well to home audiences.
Or we could focus on those in need and just try to get the job done. If that means following China's example and letting Burmese authorities take the lead in delivering aid, then so be it.
Some will be skimmed off. But some always is. After an Italian earthquake disaster in 1980, there were allegations of misspent funds. Ditto with the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe that devastated New Orleans.
Indeed, Hurricane Katrina should make the West feel humble. The world's most powerful nation botched relief efforts there. It's not clear that even Burma's inept government could do that much worse.
Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday and Saturday.
Got it from here.
China shows little desire to exert pressure on Burma
Jane Macartney in Beijing
Many countries are looking to China to play a role in persuading cyclone-devastated Burma to open its doors to foreign aid workers in addition to emergency relief supplies.
But it is unlikely that Beijing would take such an active part. Its principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries has for decades been the linchpin of its foreign policy.
However, Chinese officials, clearly shocked at the extent of a disaster that has received widespread coverage in the domestic media, have already displayed unusual interest in relief efforts in Burma, which lies on China’s southern border.
Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, has urged Burma to work with the international community. “We hope Myanmar will co-operate with the international community, will have consultation with the international community.”Those apparently mild words mark a rare effort by Beijing to put some pressure on its neighbour.
But the spokesman reiterated China’s policy principle, saying: “We should take full consideration of Myanmar’s willingness and sovereignty.”
China does not waver from its principle of non-interference – in part because it does not want to attract pressure from other countries that it would regard as unwarranted meddling in its own domestic business.
China this week rejected France's idea of having the Security Council ratchet up the pressure on Burma to grant full access to foreign aid workers, saying the issue should not be politicised.
Beijing's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Liu Zhenmin, made it clear that China, with veto powers on the council, opposed any involvement of the UN Security Council.
He said: “The current issue of Myanmar is a natural disaster. It's not an issue for the Security Council. It might be a good issue for other forums of the UN." The said the council should "let the humanitarian assistance go on."
Chinese aid has already started to arrive – it has already added $4.3 million in aid to its initial $1 million.
However, China has in the past tried to bring some pressure to bear on the Burmese junta. Beijing’s encouragement prompted the generals to speed up the issuing of a visa to the UN special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, after demonstrations by monks last year.
got it from here.
China reluctant to prod Myanmar over aid
By JOE McDONALD
BEIJING (AP) — China faces mounting appeals to prod cyclone-ravaged Myanmar to allow access to foreign aid workers but is giving no sign it will use its influence over its ally, insisting instead that the world respect the military junta's sovereignty.
The disaster is a reminder of China's close ties with dictatorships such as Zimbabwe, Sudan and Myanmar — also called Burma — at a time when Beijing wants to use the Summer Olympics to polish its global image.
Human Rights Watch appealed Saturday to China to help persuade Myanmar — or force it, if necessary — to drop restrictions on assistance.
"China and Burma's other friends should lead international efforts, including at the U.N. Security Council, to persuade or compel Burma to accept the international aid that cyclone survivors so badly need," the group's Asia director, Brad Adams, said in a statement.
China has promised $5.3 million in aid to survivors of Cyclone Nargis. On Saturday, a Chinese jumbo jet carrying 58 tons of supplies including tents and water purifiers landed in Myanmar's capital, Yangon, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Xinhua said it was China's third aid shipment to Myanmar.
But Beijing also is trying to shield Myanmar's generals from pressure to let foreign aid workers into the country.
An exiled leader of Myanmar's opposition called Friday for pressure on China to use its influence with Myanmar.
"The world is not telling China to do what they should do ... to save people," Sein Win said in Washington. China has leverage, and "the question is whether they are going to use it or not," he said.
China is adamant that governments should not interfere in each other's internal affairs — a reflection of Beijing's unease about scrutiny of its own record in Tibet and other areas.
This week, Beijing blocked a proposal to have the U.N. humanitarian chief brief the Security Council on Myanmar, saying governments should not politicize the issue.
"We should take full consideration of Myanmar's willingness and sovereignty," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.
Beijing has faced criticism for forging ties with international pariahs including Sudan, Iran and Myanmar in its search for diplomatic allies and for resources and markets for its booming economy.
China faced an international outcry after it sent a shipload of weapons to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government last month during an election standoff.
Critics said the bullets and mortar grenades might be used against Mugabe's opponents. China was forced to recall the shipment after neighboring countries refused to unload it for their landlocked neighbor.
Activists also are lobbying Olympics sponsors to prod Beijing to use its status as a major investor in Sudan to help end bloodshed in the African nation's Darfur region.
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