IP/08/738
Brussels, 11 May 2008 - The European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel, has welcomed indications of improving access for relief agencies striving to help the victims of Cyclone Nargis.
But he stressed: "Hundreds of thousands of human lives are in the balance and a massive international operation is still needed in the Irrawaddy Delta to save those lives. When disaster strikes on this kind of scale, it becomes a matter of global solidarity. Myanmar should embrace the experience of the international humanitarian community gained in crisis zones around the world. Their work is independent and impartial. That is why I urge the government to let more relief workers in and to let them go to the stricken zone to work alongside the local authorities in assisting the victims. The Commission is ready to give more but the funds won't be much use without professional delivery on the ground."
A member of the Commission's humanitarian field staff has just returned from a needs assessment mission to Laputta in the heart of the Delta region. It was reported to her that as many as 40,000 people were killed in this district alone during the cyclone which raged for twelve hours. Survivors from villages at the coast have evacuated to Laputta which itself suffered 80% destruction. Tens of thousands of people are living in informal camps, with many more along the roadsides. While the authorities and relief agencies have been able to distribute some food and other basic essentials, huge needs remain. Disease is one of the biggest concerns as so many streams are contaminated by bodies – both human and animals.
By: Relief Web
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
Myanmar Government Still Blocking Relief
A collapsed building provides some shelter from the disaster in Thanaden, a village near Yangon.YANGON, Myanmar (NYT)— Further deliveries of small-scale aid arrived in Myanmar on Tuesday — a darkly clouded and rainy day in Yangon and in the south — but international aid experts and diplomats here in the main city expressed concern that the government may not be up to delivering it, a task it has claimed almost exclusively as its own.
In Brussels on Tuesday, the foreign policy chief of the European Union, Javier Solana, said that if the Myanmar government continued to bar large-scale aid, outside donors should find a way to deliver it anyway.
“We have to use all the means to help those people,” he said. “The United Nations charter opens some avenues if things cannot be resolved in order to get the humanitarian aid to arrive.”
Ten days after the devastating cyclone struck, the isolationist military government has slightly eased its restrictions on aid but is still blocking most large-scale deliveries of relief supplies, aid officials said. Adding to the difficulties, the hundreds of thousands of people who most need help are largely in remote and inaccessible coastal and delta regions.
Myanmar’s state television reported that the death toll from the May 3 cyclone had risen again, to 34,273, The Associated Press reported, with 27,838 missing. The toll has been increasing daily, as more and more of the missing are identified as dead. The United Nations has estimated that the toll could be more than 60,000.
Still, the junta was making some progress in accepting aid. Two more American relief flights landed Tuesday, and United States officials said they were talking to the government about expanding the relief program.
But Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Myanmar, said the junta had refused the United States’ offer to send in search-and-rescue teams and disaster-relief experts. The United States is conducting a military exercise with Thailand and has 11,000 troops in the area and several ships off the coast.
Ms. Villarosa said the government had also rebuffed teams from China, Bangladesh, Singapore, Thailand and other countries.
At the United Nations on Tuesday, concerns emerged that some of the aid meant for victims of the cyclone was being diverted to people who did not need it.
“That concern exists,” a United Nations spokeswoman, Michel Montas, said at a regular news conference, according to Reuters.
“We don’t have any independent report of a specific portion of the aid going to other sectors besides the victims,” Ms. Montas said, adding that that “it is a fact that a very small percentage of victims have so far received the aid.”
The British ambassador to the United Nations, John Sawers, said Britain had also received unconfirmed reports that aid was being redirected away from disaster victims.
“If they do turn out to be true, we would be very concerned indeed,” Reuters quoted him as saying. He added, “This just underlines the necessity of the Burmese authorities’ accepting that their own capacity to distribute aid to 1.5 million people” is insufficient.
In a report from Yangon, the official news agency of China, Myanmar’s friend and neighbor, said international aid had been arriving in Myanmar since last week, with aircraft landing at the airport one after another. The Chinese reports made no mention of delays.
On Monday, several medical teams from the Swiss-based branch of Doctors Without Borders were ordered out of the Irrawaddy Delta with no explanation.
Andrew Kirkwood, country director in Myanmar for Save the Children, said he had surveyed the delta by air in recent days and had concluded that trucks and helicopters would not be enough to deliver the aid needed by the people affected by the storm. The Myanmar government reportedly has five working helicopters.
“It’s clear that the vast majority of people will have to be reached by boat,” he said.
He said his teams in the delta had seen no outbreaks of cholera yet, although he expected other diseases and diarrhea to start taking their toll soon, especially on children.
“Children can die within 24 hours from diarrhea,” he said, “and delivery of oral rehydration solution is one of the things we’ve prioritized. Water is not enough. It has to be water, sugar and salt, in the right combination.”
He said Save the Children rented two boats from private owners and in the past two days delivered 200 tons of rice, water and rehydration fluids to a remote, storm-smashed island. He said that aid reached 9,400 people living in 13 villages, including 2,350 children.
Reports of rampant infections, caused by infected cuts, were starting to reach aid offices in Yangon, as well as many cases of wind burns.
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said Monday that he had been trying to reach the country’s senior leadership to ask for greater access for aid delivery, but without success.
John Holmes, the under secretary general for emergency relief, said less than half of more than 100 visa applications for relief workers had been approved.
A journalist for The New York Times reported from Yangon. Seth Mydans contributed reporting from Bangkok, Warren Hoge from the United Nations, and Denise Grady from New York.
A journalist for The New York Times reported from Yangon. Seth Mydans contributed reporting from Bangkok, Warren Hoge from the United Nations, and Denise Grady from New York.
A Rescue in China, Uncensored
Rescuers carried an injured quake victim from a collapsed building on Tuesday in Beichuan County, China. The country’s openness about the disaster is a departure from past practices.BEIJING (NYT)— Mothers wailing over the bodies of their children. Emergency workers scrambling across pancaked buildings. And a grim-faced political leader comforting the stricken and reassuring an anguished nation.
While such scenes are a staple of catastrophes in much of the world, the rescue effort playing nonstop on Chinese television is remarkable for a country that has a history of concealing the scope of natural calamities and then bungling its response.
Since an earthquake flattened a swath of rural Sichuan Province on Monday, killing more than 13,000 people, the government in Beijing has mounted an aggressive rescue effort, dispatching tens of thousands of troops and promptly sending Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to the disaster zone, accompanied by reporters.
A hard hat on his head and a bullhorn in hand, he ducked into the wreckage of a hospital where scores of people were buried and shouted: “Hang on a bit longer. The troops are rescuing you.” Throughout the day, the images of Mr. Wen directing disaster relief officials and comforting the injured dominated the airwaves.
With scenes of the calamitous cyclone in Myanmar still fresh — and the military government’s languid, xenophobic response earning it international scorn — China’s Communist Party leaders are keenly aware that their approach to the earthquake will be closely watched at home and abroad. And after two bruising months of criticism from the West over its handling of Tibetan unrest, the government can ill afford another round of criticism as it prepares to host the Olympic Games in August.
In its zigzagging pursuit of a more nimble and effective form of authoritarian rule, China may be having a defining moment. Its harsh crackdown on discontented Tibetans bore the hallmarks of Beijing’s hard-line impulses. But its decision on Tuesday to scale back the elaborate domestic leg of the Olympic torch relay — after a flood of Internet protests calling it insensitive — is a sign that officials are not deaf to public sentiment.
Shi Anbin, a professor of media studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said he thought the international uproar after the crackdown in Tibet was having an impact on Communist Party leaders. “My judgment is that the government has drawn some lessons from negative feedback,” he said. “I think it reflects a trend of Chinese openness and reform.”
So far, that approach appears to be paying off. Commentary on Chinese Web sites and in chat rooms has been full of praise for the government’s emergency response. On Tianya, a popular forum where antigovernment postings sometimes find a home, users have been quick to shout down those who criticize Mr. Wen and the military’s delay in reaching some quake victims. “Those who can only do mouth work please shut up at this key moment,” says one posting.
Another writer praised the People’s Liberation Army, saying: “Whenever there’s a life-or-death crisis, they’re the ones on the front line. We certainly can overcome this catastrophe because we have them.”
Chinese Web sites remain heavily censored, and a brief flirtation with openness and responsiveness does not mean that China is headed toward Western-style democracy. On the contrary, if China manages to handle a big natural disaster better than the United States handled Hurricane Katrina, the achievement may underscore Beijing’s contention that its largely nonideological brand of authoritarianism can deliver good government as well as fast growth.
Dali Yang, the director of the East Asian Institute in Singapore, said the government might have come to the realization that openness and accountability could bolster its legitimacy and counter growing anger over corruption, rising inflation and the disparity between the urban rich and the rural poor.
“I think their response to this disaster shows they can act, and they can care,” he said. “They seem to be aware that a disaster like this can pull the country together and bring them support.”
The official response since Monday stands in stark contrast not only to neighboring Myanmar’s, but also to China’s abysmal performance during a major quake in 1976, when at least 240,000 people died in the eastern city of Tangshan. The lessons from that disaster have undoubtedly been imprinted on the minds of the men who govern from Beijing. In the days after the quake, the powerful Gang of Four played down the disaster and rebuffed offers of help from the outside world, leaving rescue efforts to poorly equipped soldiers.
Hua Guofeng, who was the chosen successor to Mao and was then out of favor, visited Tangshan a few days after the quake. This act of good will enhanced his power and, along with Mao’s death later that year, emboldened him to arrest the Gang of Four, effectively ending the decade-long Cultural Revolution and ushering in leaders who introduced the economic reforms that continue to transform China.
The Communist Party does not always remember the lessons of Tangshan. Repeated flooding on the Yangtze River — partly caused by government inaction — has killed thousands. The SARS epidemic of 2003, which officials initially sought to cover up, prompted accusations that the party was more concerned with promoting a false image of stability than with the commonweal.
Last winter Mr. Wen found himself facing thousands of angry travelers who were stranded by a snowstorm that crippled the nation’s rail system. And last month, the collision of two passenger trains in Shandong Province killed 72 people, injured more than 400 and laid bare the failure of transportation officials to communicate a go-slow order on a stretch of track that was under construction.
While information on that accident was tightly controlled and foreign reporters were kept at bay, coverage of the Sichuan earthquake seems more unfettered. Scores of Chinese reporters have been broadcasting live from places across the quake zone and so far, at least, foreign correspondents have been given unrestricted access.
The Xinhua News Agency, the government’s leading propaganda organ, has offered an unusually vigorous stream of updates about casualties and problems confronting rescue teams. Internet sites have been filled with cellphone videos of the quake and commentary, most of it laudatory, but some of it criticizing the military’s response. A few postings have given life to a rumor that officials in Sichuan knew the quake was imminent and failed to act.
Mr. Shi, the media studies professor, said he was surprised by the government’s candor and the vigor of the state-run Chinese press. He attributed some of the openness to a recent law that requires public officials to provide information to the news media during natural disasters. But like many experts, he said the Olympics were pushing China to experiment with a greater degree of openness.
“This is the first time the Chinese media has lived up to international standards,” he said, adding, “I think the government is learning some lessons from the past.”
Fan Wenxin contributed reporting from Shanghai.
Myanmar: Relief is reaching the neglected
We are reaching the remote villages
Through 21 relief centres, DanChurchAid's local partners are reaching 100.000 people.
DanChurchAid's representative reports 'We brought rice, beans, fish paste, cooking utensils, blankets and plastic sheets with us, and people came rushing up to us. At the beginning everything was chaotic but with the help from some local monks, we managed to distribute the supplies'.
We are reaching the remote villages
DanChurchAid's representative reports that it is still extremely difficult to bring relief out to where the cyclone Nargis caused the worst damages, in the remotest areas of the vast delta.
'DanChurchAid's local partners, on the other hand, are reaching the very poor villages that nobody else can access, namely because we already work very locally'.
The local partners have established 21 centres where they are able to help 100.000 people who have become homeless after the disaster.
Source: Relief Web
Through 21 relief centres, DanChurchAid's local partners are reaching 100.000 people.
DanChurchAid's representative reports 'We brought rice, beans, fish paste, cooking utensils, blankets and plastic sheets with us, and people came rushing up to us. At the beginning everything was chaotic but with the help from some local monks, we managed to distribute the supplies'.
We are reaching the remote villages
DanChurchAid's representative reports that it is still extremely difficult to bring relief out to where the cyclone Nargis caused the worst damages, in the remotest areas of the vast delta.
'DanChurchAid's local partners, on the other hand, are reaching the very poor villages that nobody else can access, namely because we already work very locally'.
The local partners have established 21 centres where they are able to help 100.000 people who have become homeless after the disaster.
Source: Relief Web
'The situation is very tense'
It has been raining now for almost 48 hours. The first really hard rains of the monsoon. The town is ankle-deep in water. People are camping on the pavements with the smallest amounts of plastic for shelter. At the football ground a large camp has been set up, with family-sized tents. The field is gradually becoming inundated with water. People are walking around in the mud in their bare feet.
The Maung family are 13 in one tent with the water gradually seeping inside. They got to Laputta four days after the storm, after walking for a day, from the village of Yway Grop.
"Every house in the village was destroyed," said Maung Win, the grandfather. "When the storm came we were sheltering in the monastery. The wave that came from the sea went right over our house, at least 18ft high. We couldn't count the number of people who died there were so many. Sixteen people from our family died, including my son, who was the breadwinner. In the camp we have food and water, but this shelter is very poor. We don't feel safe here."
In another tent was the Tun family, with 15 people. It took them five hours to reach Laputta by boat from the village of Amatkalay. Semawig Tun was heavily pregnant. "I think I will give birth in about 10 days. I am worried. I was all ready for the birth in my village, but now I don't know what to do. After the storm there were 160 people missing out of a total of 780. We think they are all dead."
Shortly after I met this family, some men left their tent carrying an old man on a stretcher. He had fallen unconscious, and they were taking him to the doctor. An attendant from Merlin's clinic got the man back into the tent and went on his motorbike to bring a doctor. They lay the grandfather on a mattress with a blanket over him. He was gasping for air.
After 10 minutes two doctors arrived. Dr Ye Hein Naing checked his blood pressure and gave him a heart massage. But it was too late. The grandfather had died.
"It's very hard to tell the cause of death in these conditions," said Ye. "I think he could have had a pre-existing medical condition. What he has gone through in the past week is more than he could endure." We left the tent quietly. Members of the family were weeping.
Ye returned to the clinic, where he continued to see other patients. A man of 40 named Thein Chit had a bad limp and swelling on his knee from where he had been hit by a tree. Ye dressed the wound and gave him paracetamol. "The wound wasn't serious and will heal quite soon," said Ye. "But he needs help. He is very traumatised."
The clinic has seen about 50 people a day over the past four days. Today the team is setting up clinics at three other sites in Laputta. Latrines are being built for people at the football camp, and there are 27 safe water distribution points around the town. Five hundred hygiene kits have been distributed and 20,000 more will arrive in the next few days.
Our main supply of drugs and medical equipment is due to arrive on Thursday. Until then we have basic stocks for first aid and we are expecting some extra supplies that have been sourced in country. Other members of the team are attempting to get out of the town to help people in the surrounding villages.
There is virtually total destruction and bodies are still lying in the water and hanging in the trees. The situation is very tense. One village leader was killed a couple of days ago (his head was cut off) when he returned to the village without bringing more food for people. There are many other really horrible pieces of information being received about the situation in the delta villages.
Jonathan Pearce is an aid worker with British medical agency Merlin in Laputta
Source: Guardian
The Maung family are 13 in one tent with the water gradually seeping inside. They got to Laputta four days after the storm, after walking for a day, from the village of Yway Grop.
"Every house in the village was destroyed," said Maung Win, the grandfather. "When the storm came we were sheltering in the monastery. The wave that came from the sea went right over our house, at least 18ft high. We couldn't count the number of people who died there were so many. Sixteen people from our family died, including my son, who was the breadwinner. In the camp we have food and water, but this shelter is very poor. We don't feel safe here."
In another tent was the Tun family, with 15 people. It took them five hours to reach Laputta by boat from the village of Amatkalay. Semawig Tun was heavily pregnant. "I think I will give birth in about 10 days. I am worried. I was all ready for the birth in my village, but now I don't know what to do. After the storm there were 160 people missing out of a total of 780. We think they are all dead."
Shortly after I met this family, some men left their tent carrying an old man on a stretcher. He had fallen unconscious, and they were taking him to the doctor. An attendant from Merlin's clinic got the man back into the tent and went on his motorbike to bring a doctor. They lay the grandfather on a mattress with a blanket over him. He was gasping for air.
After 10 minutes two doctors arrived. Dr Ye Hein Naing checked his blood pressure and gave him a heart massage. But it was too late. The grandfather had died.
"It's very hard to tell the cause of death in these conditions," said Ye. "I think he could have had a pre-existing medical condition. What he has gone through in the past week is more than he could endure." We left the tent quietly. Members of the family were weeping.
Ye returned to the clinic, where he continued to see other patients. A man of 40 named Thein Chit had a bad limp and swelling on his knee from where he had been hit by a tree. Ye dressed the wound and gave him paracetamol. "The wound wasn't serious and will heal quite soon," said Ye. "But he needs help. He is very traumatised."
The clinic has seen about 50 people a day over the past four days. Today the team is setting up clinics at three other sites in Laputta. Latrines are being built for people at the football camp, and there are 27 safe water distribution points around the town. Five hundred hygiene kits have been distributed and 20,000 more will arrive in the next few days.
Our main supply of drugs and medical equipment is due to arrive on Thursday. Until then we have basic stocks for first aid and we are expecting some extra supplies that have been sourced in country. Other members of the team are attempting to get out of the town to help people in the surrounding villages.
There is virtually total destruction and bodies are still lying in the water and hanging in the trees. The situation is very tense. One village leader was killed a couple of days ago (his head was cut off) when he returned to the village without bringing more food for people. There are many other really horrible pieces of information being received about the situation in the delta villages.
Jonathan Pearce is an aid worker with British medical agency Merlin in Laputta
Source: Guardian
R2P through Burma’s looking glass
By Sai Wansai
If one would compare the speed and efficiency of the tsunami disaster of 2004 that hits the Asian region to Burma's recent natural catastrophe, it is lacking ways behind in every aspect. During the disaster of tsunami, the international, massive humanitarian assistance kicked off in relatively short span of time.
"We are reaching people today but we are reaching too few and too slowly," said Terje Skavdal, the regional representative for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) which has been leading the relief efforts for Burma out of Bangkok.
"Normally, you will within three to four days be up to speed in such a situation like this," Skavdal told a press conference. "The fact that we are at day 10 now shows how delayed we are in the response," he said.
As of Tuesday, the intended massive relief operation is still pending, due to the red tape surrounding visa processing for aids workers and the junta's lack of political will, coupled with its paranoid mistrustfulness of international community and false priority-setting.
On Monday morning the first of three cargo planes with a total of 110 tons of food, tents, medical supplies, drugs, and pumps and generators for water and sanitation systems from Doctors Without Borders arrived in Rangoon.
Also on Monday the US government flew its first shipment of disaster relief into Burma.
"This is a small salve for a much larger wound," US Ambassador to Thailand Eric John said from UTapao, 120 kilometres south-east of Bangkok.
A report, emphasising on the needed volume of assistance shipment on such a major disaster, pointed out that it needed at least 40 planes load of relief aids on daily basis to cope with the situation, while there is barely one plane landing in Rangoon airport after 10 days of cyclone Nargis devastation.
Notwithstanding the junta’s inability to cope with the logistics problem, due to the bulk of its navy ships being destroyed during the recent cyclone in delta area and lack of enough suitable helicopters for such rescue mission, it still rejected the US offers to deliver supplies by helicopter or ship directly to cyclone survivors, as of late Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the disaster hit Irrawaddy delta areas is still widely inaccessible, where about 5,000 sq. km of land remain under water. To top this, the death toll count have risen to 100,000 and between 1.2 million and 1.9 million people were struggling to survive, according to the United Nations.
Parallel to this ongoing tragedy, the international stakeholders are debating whether “Responsibility to Protect” or R2P doctrine, recognised by the UN in 2005, could be applicable in the wake of Cyclone Nargis devastation and the Burmese junta reluctance to let the badly needed massive humanitarian assistance go ahead without delay.
Ironically, in R2P Commission view’s, Paragraph 4.19, military intervention for human protection purposes is justified in two broad sets of circumstances, namely in order to halt or avert:
If either or both of these conditions are satisfied, it is our view that the “just cause” component of the decision to intervene is amply satisfied.
As if to buttress the doctrine of military intervention in a similar case recently surrounding Burma, a phrase in Paragraph 4.20, under the heading of “THRESHOLD CRITERIA: JUST CAUSE”, writes:
While the recent EU posturing to use all possible means to get aid through to victims of Burma's cyclone, despite the reluctance of the military junta, the R2P notion is not likely to be implemented, anytime soon.
With Rwanda, Srebrenica and the likes of failed missions in Uganda, Congo and Sudan as glaring examples of international impotence, the chances of humanitarian intervention is quite remote, given that Burma occupies a relatively low priority level in the West agenda in general, although it has been seen and made use of as an issue, where it could project its "moral high ground" with little or no investment.
A strategy paper, on project to end genocide and crime against humanity, titled “R2P, the ICC, and stopping atrocities in the real world” , by John Prendergast and Lisa Rogoff in concluding note writes, “The adoption of the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine has the capacity to change the way the United Nations does business. Although sovereignty still is central, the United Nations has nowwith this doctrine dedicated itself to protecting people. At least in theory”.
The paper further pointed out that the major challenge is in helping to build the political will and that beyond mass atrocities, R2P must move from mere words to concrete action.
But still, if it is ever going to happen within the Burma context, it will be within the mold of "coalition of the willing", somewhat like Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq and not under the UN or UNSC direction.
Most recently, contacted by AsiaNews, a teacher from Pathein (Bassein) describes the worsening situation, launching an outspoken appeal on behalf of the country, urging the “international community to put pressure to let in aid held back in Thailand because here we are dying like flies.”
Meanwhile, The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that, because of poor sanitary conditions, disease could break out.
Likewise, the United Nations warned that Burma faced a "second catastrophe" after its devastating cyclone, unless the junta immediately allows massive air and sea deliveries of aid.
On Tuesday, spokeswoman for the UN Organization for Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) Elizabeth Byrs said that at least 1.5 million people are severely affected by the disaster, but only about one-third of those are getting aid.
For the moment, it is as if the junta is obstructing the fire-fighters with major vehicles to enter the premises, but letting in a few selected ones with buckets to overcome the towering inferno, which certainly will lead to total destruction.
As it now seems, the world shouldn't be surprised to witness, if the last surviving victim of the cyclone Nargis will die a second death, due to international incompetence, coupled with the Burmese junta's paranoid attitude and wrong priority-setting to handle the situation in a timely and decisive manner.
14 May, 2008 (Shan) - It is heartening to hear that the international community should use all possible means to get aid through to victims of Burma's cyclone despite the reluctance of the military junta, the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Tuesday.
After more than 10 days of deliberation between the Burmese military junta and international donors, notably the UN, US and France the world is nowhere near the full scale relief operation, which is most urgently needed.If one would compare the speed and efficiency of the tsunami disaster of 2004 that hits the Asian region to Burma's recent natural catastrophe, it is lacking ways behind in every aspect. During the disaster of tsunami, the international, massive humanitarian assistance kicked off in relatively short span of time.
"We are reaching people today but we are reaching too few and too slowly," said Terje Skavdal, the regional representative for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) which has been leading the relief efforts for Burma out of Bangkok.
"Normally, you will within three to four days be up to speed in such a situation like this," Skavdal told a press conference. "The fact that we are at day 10 now shows how delayed we are in the response," he said.
As of Tuesday, the intended massive relief operation is still pending, due to the red tape surrounding visa processing for aids workers and the junta's lack of political will, coupled with its paranoid mistrustfulness of international community and false priority-setting.
On Monday morning the first of three cargo planes with a total of 110 tons of food, tents, medical supplies, drugs, and pumps and generators for water and sanitation systems from Doctors Without Borders arrived in Rangoon.
Also on Monday the US government flew its first shipment of disaster relief into Burma.
"This is a small salve for a much larger wound," US Ambassador to Thailand Eric John said from UTapao, 120 kilometres south-east of Bangkok.
A report, emphasising on the needed volume of assistance shipment on such a major disaster, pointed out that it needed at least 40 planes load of relief aids on daily basis to cope with the situation, while there is barely one plane landing in Rangoon airport after 10 days of cyclone Nargis devastation.
Notwithstanding the junta’s inability to cope with the logistics problem, due to the bulk of its navy ships being destroyed during the recent cyclone in delta area and lack of enough suitable helicopters for such rescue mission, it still rejected the US offers to deliver supplies by helicopter or ship directly to cyclone survivors, as of late Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the disaster hit Irrawaddy delta areas is still widely inaccessible, where about 5,000 sq. km of land remain under water. To top this, the death toll count have risen to 100,000 and between 1.2 million and 1.9 million people were struggling to survive, according to the United Nations.
Parallel to this ongoing tragedy, the international stakeholders are debating whether “Responsibility to Protect” or R2P doctrine, recognised by the UN in 2005, could be applicable in the wake of Cyclone Nargis devastation and the Burmese junta reluctance to let the badly needed massive humanitarian assistance go ahead without delay.
Ironically, in R2P Commission view’s, Paragraph 4.19, military intervention for human protection purposes is justified in two broad sets of circumstances, namely in order to halt or avert:
- large scale loss of life, actual or apprehended, with genocidal intent or not, which is the product either of deliberate state action, or state neglect or inability to act, or a failed state situation; or
- large scale “ethnic cleansing,” actual or apprehended, whether carried out by killing, forced expulsion, acts of terror or rape.
If either or both of these conditions are satisfied, it is our view that the “just cause” component of the decision to intervene is amply satisfied.
As if to buttress the doctrine of military intervention in a similar case recently surrounding Burma, a phrase in Paragraph 4.20, under the heading of “THRESHOLD CRITERIA: JUST CAUSE”, writes:
- overwhelming natural or environmental catastrophes, where the state concerned is either unwilling or unable to cope, or call for assistance, and significant loss of life is occurring or threatened.
While the recent EU posturing to use all possible means to get aid through to victims of Burma's cyclone, despite the reluctance of the military junta, the R2P notion is not likely to be implemented, anytime soon.
With Rwanda, Srebrenica and the likes of failed missions in Uganda, Congo and Sudan as glaring examples of international impotence, the chances of humanitarian intervention is quite remote, given that Burma occupies a relatively low priority level in the West agenda in general, although it has been seen and made use of as an issue, where it could project its "moral high ground" with little or no investment.
A strategy paper, on project to end genocide and crime against humanity, titled “R2P, the ICC, and stopping atrocities in the real world” , by John Prendergast and Lisa Rogoff in concluding note writes, “The adoption of the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine has the capacity to change the way the United Nations does business. Although sovereignty still is central, the United Nations has nowwith this doctrine dedicated itself to protecting people. At least in theory”.
The paper further pointed out that the major challenge is in helping to build the political will and that beyond mass atrocities, R2P must move from mere words to concrete action.
But still, if it is ever going to happen within the Burma context, it will be within the mold of "coalition of the willing", somewhat like Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq and not under the UN or UNSC direction.
Most recently, contacted by AsiaNews, a teacher from Pathein (Bassein) describes the worsening situation, launching an outspoken appeal on behalf of the country, urging the “international community to put pressure to let in aid held back in Thailand because here we are dying like flies.”
Meanwhile, The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that, because of poor sanitary conditions, disease could break out.
Likewise, the United Nations warned that Burma faced a "second catastrophe" after its devastating cyclone, unless the junta immediately allows massive air and sea deliveries of aid.
On Tuesday, spokeswoman for the UN Organization for Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) Elizabeth Byrs said that at least 1.5 million people are severely affected by the disaster, but only about one-third of those are getting aid.
For the moment, it is as if the junta is obstructing the fire-fighters with major vehicles to enter the premises, but letting in a few selected ones with buckets to overcome the towering inferno, which certainly will lead to total destruction.
As it now seems, the world shouldn't be surprised to witness, if the last surviving victim of the cyclone Nargis will die a second death, due to international incompetence, coupled with the Burmese junta's paranoid attitude and wrong priority-setting to handle the situation in a timely and decisive manner.
Villager arrested for possession of anti-referendum leaflets
By Hawkeye/Hseng Khio Fah
The authorities in Namkham, northern Shan State, found anti-referendum leaflets at the home of a former village headman while looking for heroin users and arrested him, according to local sources.
On 11 May evening, authorities in Namkham searched the house of Sai Ngeun Hsoi Hsai, former headman of Wanpong-Wanoi, Kunlong village tract, claiming they were looking for heroin users.
They found vote No leaflets which were distributed before 10 May referendum. They arrested him instantly and called the village tract secretary Sai Yi Mon to translate.
The authorities asked, "Where did you get the leaflets? Who else have these leaflets? If someone come and tell us, Ngeun Hsoi Hsai will be released."
There has been no information about him since his detention, and the authorities have yet to release him, said a villager.
Sai Yi Mon, who acted as the interpreter, attended the National Convention in the peasants' category along with the secretary of local Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) Sai Kyaw Myint, 57, who was assassinated on 4 May while campaigning for public support of junta drafted charter.
Shanland News
The authorities in Namkham, northern Shan State, found anti-referendum leaflets at the home of a former village headman while looking for heroin users and arrested him, according to local sources.
On 11 May evening, authorities in Namkham searched the house of Sai Ngeun Hsoi Hsai, former headman of Wanpong-Wanoi, Kunlong village tract, claiming they were looking for heroin users.
They found vote No leaflets which were distributed before 10 May referendum. They arrested him instantly and called the village tract secretary Sai Yi Mon to translate.
The authorities asked, "Where did you get the leaflets? Who else have these leaflets? If someone come and tell us, Ngeun Hsoi Hsai will be released."
There has been no information about him since his detention, and the authorities have yet to release him, said a villager.
Sai Yi Mon, who acted as the interpreter, attended the National Convention in the peasants' category along with the secretary of local Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) Sai Kyaw Myint, 57, who was assassinated on 4 May while campaigning for public support of junta drafted charter.
Shanland News
Bangladeshi relief team leaves for Burma
Maungdaw, Arakan State: A Bangladeshi relief team left for Maungdaw Town, Arakan State, Burma on May 8, with relief material for Cyclone Nargis hit victims in lower Burma, said an aide of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR).
On May 8, at about 11:30 a.m. a team of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) from Bangladesh led by Lt. Col Mahbub Ali from Chittagong went to Maungdaw to hand over relief material. He was accompanied by Lt Col Ahsan Habib Khan, the Commander of 42 BDR Battalion of Teknaf, Major Jahidul Islam, the deputy Commander of 42 BDR Battalion of Teknaf and 15 BDR personnel.
They carried 500,000 tablets of medicine and mineral water from BDR's own godown for the cyclone affected people. The team handed over the material to Nasaka , Burma 's border security force director Lt. Col U Aung Htay and returned at about 4:00 p.m.
The Nasaka director thanked the Bangladesh team for help for the cyclone affected people and also hoped that the bilateral relation will be strengthened between the two countries, according to an aide of Burma’s border security force (Nasaka).
Earlier, on May 7, a team of the Bangladesh Army led by Brig-General Taslim Uddin Khan went to Burma to help and rescue people missing in the cyclone since May 3. The team will handed over relief material such as potatoes, medicine, oral saline, water purification tablets, Shari , Burmese Tami, Longyi, and trousers.
Kaladan Press
On May 8, at about 11:30 a.m. a team of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) from Bangladesh led by Lt. Col Mahbub Ali from Chittagong went to Maungdaw to hand over relief material. He was accompanied by Lt Col Ahsan Habib Khan, the Commander of 42 BDR Battalion of Teknaf, Major Jahidul Islam, the deputy Commander of 42 BDR Battalion of Teknaf and 15 BDR personnel.
They carried 500,000 tablets of medicine and mineral water from BDR's own godown for the cyclone affected people. The team handed over the material to Nasaka , Burma 's border security force director Lt. Col U Aung Htay and returned at about 4:00 p.m.
The Nasaka director thanked the Bangladesh team for help for the cyclone affected people and also hoped that the bilateral relation will be strengthened between the two countries, according to an aide of Burma’s border security force (Nasaka).
Earlier, on May 7, a team of the Bangladesh Army led by Brig-General Taslim Uddin Khan went to Burma to help and rescue people missing in the cyclone since May 3. The team will handed over relief material such as potatoes, medicine, oral saline, water purification tablets, Shari , Burmese Tami, Longyi, and trousers.
Kaladan Press
DVB News links for 13 May 2008
| Thee Lay Thee stage benefit performances in Thailand |
Government officials appropriate international aid
Burmese film stars to take aid to Irrawaddy delta
Bogalay healthcare provision in crisis
Labutta survivors still neglected by authorities
Relief supplies appropriated by officials in Bogalay
Nargis cyclone: eyewitness account of an aid worker in Bogalay/Bogale
Cyclone refugees in Bogalay forced to relocate
Two Natural Disasters, Two Different Responses
By EDITH M. LEDERER / AP WRITER / UNITED NATIONS
The Irrawaddy News
Two natural disasters in tightly controlled Asian nations have produced two very different responses: Burma's very slow response to Cyclone Nargis has sparked international outrage while China's speedy reaction to a killer earthquake has won international admiration.
Burma's military government, which has ruled with an iron first since 1962, has barred almost all foreign experts experienced in managing humanitarian crises, saying it would handle relief efforts on its own.
Survivors of the cyclone Nargis stand under their shelter set up on the side of a road in Bogalay of Burma's Irrawaddy delta. (Photo: AFP)
But without equipment to even lift cargo off Boeing 747s and at least 1.5 million people left homeless or in need, the UN warned Tuesday that Burma faces a monumental catastrophe unless relief efforts reach the scale of the response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
China's communist government also said it was not allowing foreign aid workers into the area affected by Monday's 7.9-magnitude earthquake which wrecked towns across hilly stretches of Sichuan province though it would accept international aid for the tens of thousands left homeless.
Chinese rescuers remove an injured student from the rubble of a high school in Sichuan province. China's biggest earthquake for a generation left tens of thousands dead, missing or buried under the rubble of broken communities Tuesday, unleashing a desperate nationwide relief effort. (Photo: AFP/Xinhua)
But in contrast to Burma, China's government quickly moved into high-gear, sending 20,000 soldiers and police into the disaster area with 30,000 more on the way by plane, train, truck and on foot because roads were impassable. The government was also mobilizing food, clothes, tents and plastic sheeting for the victims and sent Premier Wen Jiabao to oversee relief efforts and comfort victims.
China's leaders appeared intent on reassuring the Chinese people and the world that they were in control of the biggest disaster to strike the country in three decades, and were ready for the August 8-24 Olympics in Beijing.
The death toll in China's earthquake topped 12,000 with up to 18,000 people believed trapped in rubble. The death toll in the May 3 cyclone that devastated Burma's Irrawaddy delta was put by the government at over 34,000, with nearly 28,000 missing. The UN said between 62,000 and 100,000 could have died.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday sharply criticized Burma's military junta, whose leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe has refused to take his calls, expressing "deep concern and immense frustration" at "the unacceptably slow response to this grave humanitarian crisis." on Tuesday, Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs, followed up saying: "We fear a second catastrophe unless we're able to put in place quickly a maximum of aid and a major logistical effort comparable with the response to the tsunami."
UN spokeswoman Michele Montas was asked Tuesday whether the secretary-general was concerned that China has not yet said what kind of help the UN could provide to the earthquake victims.
"I don't think he is that concerned because so far, he doesn't have any reports that aid is not reaching the survivors and that the survivors are not being taken care of," she replied. "I think his concern was about the situation in Myanmar [Burma], because of the fact that people were not receiving aid."
Britain's UN Ambassador John Sawers, asked Tuesday whether Britain was concerned that China also is not allowing foreign aid workers into the country, said "I think the two situations are different."
"I think China has reacted very promptly to the appalling disaster ... and I think the political attention, the rapid response, has been admirable," he said.
"The situation in Burma is very, very different," Sawers said. "There, the scale of the disaster is a whole lot greater.
The risk of water-borne disease, lack of clean sanitation— all these problems are going to escalate over the days to come."
He warned that "the death toll can double or more because of the lack of basic health care facilities and clean water and food and shelter—and with heavy rains expected in southern Burma in the days ahead that can only make things even worse."
The secretary-general, Sawers, and US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad all expressed concern at reports that desperately needed food and aid from the UN and other organizations that has arrived in Burma is being diverted to non-cyclone victims, though no one had independent evidence.
Sawers said the reports underline the need for the Myanmar government to accept that it does not have the capacity to distribute aid to 1.5 million people.
"This is not a slight on Burma," he said. "No country of that size could cope with delivering aid to 1.5 million people."
Besides, Sawers said, "the Burmese army are not a humanitarian organization" and are not geared up for humanitarian operations, so the government should leave distribution to experts from the UN and international organizations who have the skills to get help in before it's too late.
The Irrawaddy News
Two natural disasters in tightly controlled Asian nations have produced two very different responses: Burma's very slow response to Cyclone Nargis has sparked international outrage while China's speedy reaction to a killer earthquake has won international admiration.
Burma's military government, which has ruled with an iron first since 1962, has barred almost all foreign experts experienced in managing humanitarian crises, saying it would handle relief efforts on its own.
Survivors of the cyclone Nargis stand under their shelter set up on the side of a road in Bogalay of Burma's Irrawaddy delta. (Photo: AFP)But without equipment to even lift cargo off Boeing 747s and at least 1.5 million people left homeless or in need, the UN warned Tuesday that Burma faces a monumental catastrophe unless relief efforts reach the scale of the response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
China's communist government also said it was not allowing foreign aid workers into the area affected by Monday's 7.9-magnitude earthquake which wrecked towns across hilly stretches of Sichuan province though it would accept international aid for the tens of thousands left homeless.
Chinese rescuers remove an injured student from the rubble of a high school in Sichuan province. China's biggest earthquake for a generation left tens of thousands dead, missing or buried under the rubble of broken communities Tuesday, unleashing a desperate nationwide relief effort. (Photo: AFP/Xinhua)But in contrast to Burma, China's government quickly moved into high-gear, sending 20,000 soldiers and police into the disaster area with 30,000 more on the way by plane, train, truck and on foot because roads were impassable. The government was also mobilizing food, clothes, tents and plastic sheeting for the victims and sent Premier Wen Jiabao to oversee relief efforts and comfort victims.
China's leaders appeared intent on reassuring the Chinese people and the world that they were in control of the biggest disaster to strike the country in three decades, and were ready for the August 8-24 Olympics in Beijing.
The death toll in China's earthquake topped 12,000 with up to 18,000 people believed trapped in rubble. The death toll in the May 3 cyclone that devastated Burma's Irrawaddy delta was put by the government at over 34,000, with nearly 28,000 missing. The UN said between 62,000 and 100,000 could have died.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday sharply criticized Burma's military junta, whose leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe has refused to take his calls, expressing "deep concern and immense frustration" at "the unacceptably slow response to this grave humanitarian crisis." on Tuesday, Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs, followed up saying: "We fear a second catastrophe unless we're able to put in place quickly a maximum of aid and a major logistical effort comparable with the response to the tsunami."
UN spokeswoman Michele Montas was asked Tuesday whether the secretary-general was concerned that China has not yet said what kind of help the UN could provide to the earthquake victims.
"I don't think he is that concerned because so far, he doesn't have any reports that aid is not reaching the survivors and that the survivors are not being taken care of," she replied. "I think his concern was about the situation in Myanmar [Burma], because of the fact that people were not receiving aid."
Britain's UN Ambassador John Sawers, asked Tuesday whether Britain was concerned that China also is not allowing foreign aid workers into the country, said "I think the two situations are different."
"I think China has reacted very promptly to the appalling disaster ... and I think the political attention, the rapid response, has been admirable," he said.
"The situation in Burma is very, very different," Sawers said. "There, the scale of the disaster is a whole lot greater.
The risk of water-borne disease, lack of clean sanitation— all these problems are going to escalate over the days to come."
He warned that "the death toll can double or more because of the lack of basic health care facilities and clean water and food and shelter—and with heavy rains expected in southern Burma in the days ahead that can only make things even worse."
The secretary-general, Sawers, and US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad all expressed concern at reports that desperately needed food and aid from the UN and other organizations that has arrived in Burma is being diverted to non-cyclone victims, though no one had independent evidence.
Sawers said the reports underline the need for the Myanmar government to accept that it does not have the capacity to distribute aid to 1.5 million people.
"This is not a slight on Burma," he said. "No country of that size could cope with delivering aid to 1.5 million people."
Besides, Sawers said, "the Burmese army are not a humanitarian organization" and are not geared up for humanitarian operations, so the government should leave distribution to experts from the UN and international organizations who have the skills to get help in before it's too late.
Are the generals still indifferent?
By AUNG ZAW - Irrawaddy.Org
Whenever Burma faces a political or humanitarian crisis, Burmese and foreign observers monitor the reclusive military leaders from a distance, trying to gauge their reactions, guessing what shapes their decisions and where possible conflicts within the leadership lie. The question Burma watchers are quietly asking this time is: has the cyclone managed to instil fear in strongman Senior General Than Shwe and his hard-core military cronies? Are they trembling or are they standing firm?
It is easy to imagine the pampered generals running from the storm, boarding themselves in their collective bunker and curling up in terror as the cyclone whipped through the southwest of the country. In the wake of the cyclone, the ordinary people of Burma are braving the elements and starting to put their lives back together. Meanwhile, the cowering junta has been oblivious to the calls to help survivors and allow aid into the affected areas.
Despite the junta's long history of perfidy and brutality, many observers were taken aback by the regime's refusal to allow international aid and foreign aid workers to tend to the cyclone victims in and around the Irrawaddy delta.
Then, over the last week, cracks of dissent within the leadership were detected. Gen Than Shwe and his deputy Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye reportedly have been at loggerheads since troops opened fire on Buddhist monks and activists on the streets last September.
Now rumours have surfaced that Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein has drawn the ire of the top general for showing a soft side after witnessing the tragedy first-hand while overseeing the delivery of aid to cyclone victims from a helicopter. Apparently distressed by what he saw, Gen Thein Sein urged his boss to permit international aid into the area as quickly as possible.
Reportedly, Gen Thein Sein filed a situation report and was immediately stonewalled. At an emergency meeting in Naypyidaw, Gen Than Shwe is said to have told council members that the country's armed forces could handle the humanitarian crisis and that he would rather concentrate on the referendum.
Gen Thein Sein backed off and returned quietly to Rangoon to oversee the relief effort, which was already falling apart _ ill-prepared, ill-equipped and mismanaged. To his and everyone else's frustration, the doors to large-scale international aid remained closed.
The prime minister reportedly began suffering from stress and told his subordinates that he was looking forward to retiring soon.
This time around, sources in Rangoon say Gen Than Shwe and Gen Maung Aye are hanging tight together. They both were seen on TV at polling stations casting their votes last Saturday.
With Gen Than Shwe determined to focus on the national referendum, calls from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to postpone the referendum, and pleas from the international community to allow aid into the delta, fell on deaf ears.
Then, a rumour started circulating among dissidents in exile that Gen Thura Shwe Mann, who is being groomed to take over the armed forces, supports the line of Gen Thein Sein, the prime minister.
Sources say Gen Shwe Mann wanted aid flown in immediately. However, he was apparently unwilling to confront the commander-in-chief, Gen Than Shwe.
Gen Shwe Mann may be acting out of personal concerns. Two of his sons run Ayer Shwe Wah Company, selling fertiliser to farmers in the Irrawaddy delta. They also own a rice mill. Among the Burmese businesses on the United States' sanctions list, the Ayer Shwe Wah Co has approximately 30,000 acres of rice fields in the Irrawaddy delta and is a leading exporter of rice.
Reports from Naypyidaw suggest that Gen Than Shwe doesn't want to hear about the death toll and missing persons in the delta. Some senior officials in the capital have let it leak that Gen Than Shwe's subordinates are afraid to brief him on the horrific figures.
It is a sad irony that it has taken a disaster of such proportions to unmask the true depth of the inhumanity and darkness that resides within the brutal strongman Gen Than Shwe. Perhaps the military leaders closest to him will look into his heart of darkness and see the truth for themselves.
Aung Zaw is Editor of the Irrawaddy magazine covering Burma and Southeast Asia.
Source: Bangkok Post
Whenever Burma faces a political or humanitarian crisis, Burmese and foreign observers monitor the reclusive military leaders from a distance, trying to gauge their reactions, guessing what shapes their decisions and where possible conflicts within the leadership lie. The question Burma watchers are quietly asking this time is: has the cyclone managed to instil fear in strongman Senior General Than Shwe and his hard-core military cronies? Are they trembling or are they standing firm?
It is easy to imagine the pampered generals running from the storm, boarding themselves in their collective bunker and curling up in terror as the cyclone whipped through the southwest of the country. In the wake of the cyclone, the ordinary people of Burma are braving the elements and starting to put their lives back together. Meanwhile, the cowering junta has been oblivious to the calls to help survivors and allow aid into the affected areas.
Despite the junta's long history of perfidy and brutality, many observers were taken aback by the regime's refusal to allow international aid and foreign aid workers to tend to the cyclone victims in and around the Irrawaddy delta.
Then, over the last week, cracks of dissent within the leadership were detected. Gen Than Shwe and his deputy Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye reportedly have been at loggerheads since troops opened fire on Buddhist monks and activists on the streets last September.
Now rumours have surfaced that Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein has drawn the ire of the top general for showing a soft side after witnessing the tragedy first-hand while overseeing the delivery of aid to cyclone victims from a helicopter. Apparently distressed by what he saw, Gen Thein Sein urged his boss to permit international aid into the area as quickly as possible.
Reportedly, Gen Thein Sein filed a situation report and was immediately stonewalled. At an emergency meeting in Naypyidaw, Gen Than Shwe is said to have told council members that the country's armed forces could handle the humanitarian crisis and that he would rather concentrate on the referendum.
Gen Thein Sein backed off and returned quietly to Rangoon to oversee the relief effort, which was already falling apart _ ill-prepared, ill-equipped and mismanaged. To his and everyone else's frustration, the doors to large-scale international aid remained closed.
The prime minister reportedly began suffering from stress and told his subordinates that he was looking forward to retiring soon.
This time around, sources in Rangoon say Gen Than Shwe and Gen Maung Aye are hanging tight together. They both were seen on TV at polling stations casting their votes last Saturday.
With Gen Than Shwe determined to focus on the national referendum, calls from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to postpone the referendum, and pleas from the international community to allow aid into the delta, fell on deaf ears.
Then, a rumour started circulating among dissidents in exile that Gen Thura Shwe Mann, who is being groomed to take over the armed forces, supports the line of Gen Thein Sein, the prime minister.
Sources say Gen Shwe Mann wanted aid flown in immediately. However, he was apparently unwilling to confront the commander-in-chief, Gen Than Shwe.
Gen Shwe Mann may be acting out of personal concerns. Two of his sons run Ayer Shwe Wah Company, selling fertiliser to farmers in the Irrawaddy delta. They also own a rice mill. Among the Burmese businesses on the United States' sanctions list, the Ayer Shwe Wah Co has approximately 30,000 acres of rice fields in the Irrawaddy delta and is a leading exporter of rice.
Reports from Naypyidaw suggest that Gen Than Shwe doesn't want to hear about the death toll and missing persons in the delta. Some senior officials in the capital have let it leak that Gen Than Shwe's subordinates are afraid to brief him on the horrific figures.
It is a sad irony that it has taken a disaster of such proportions to unmask the true depth of the inhumanity and darkness that resides within the brutal strongman Gen Than Shwe. Perhaps the military leaders closest to him will look into his heart of darkness and see the truth for themselves.
Aung Zaw is Editor of the Irrawaddy magazine covering Burma and Southeast Asia.
Source: Bangkok Post
Traffickers target child cyclone survivors
(Newscom) - CHILD traffickers are targeting the youngest and most vulnerable survivors of Burma's catastrophic cyclone and two suspects have already been arrested, the United Nations has reported.
The children, among up to two million people struggling to survive without enough clean water, food or shelter in the aftermath of the storm, were approached last week in Rangoon, the UN said yesterday.
"A broker came to a shelter and tried to recruit children,'' said UNICEF's chief child protection officer in Burma, Anne-Claire Dufay.
"There was an intervention. The police intervened and made arrests,'' she said.
The official death toll from Cyclone Nargis has risen to 34,273, with 27,836 people missing, state radio said today.
Ms Dufay said children who had been separated from their parents, and who were possibly orphans, were now facing the threat of violence on top of the everyday struggle to find enough food and water.
"There are concerns for children in camps,'' she said.
Katy Barnett, Save the Children's child protection adviser in Rangoon, said the organisation was aware of the report of the arrests and expected more trafficking problems as the crisis develops.
"It's something which agencies have been expecting. It's an absolute standard thing in the fallout from an emergency like this,'' Ms Barnett said.
"Traffickers can easily get hold of unaccompanied or separated children and tell them they'll lead a better life or be safe.''
Ms Barnett said another unconfirmed report of people looking in camps to recruit girls to work as domestic workers - a typical ruse for traffickers - was being investigated by a church organisation today.
"They are asking families if they would give their girls up and they haven't been stopped yet apparently,'' she said.
Burma made human trafficking illegal in September 2005, but in a report last year the US State Department listed the isolated nation as one of the world's worst offenders, along with North Korea and Laos.
Many of those involved in the trade are women and girls who face sexual exploitation after being smuggled across borders.
The children, among up to two million people struggling to survive without enough clean water, food or shelter in the aftermath of the storm, were approached last week in Rangoon, the UN said yesterday.
"A broker came to a shelter and tried to recruit children,'' said UNICEF's chief child protection officer in Burma, Anne-Claire Dufay.
"There was an intervention. The police intervened and made arrests,'' she said.
The official death toll from Cyclone Nargis has risen to 34,273, with 27,836 people missing, state radio said today.
Ms Dufay said children who had been separated from their parents, and who were possibly orphans, were now facing the threat of violence on top of the everyday struggle to find enough food and water.
"There are concerns for children in camps,'' she said.
Katy Barnett, Save the Children's child protection adviser in Rangoon, said the organisation was aware of the report of the arrests and expected more trafficking problems as the crisis develops.
"It's something which agencies have been expecting. It's an absolute standard thing in the fallout from an emergency like this,'' Ms Barnett said.
"Traffickers can easily get hold of unaccompanied or separated children and tell them they'll lead a better life or be safe.''
Ms Barnett said another unconfirmed report of people looking in camps to recruit girls to work as domestic workers - a typical ruse for traffickers - was being investigated by a church organisation today.
"They are asking families if they would give their girls up and they haven't been stopped yet apparently,'' she said.
Burma made human trafficking illegal in September 2005, but in a report last year the US State Department listed the isolated nation as one of the world's worst offenders, along with North Korea and Laos.
Many of those involved in the trade are women and girls who face sexual exploitation after being smuggled across borders.
Junta propaganda continues for next referendum
Nem Davies
13 May 2008 (Mizzima)- State-owned media has continuously aired propaganda for the upcoming constitutional referendum in cyclone-hit regions of Burma.
Myanmar Radio and Television has been broadcasting propaganda songs aimed at the 4 million eligible voters in Rangoon Township.
Most of the country has already voted, on May 10, except for voters in 47 townships in Rangoon and Irrawaddy division hit hard by Cyclone Nargis. Those voters will be able to cast their ballots on May 24.
"Every night, junta propaganda songs are released by government television from artists Kaing Zar and Nann Suu Yathi Soe," said an editor of a Rangoon-based magazine. "They said to vote 'yes' for the referendum."
A Rangoon resident said, "We do not watch Myanmar television at home anymore because there is nothing interesting to watch. Instead, we watch DVDs and Burmese movies."
Before the May 10 vote, the junta forced state-run newspapers and private weekly journals to run slogans urging the public to support the regime's draft constitution. The slogans said it was voters' "national responsibility" to approve the charter, which guarantees the military a quarter of all legislative seats in a nominally civilian government.
But the junta has not required print media to run referendum propaganda since May 10.
"They might be keeping quiet this time to avoid criticism from the public and the international community," said the editor.
Tuesday's New Light of Myanmar, the government-run daily, shows pictures of foreign donations, such as the arrival of a US military C-130 aircraft, and local companies donating money to cyclone survivors.
The New Light reported that 31,938 people were killed by the deadly cyclone and 1,403 were injured. In addition, 29,770 were reportedly missing. But the UN and independent aid agencies said the death toll could top 100,000 and that many more face disease and hardships.
13 May 2008 (Mizzima)- State-owned media has continuously aired propaganda for the upcoming constitutional referendum in cyclone-hit regions of Burma.
Myanmar Radio and Television has been broadcasting propaganda songs aimed at the 4 million eligible voters in Rangoon Township.
Most of the country has already voted, on May 10, except for voters in 47 townships in Rangoon and Irrawaddy division hit hard by Cyclone Nargis. Those voters will be able to cast their ballots on May 24.
"Every night, junta propaganda songs are released by government television from artists Kaing Zar and Nann Suu Yathi Soe," said an editor of a Rangoon-based magazine. "They said to vote 'yes' for the referendum."
A Rangoon resident said, "We do not watch Myanmar television at home anymore because there is nothing interesting to watch. Instead, we watch DVDs and Burmese movies."
Before the May 10 vote, the junta forced state-run newspapers and private weekly journals to run slogans urging the public to support the regime's draft constitution. The slogans said it was voters' "national responsibility" to approve the charter, which guarantees the military a quarter of all legislative seats in a nominally civilian government.
But the junta has not required print media to run referendum propaganda since May 10.
"They might be keeping quiet this time to avoid criticism from the public and the international community," said the editor.
Tuesday's New Light of Myanmar, the government-run daily, shows pictures of foreign donations, such as the arrival of a US military C-130 aircraft, and local companies donating money to cyclone survivors.
The New Light reported that 31,938 people were killed by the deadly cyclone and 1,403 were injured. In addition, 29,770 were reportedly missing. But the UN and independent aid agencies said the death toll could top 100,000 and that many more face disease and hardships.
Sri Lanka to send 20 tons of relief assistance to Myanmar cyclone victims
Sri Lanka will dispatch 20 tones of relief assistance to cyclone hit Myanmar, the government announced today.
Addressing a press conference, Media Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena said Myanmar is a close friend of Sri Lanka and urged the public to come to the aid of the people of Myanmar.
"A great devastation had stuck one of our close friends and a neighbouring country in the Asian region. When the LTTE attacked the Dalada Maligawa, the Myanmar Government and its people contributed towards reconstructing the temple and the Ruwanweliseya Chudamanikya was enhanced in quality with the help of the Myanmar Government," the Minister said.
Cyclone Nargis moved across southern Myanmar on May 2 killing over 100,000 people and leaving nearly 50,000 missing in 600 villages.
The Sri Lankan government also donated USD 25,000 to the Myanmar government as emergency relief. Meanwhile the Three Chapters of the Maha Sangha also have appealed for assistance from the public to help the people of Myanmar.
"Collection of goods and other support from the public can be done during the Vesak period. We can announce to the public at each temple all around the country to come forward and extend their support and also bring donors to their respective temples," Ven. Madhuluwawe Sobitha Thera said.
The Colombo Page
Addressing a press conference, Media Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena said Myanmar is a close friend of Sri Lanka and urged the public to come to the aid of the people of Myanmar.
"A great devastation had stuck one of our close friends and a neighbouring country in the Asian region. When the LTTE attacked the Dalada Maligawa, the Myanmar Government and its people contributed towards reconstructing the temple and the Ruwanweliseya Chudamanikya was enhanced in quality with the help of the Myanmar Government," the Minister said.
Cyclone Nargis moved across southern Myanmar on May 2 killing over 100,000 people and leaving nearly 50,000 missing in 600 villages.
The Sri Lankan government also donated USD 25,000 to the Myanmar government as emergency relief. Meanwhile the Three Chapters of the Maha Sangha also have appealed for assistance from the public to help the people of Myanmar.
"Collection of goods and other support from the public can be done during the Vesak period. We can announce to the public at each temple all around the country to come forward and extend their support and also bring donors to their respective temples," Ven. Madhuluwawe Sobitha Thera said.
The Colombo Page
Red Cross official: Myanmar delta 'unrecognizable;' UN says another cyclone is forming nearby
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- The first international aid official allowed into the cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy delta by Myanmar's military leaders described towns rendered unrecognizable, thousands of survivors without shelter in heavy rains and local volunteers saving lives.
Bad weather has contributed to the suffering of survivors and hampered rescue efforts since the May 3 storm, and the Joint Typhoon Warning center said Wednesday another cyclone was forming in the region.
Amanda Pitt, a spokeswoman for the United Nations humanitarian relief program, couldn't say where the landfall would be or when it would become a full-fledged cyclone. But she said the chances of another cyclone were good.
Soldiers have barred foreign aid workers from reaching survivors in the areas hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis, but gave access to an International Red Cross representative who returned to Yangon on Tuesday.
"People who have come here having lost their homes in rural areas have volunteered to work as first aiders. They are humanitarian heroes," said Bridget Gardner, the agency's country head.
The ruling junta has been blasted by aid agencies for refusing to allow most foreign experts into the delta and not responding adequately to what they say is a spiraling crisis.
Relief workers also reported some storm survivors were being given spoiled or poor-quality food rather than nutrition-rich biscuits sent by international donors, adding to fears that the ruling military junta in the Southeast Asian country could be misappropriating assistance.
U.N. officials warned that the threat was escalating for the 2 million people facing disease and hunger in low-lying areas battered by the storm unless relief efforts increased dramatically.
Eleven days after the tempest, reaching the worst-affected areas was getting more and more difficult.
Checkpoints manned by armed police were set up Tuesday on roads leading to the Irrawaddy River delta and all international aid workers and journalists were turned back by officers who took down their names and passport numbers. Drivers were interrogated.
"No foreigners allowed," one policeman said after waving a car back.
However, Gardner, the Red Cross expert, and her assessment team were able to visit five locations in the Irrawaddy delta. In one of them, 10,000 people are living without shelter as rain continued to tumble from the sky.
"The town of Labutta is unrecognizable. I have been here before and now with the extent of the damage and the crowds of displaced people, it's a different place," Gardner was quoted as saying in a statement by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
In Labutta and elsewhere she said volunteers were giving medical aid to hundreds of people a day even though "they have no homes to go back to when they finish."
Supplies piled up at Yangon's main airport, which does not have equipment to lift cargo off big Boeing 747s. It took 200 Burmese volunteers to unload by hand a plane carrying more than 60 tons of relief supplies, including school tents, said Dubai Cares, a United Arab Emirates aid group.
A report from a Tuesday meeting of the U.N. center overseeing logistics said the airport was a bottleneck in the aid effort. "Discharging operations at Yangon airport are hampered by limitations of handling equipment, fuel availability and worsening weather conditions," it said.
The report said Britain's Department for International Development had offered to send in machinery for unloading jumbo jets and other aircraft.
The military, which has ruled with since 1962, has taken control of most supplies sent by other countries, including the United States, which began its third day of aid delivery Wednesday, with one of five scheduled flights taking off from Thailand to Yangon.
Thailand's Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej was also to fly into Yangon to try to persuade the regime to grant visas to international disaster experts. On Tuesday night, King Bhumibol Adulyadej urged Thais to help their neighbor, and without mentioning Myanmar by name warned that hardship would prevail if a country does not accept offered assistance.
With rain falling on Yangon on Tuesday and downpours predicted later this week, aid officials also said there was not enough warehouse space to protect the supplies beginning to flow in after the regime agreed to accept foreign help.
Even the quicker pace is not enough, U.N. officials warned.
"We fear a second catastrophe (in Myanmar) unless we're able to put in place quickly a maximum of aid and a major logistical effort comparable with the response to the (2004) tsunami," said Elisabeth Byrs of the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs.
The tsunami killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen nations around the Indian Ocean, prompting the largest relief operation ever known. Tens of thousands of aid workers poured into devastated areas and the world community donated billions of dollars.
Myanmar's state television said the number of confirmed deaths from Cyclone Nargis had risen by 2,335, to 34,273, and the number of missing stood at 27,838. The United Nations estimates the actual death toll from the storm could be between 62,000 and 100,000.
Some victims and aid workers said that in many cases spoiled or poor-quality food was being given to survivors.
A longtime foreign resident of Yangon told The Associated Press that angry government officials were complaining that high-energy biscuits rushed in on the World Food Program's first flights were sent to a military warehouse.
Those supplies were exchanged for what the officials described as "tasteless and low-quality" biscuits produced by the Industry Ministry to be handed out to cyclone victims, the resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity because identifying himself could jeopardize his safety.
A spokesman for the military regime would not comment.
U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said that while Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had expressed concern about food aid being diverted to non-cyclone victims, so far there was no evidence that was happening.
"It is a fact that a very small percentage of victims so far have received the aid, but from yesterday until today ... the situation has improved in terms of the delivery," she told reporters in New York.
Speaking at the U.N. in New York, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the U.S. is concerned that the aid reaches the neediest.
"We want to make sure that aid goes to the people that are intended to be the recipients, that they're not diverted for other uses, and therefore we want more people there to be able to distribute the aid," he said.
CARE Australia's country director in Myanmar, Brian Agland, reported problems with some rice going to survivors.
He said members of his local staff brought back samples of rotting rice that was being distributed in the Irrawaddy delta.
"I have a small sample in my pocket, and it's some of the poorest quality rice we've seen," he said. "It's affected by salt water and it's very old."
It was unclear whether the rice, which Agland described as dark gray in color and consisting of very small grains, had come from the government or from mills or warehouses in the delta.
"Certainly, we are concerned that (poor quality rice) is being distributed," Agland said by telephone from Yangon. "The level of nutrition is very low."
But the head of Myanmar's navy, Rear Adm. Soe Thein, told Adm. Timothy J. Keating, commander of the U.S. Pacific forces, that basic needs of storm victims were being fulfilled and that "skillful humanitarian workers are not necessary," according to state television.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington was pressing the junta and its foreign allies to allow in not only food and supplies but disaster relief experts.
"We are doing everything we can, because this is a humanitarian issue, not a political issue," she said. "We want to make very clear that our only desire is to help the people of Burma."
Survivors are jamming Buddhist monasteries or camping in the open. Drinking water has been contaminated by fecal matter, and dead bodies and animal carcasses are floating around. Food and medicine are scarce.
The international Red Cross said its delegation in Myanmar found an urgent need for more medical supplies in the Irrawaddy delta.
"During the cyclone, many people held onto trees to avoid being blown away," Red Cross official Bridget Gardner said. "They were almost 'sand blasted' by dirt and saltwater; (many) lost the top layer of their skin and it's important that these injuries are treated before infections can set in."
---
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Alexander G. Higgins in Geneva contributed to this report.
Bad weather has contributed to the suffering of survivors and hampered rescue efforts since the May 3 storm, and the Joint Typhoon Warning center said Wednesday another cyclone was forming in the region.
Amanda Pitt, a spokeswoman for the United Nations humanitarian relief program, couldn't say where the landfall would be or when it would become a full-fledged cyclone. But she said the chances of another cyclone were good.
Soldiers have barred foreign aid workers from reaching survivors in the areas hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis, but gave access to an International Red Cross representative who returned to Yangon on Tuesday.
"People who have come here having lost their homes in rural areas have volunteered to work as first aiders. They are humanitarian heroes," said Bridget Gardner, the agency's country head.
The ruling junta has been blasted by aid agencies for refusing to allow most foreign experts into the delta and not responding adequately to what they say is a spiraling crisis.
Relief workers also reported some storm survivors were being given spoiled or poor-quality food rather than nutrition-rich biscuits sent by international donors, adding to fears that the ruling military junta in the Southeast Asian country could be misappropriating assistance.
U.N. officials warned that the threat was escalating for the 2 million people facing disease and hunger in low-lying areas battered by the storm unless relief efforts increased dramatically.
Eleven days after the tempest, reaching the worst-affected areas was getting more and more difficult.
Checkpoints manned by armed police were set up Tuesday on roads leading to the Irrawaddy River delta and all international aid workers and journalists were turned back by officers who took down their names and passport numbers. Drivers were interrogated.
"No foreigners allowed," one policeman said after waving a car back.
However, Gardner, the Red Cross expert, and her assessment team were able to visit five locations in the Irrawaddy delta. In one of them, 10,000 people are living without shelter as rain continued to tumble from the sky.
"The town of Labutta is unrecognizable. I have been here before and now with the extent of the damage and the crowds of displaced people, it's a different place," Gardner was quoted as saying in a statement by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
In Labutta and elsewhere she said volunteers were giving medical aid to hundreds of people a day even though "they have no homes to go back to when they finish."
Supplies piled up at Yangon's main airport, which does not have equipment to lift cargo off big Boeing 747s. It took 200 Burmese volunteers to unload by hand a plane carrying more than 60 tons of relief supplies, including school tents, said Dubai Cares, a United Arab Emirates aid group.
A report from a Tuesday meeting of the U.N. center overseeing logistics said the airport was a bottleneck in the aid effort. "Discharging operations at Yangon airport are hampered by limitations of handling equipment, fuel availability and worsening weather conditions," it said.
The report said Britain's Department for International Development had offered to send in machinery for unloading jumbo jets and other aircraft.
The military, which has ruled with since 1962, has taken control of most supplies sent by other countries, including the United States, which began its third day of aid delivery Wednesday, with one of five scheduled flights taking off from Thailand to Yangon.
Thailand's Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej was also to fly into Yangon to try to persuade the regime to grant visas to international disaster experts. On Tuesday night, King Bhumibol Adulyadej urged Thais to help their neighbor, and without mentioning Myanmar by name warned that hardship would prevail if a country does not accept offered assistance.
With rain falling on Yangon on Tuesday and downpours predicted later this week, aid officials also said there was not enough warehouse space to protect the supplies beginning to flow in after the regime agreed to accept foreign help.
Even the quicker pace is not enough, U.N. officials warned.
"We fear a second catastrophe (in Myanmar) unless we're able to put in place quickly a maximum of aid and a major logistical effort comparable with the response to the (2004) tsunami," said Elisabeth Byrs of the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs.
The tsunami killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen nations around the Indian Ocean, prompting the largest relief operation ever known. Tens of thousands of aid workers poured into devastated areas and the world community donated billions of dollars.
Myanmar's state television said the number of confirmed deaths from Cyclone Nargis had risen by 2,335, to 34,273, and the number of missing stood at 27,838. The United Nations estimates the actual death toll from the storm could be between 62,000 and 100,000.
Some victims and aid workers said that in many cases spoiled or poor-quality food was being given to survivors.
A longtime foreign resident of Yangon told The Associated Press that angry government officials were complaining that high-energy biscuits rushed in on the World Food Program's first flights were sent to a military warehouse.
Those supplies were exchanged for what the officials described as "tasteless and low-quality" biscuits produced by the Industry Ministry to be handed out to cyclone victims, the resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity because identifying himself could jeopardize his safety.
A spokesman for the military regime would not comment.
U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said that while Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had expressed concern about food aid being diverted to non-cyclone victims, so far there was no evidence that was happening.
"It is a fact that a very small percentage of victims so far have received the aid, but from yesterday until today ... the situation has improved in terms of the delivery," she told reporters in New York.
Speaking at the U.N. in New York, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the U.S. is concerned that the aid reaches the neediest.
"We want to make sure that aid goes to the people that are intended to be the recipients, that they're not diverted for other uses, and therefore we want more people there to be able to distribute the aid," he said.
CARE Australia's country director in Myanmar, Brian Agland, reported problems with some rice going to survivors.
He said members of his local staff brought back samples of rotting rice that was being distributed in the Irrawaddy delta.
"I have a small sample in my pocket, and it's some of the poorest quality rice we've seen," he said. "It's affected by salt water and it's very old."
It was unclear whether the rice, which Agland described as dark gray in color and consisting of very small grains, had come from the government or from mills or warehouses in the delta.
"Certainly, we are concerned that (poor quality rice) is being distributed," Agland said by telephone from Yangon. "The level of nutrition is very low."
But the head of Myanmar's navy, Rear Adm. Soe Thein, told Adm. Timothy J. Keating, commander of the U.S. Pacific forces, that basic needs of storm victims were being fulfilled and that "skillful humanitarian workers are not necessary," according to state television.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington was pressing the junta and its foreign allies to allow in not only food and supplies but disaster relief experts.
"We are doing everything we can, because this is a humanitarian issue, not a political issue," she said. "We want to make very clear that our only desire is to help the people of Burma."
Survivors are jamming Buddhist monasteries or camping in the open. Drinking water has been contaminated by fecal matter, and dead bodies and animal carcasses are floating around. Food and medicine are scarce.
The international Red Cross said its delegation in Myanmar found an urgent need for more medical supplies in the Irrawaddy delta.
"During the cyclone, many people held onto trees to avoid being blown away," Red Cross official Bridget Gardner said. "They were almost 'sand blasted' by dirt and saltwater; (many) lost the top layer of their skin and it's important that these injuries are treated before infections can set in."
---
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Alexander G. Higgins in Geneva contributed to this report.
UN warns another cyclone is forming near Myanmar
The U.N. says another cyclone in forming near Myanmar, which was devastated by a killer storm earlier this month.
U.N. spokeswoman Amanda Pitts couldn't say where the landfall would be or when it would become a full-fledged cyclone.
She told reporters Wednesday that "the chances of it (cyclone) happening is good."
She said the information about the possible cyclone came from the Joint Typhoon Warning center, which is part of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Center.
The May 3 cyclone that pulverized Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta left more than 60,000 people dead or missing.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - The first international aid official allowed into the cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy delta by Myanmar's military leaders described towns rendered unrecognizable, thousands of survivors without shelter in heavy rains and local volunteers saving lives.
Soldiers have barred foreign aid workers from reaching cyclone survivors in the areas hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis, but gave access to an International Red Cross representative who returned to Yangon on Tuesday.
"People who have come here having lost their homes in rural areas have volunteered to work as first aiders. They are humanitarian heroes," said Bridget Gardner, the agency's country head.
The ruling junta has been blasted by aid agencies for refusing to allow most foreign experts into the delta and not responding adequately to what they say is a spiraling crisis.
Relief workers also reported some storm survivors were being given spoiled or poor-quality food rather than nutrition-rich biscuits sent by international donors, adding to fears that the ruling military junta in the Southeast Asian country could be misappropriating assistance.
U.N. officials warned that the threat was escalating for the 2 million people facing disease and hunger in low-lying areas battered by the storm unless relief efforts increased dramatically.
Ten days after the tempest, reaching the worst-affected areas was getting more and more difficult.
Checkpoints manned by armed police were set up Tuesday on roads leading to the Irrawaddy River delta and all international aid workers and journalists were turned back by officers who took down their names and passport numbers. Drivers were interrogated.
"No foreigners allowed," one policeman said after waving a car back.
However, Gardner, the Red Cross expert, and her assessment team were able to visit five locations in the Irrawaddy delta. In one of them, 10,000 people are living without shelter as rain continued to tumble from the sky.
"The town of Labutta is unrecognizable. I have been here before and now with the extent of the damage and the crowds of displaced people, it's a different place," Gardner was quoted as saying in a statement by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
In Labutta and elsewhere she said volunteers were giving medical aid to hundreds of people a day even though "they have no homes to go back to when they finish."
Supplies piled up at Yangon's main airport, which does not have equipment to lift cargo off big Boeing 747s. It took 200 Burmese volunteers to unload by hand a plane carrying more than 60 tons of relief supplies, including school tents, said Dubai Cares, a United Arab Emirates aid group.
A report from a Tuesday meeting of the U.N. center overseeing logistics said the airport was a bottleneck in the aid effort. "Discharging operations at Yangon airport are hampered by limitations of handling equipment, fuel availability and worsening weather conditions," it said.
The report said Britain's Department for International Development had offered to send in machinery for unloading jumbo jets and other aircraft.
With rain falling on Yangon on Tuesday and downpours predicted later this week, aid officials also said there was not enough warehouse space to protect the supplies beginning to flow in after the regime agreed to accept foreign help.
Even the quicker pace is not enough, U.N. officials warned.
"We fear a second catastrophe (in Myanmar) unless we're able to put in place quickly a maximum of aid and a major logistical effort comparable with the response to the (2004) tsunami," said Elisabeth Byrs of the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs.
The tsunami killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen nations around the Indian Ocean, prompting the largest relief operation ever known. Tens of thousands of aid workers poured into devastated areas and the world community donated billions of dollars.
Myanmar's state television said the number of confirmed deaths from Cyclone Nargis had risen by 2,335, to 34,273, and the number of missing stood at 27,838. The United Nations estimates the actual death toll from the May 3 storm could be between 62,000 and 100,000.
Some victims and aid workers said that in many cases spoiled or poor-quality food was being given to survivors.
A longtime foreign resident of Yangon told The Associated Press that angry government officials were complaining that high-energy biscuits rushed in on the World Food Program's first flights were sent to a military warehouse.
Those supplies were exchanged for what the officials described as "tasteless and low-quality" biscuits produced by the Industry Ministry to be handed out to cyclone victims, the resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity because identifying himself could jeopardize his safety.
A spokesman for the military regime would not comment.
U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said that while Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had expressed concern about food aid being diverted to non-cyclone victims, so far there was no evidence that was happening.
"It is a fact that a very small percentage of victims so far have received the aid, but from yesterday until today ... the situation has improved in terms of the delivery," she told reporters in New York.
Speaking at the U.N. in New York, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the U.S. is concerned that the aid reaches the neediest.
"We want to make sure that aid goes to the people that are intended to be the recipients, that they're not diverted for other uses, and therefore we want more people there to be able to distribute the aid," he said.
CARE Australia's country director in Myanmar, Brian Agland, reported problems with some rice going to survivors.
He said members of his local staff brought back samples of rotting rice that was being distributed in the Irrawaddy delta.
"I have a small sample in my pocket, and it's some of the poorest quality rice we've seen," he said. "It's affected by salt water and it's very old."
It was unclear whether the rice, which Agland described as dark gray in color and consisting of very small grains, had come from the government or from mills or warehouses in the delta.
"Certainly, we are concerned that (poor quality rice) is being distributed," Agland said by telephone from Yangon. "The level of nutrition is very low."
The military, which has ruled Myanmar since 1962, has taken control of most supplies sent in by other countries.
Among those are the United States, which made its first aid delivery Monday and sent in another cargo plane Tuesday packed with blankets, water and mosquito netting. A third shipment was en route.
The head of Myanmar's navy, Rear Adm. Soe Thein, told Adm. Timothy J. Keating, commander of the U.S. Pacific forces, that basic needs of storm victims were being fulfilled and that "skillful humanitarian workers are not necessary," according to state television.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington was pressing the junta and its foreign allies to allow in not only food and supplies but disaster relief experts.
"We are doing everything we can, because this is a humanitarian issue, not a political issue," she said. "We want to make very clear that our only desire is to help the people of Burma."
Survivors are jamming Buddhist monasteries or camping in the open. Drinking water has been contaminated by fecal matter, and dead bodies and animal carcasses are floating around. Food and medicine are scarce.
The international Red Cross said its delegation in Myanmar found an urgent need for more medical supplies in the Irrawaddy delta.
"During the cyclone, many people held (AP) - onto trees to avoid being blown away," Red Cross official Bridget Gardner said. "They were almost 'sand blasted' by dirt and saltwater; (many) lost the top layer of their skin and it's important that these injuries are treated before infections can set in."
---
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Alexander G. Higgins in Geneva contributed to this report.
U.N. spokeswoman Amanda Pitts couldn't say where the landfall would be or when it would become a full-fledged cyclone.
She told reporters Wednesday that "the chances of it (cyclone) happening is good."
She said the information about the possible cyclone came from the Joint Typhoon Warning center, which is part of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Center.
The May 3 cyclone that pulverized Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta left more than 60,000 people dead or missing.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - The first international aid official allowed into the cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy delta by Myanmar's military leaders described towns rendered unrecognizable, thousands of survivors without shelter in heavy rains and local volunteers saving lives.
Soldiers have barred foreign aid workers from reaching cyclone survivors in the areas hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis, but gave access to an International Red Cross representative who returned to Yangon on Tuesday.
"People who have come here having lost their homes in rural areas have volunteered to work as first aiders. They are humanitarian heroes," said Bridget Gardner, the agency's country head.
The ruling junta has been blasted by aid agencies for refusing to allow most foreign experts into the delta and not responding adequately to what they say is a spiraling crisis.
Relief workers also reported some storm survivors were being given spoiled or poor-quality food rather than nutrition-rich biscuits sent by international donors, adding to fears that the ruling military junta in the Southeast Asian country could be misappropriating assistance.
U.N. officials warned that the threat was escalating for the 2 million people facing disease and hunger in low-lying areas battered by the storm unless relief efforts increased dramatically.
Ten days after the tempest, reaching the worst-affected areas was getting more and more difficult.
Checkpoints manned by armed police were set up Tuesday on roads leading to the Irrawaddy River delta and all international aid workers and journalists were turned back by officers who took down their names and passport numbers. Drivers were interrogated.
"No foreigners allowed," one policeman said after waving a car back.
However, Gardner, the Red Cross expert, and her assessment team were able to visit five locations in the Irrawaddy delta. In one of them, 10,000 people are living without shelter as rain continued to tumble from the sky.
"The town of Labutta is unrecognizable. I have been here before and now with the extent of the damage and the crowds of displaced people, it's a different place," Gardner was quoted as saying in a statement by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
In Labutta and elsewhere she said volunteers were giving medical aid to hundreds of people a day even though "they have no homes to go back to when they finish."
Supplies piled up at Yangon's main airport, which does not have equipment to lift cargo off big Boeing 747s. It took 200 Burmese volunteers to unload by hand a plane carrying more than 60 tons of relief supplies, including school tents, said Dubai Cares, a United Arab Emirates aid group.
A report from a Tuesday meeting of the U.N. center overseeing logistics said the airport was a bottleneck in the aid effort. "Discharging operations at Yangon airport are hampered by limitations of handling equipment, fuel availability and worsening weather conditions," it said.
The report said Britain's Department for International Development had offered to send in machinery for unloading jumbo jets and other aircraft.
With rain falling on Yangon on Tuesday and downpours predicted later this week, aid officials also said there was not enough warehouse space to protect the supplies beginning to flow in after the regime agreed to accept foreign help.
Even the quicker pace is not enough, U.N. officials warned.
"We fear a second catastrophe (in Myanmar) unless we're able to put in place quickly a maximum of aid and a major logistical effort comparable with the response to the (2004) tsunami," said Elisabeth Byrs of the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs.
The tsunami killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen nations around the Indian Ocean, prompting the largest relief operation ever known. Tens of thousands of aid workers poured into devastated areas and the world community donated billions of dollars.
Myanmar's state television said the number of confirmed deaths from Cyclone Nargis had risen by 2,335, to 34,273, and the number of missing stood at 27,838. The United Nations estimates the actual death toll from the May 3 storm could be between 62,000 and 100,000.
Some victims and aid workers said that in many cases spoiled or poor-quality food was being given to survivors.
A longtime foreign resident of Yangon told The Associated Press that angry government officials were complaining that high-energy biscuits rushed in on the World Food Program's first flights were sent to a military warehouse.
Those supplies were exchanged for what the officials described as "tasteless and low-quality" biscuits produced by the Industry Ministry to be handed out to cyclone victims, the resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity because identifying himself could jeopardize his safety.
A spokesman for the military regime would not comment.
U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said that while Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had expressed concern about food aid being diverted to non-cyclone victims, so far there was no evidence that was happening.
"It is a fact that a very small percentage of victims so far have received the aid, but from yesterday until today ... the situation has improved in terms of the delivery," she told reporters in New York.
Speaking at the U.N. in New York, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the U.S. is concerned that the aid reaches the neediest.
"We want to make sure that aid goes to the people that are intended to be the recipients, that they're not diverted for other uses, and therefore we want more people there to be able to distribute the aid," he said.
CARE Australia's country director in Myanmar, Brian Agland, reported problems with some rice going to survivors.
He said members of his local staff brought back samples of rotting rice that was being distributed in the Irrawaddy delta.
"I have a small sample in my pocket, and it's some of the poorest quality rice we've seen," he said. "It's affected by salt water and it's very old."
It was unclear whether the rice, which Agland described as dark gray in color and consisting of very small grains, had come from the government or from mills or warehouses in the delta.
"Certainly, we are concerned that (poor quality rice) is being distributed," Agland said by telephone from Yangon. "The level of nutrition is very low."
The military, which has ruled Myanmar since 1962, has taken control of most supplies sent in by other countries.
Among those are the United States, which made its first aid delivery Monday and sent in another cargo plane Tuesday packed with blankets, water and mosquito netting. A third shipment was en route.
The head of Myanmar's navy, Rear Adm. Soe Thein, told Adm. Timothy J. Keating, commander of the U.S. Pacific forces, that basic needs of storm victims were being fulfilled and that "skillful humanitarian workers are not necessary," according to state television.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington was pressing the junta and its foreign allies to allow in not only food and supplies but disaster relief experts.
"We are doing everything we can, because this is a humanitarian issue, not a political issue," she said. "We want to make very clear that our only desire is to help the people of Burma."
Survivors are jamming Buddhist monasteries or camping in the open. Drinking water has been contaminated by fecal matter, and dead bodies and animal carcasses are floating around. Food and medicine are scarce.
The international Red Cross said its delegation in Myanmar found an urgent need for more medical supplies in the Irrawaddy delta.
"During the cyclone, many people held (AP) - onto trees to avoid being blown away," Red Cross official Bridget Gardner said. "They were almost 'sand blasted' by dirt and saltwater; (many) lost the top layer of their skin and it's important that these injuries are treated before infections can set in."
---
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Alexander G. Higgins in Geneva contributed to this report.
Southfield woman makes a safe place for foster children from Myanmar
By Neil Rubin
Detroit News
They're teenage boys, so what do you expect? They wrestle and sometimes they crank their music up too loud, and no, you can't play soccer in the house!
They're teenage boys from halfway around the world, and they've seen and survived things most of us can't even fathom. One of them has a tattoo across his chest from an army that made him a soldier at a point when American kids are still learning to drive.
But boys will be boys, whether it's in Myanmar or Southfield.
"They know I don't like the burping," Denise Burroughs says, and her silver hoop earrings quiver as she laughs.
Burroughs, 33 and single, could have bought herself a tidy little condo when she went looking for a home last year. Instead, she made God an offer. "You bless me with a house," she said, a good-sized ranch at a near-miraculous price, "and this will be my return favor to you."
He came through, Burroughs says, and so did she. One acre, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and now four foster sons who will build the rest of their lives atop the foundation they're forming with their surrogate mom.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, shares its largest borders with India, China and Thailand on the Indochinese peninsula. The band of generals who run the overwhelmingly Buddhist nation are so secretive and dictatorial that they have throttled attempts by the rest of the world to help victims of Cyclone Nargis, which killed upward of 20,000 people early this month.
Two of Burroughs' boys are ethnic Chins and all are Christians, and neither of those is currently a good thing to be in Myanmar. The United States admitted nearly 14,000 refugees from the country in 2007, eight times more than the year before.
Her wards fled military service or the threat of it, made their way through the jungle, found refugee camps in Malaysia and were welcomed by Lutheran Social Services in Lansing, one of only 14 agencies nationwide that works with unaccompanied refugees younger than 18.
Now they are learning about pizza and the peculiarities of English, and she is learning that no dinner is complete without spice and rice.
A home away from strife
Burroughs took in her first two foster kids, a brother and sister from Rwanda, when she was only 26.
She was a renter with two bedrooms in Rochester Hills, and she had paid minimal attention to the Rwandan genocide. A social services manager she knew floated the idea and told her to pray on it.
"Like God's going to say 'no,' " Burroughs says. The siblings were with her for two years, and when they went on with their lives the way they're supposed to, "it left a hole in my heart.."
In September, the boys from Myanmar filled it.
A former middle school teacher, Burroughs has a degree in social work and works as a residential care specialist at a private psychiatric hospital. She read about Lutheran Social Services someplace, dialed the phone, loaned a friend her Chrysler Sebring, bought a Town & Country, and switched her shift to overnights so she could drive her new kids to school.
School starts at 8 a.m. -- half a day of English, half of standard education. They're ready by 7:20.
Adjusting to a new life
Amawong, the oldest, turns 19 in August. He arrived in the United States in June, three months earlier than the others, and tends to speak for all of them because he's better at it.
He's the Alpha dog, the one who automatically sits up front in the minivan. Before Lien went door-to-door over the winter, Amawong wrote a note for him on an index card: "The weather is bad today. I would like to shovel your snow."
Thang, 17, is the least fluent and most extroverted. He'll phone Burroughs' mother in Detroit, "and I'm thinking he's talking to someone from his country," she says. "He starts out in English and then he gets excited and doesn't realize he switched to Burmese."
Sai Sai, 18, bears the tattoo. He's a talented artist, something he didn't realize until he arrived here. Translating, Amawong says Sai Sai "was not interested to draw" in Myanmar.
Lien, 18, is the only one of the four without a nickname. He likes movies. He left a girlfriend back home.
The proper pronunciations are Amung, Tung, Sigh Sigh and LEE-an. Amawong is an orphan, but he has a 15-year-old brother at a refugee camp who will meet with a United Nations caseworker soon. They all have friends or relatives in Myanmar, so out of caution, they don't want their last names in print.
Thang and Sai Sai call Burroughs "Mom." Amawong and Lien call her "Auntie." All four are learning guitar, all four keep asking when they can go to work, and all four have become protective of their foster mother: "Where are you going? How long?"
They share a range in height from 5 foot 2 inches to 5 foot 5 inches and musical tastes that range from country to Christian. Within minutes after Burroughs picks them up from school, someone has an Olivia Newton-John song playing: "If you love me, let me know ..."
They do not expect to return to Myanmar, which they call Burma, and where as far as they know their relatives survived the cyclone unscathed. When Amawong outlines their plans, the others nod. They will go to college, and they will become doctors and lawyers.
Burroughs reminds them that the first step is to improve their English. "You have to speak it to learn it," she tells the quiet ones.
"It's like having babies," Burroughs says. "I'm the only one who understands them."
Oreos, lost in translation
Burroughs has rules and concerns, just like any parent. She worries about influences the boys might find outside the house.
"You start walking around looking crazy with your pants hanging off your butt," she tells them, "and you will not be employable."
She wants them to be optimistic but also realistic. They drove through some of the dicier parts of Detroit one day, just so they understood that "America is no instant scratch-off ticket."
Not that they'd have grasped the concept if she'd phrased it that way. Some references don't translate. Neither, she discovered, do Oreos.
The first box she bought sat untouched for a week and a half. Finally, she took them into the boys' bedrooms with glasses of milk to demonstrate the concept of cookies.
Judy Burroughs, Denise's mother, says her daughter was always giving and always precise. She would keep a dictionary open on her lap when she talked on the phone with friends, so she could respond if someone challenged one of her new words.
"When Stormey was little" -- it's Stormey Denise Burroughs, but she's never liked the first name -- "she'd get out of kindergarten and stop by all the old people's houses," Judy says. Denise would tell their 90-year-old neighbor, "I'm going to have 100 kids when I get older. And guess what, Aunt Mary? You're going to be the babysitter."
She has opted so far for temporary dependents, teens with accelerated childhoods who move on to independent living when they turn 20. Plenty of kids here need help, too, she realizes, but there's no other safety net for someone from Rwanda or Myanmar.
There's nowhere else for them to sling their cargo shorts over the chairs in their rooms, to strum their guitars, to thumb through "My First Picture Dictionary." There's no other way to make such an enormous impact in such a fleeting amount of time.
At Christmas, she gave Lien a rice cooker. Months later, she realized he had never used it, and she asked him why.
"So when I get married," he told her, "I can say, 'This is the rice cooker my Auntie Denise got me,' " back when everything was new and strange and there was someone who showed him how much she cared.
Reach Neal Rubin at (313) 222-1874 or nrubin@detnews.com.
Detroit News
They're teenage boys, so what do you expect? They wrestle and sometimes they crank their music up too loud, and no, you can't play soccer in the house!
They're teenage boys from halfway around the world, and they've seen and survived things most of us can't even fathom. One of them has a tattoo across his chest from an army that made him a soldier at a point when American kids are still learning to drive.
But boys will be boys, whether it's in Myanmar or Southfield.
"They know I don't like the burping," Denise Burroughs says, and her silver hoop earrings quiver as she laughs.
Burroughs, 33 and single, could have bought herself a tidy little condo when she went looking for a home last year. Instead, she made God an offer. "You bless me with a house," she said, a good-sized ranch at a near-miraculous price, "and this will be my return favor to you."
He came through, Burroughs says, and so did she. One acre, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and now four foster sons who will build the rest of their lives atop the foundation they're forming with their surrogate mom.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, shares its largest borders with India, China and Thailand on the Indochinese peninsula. The band of generals who run the overwhelmingly Buddhist nation are so secretive and dictatorial that they have throttled attempts by the rest of the world to help victims of Cyclone Nargis, which killed upward of 20,000 people early this month.
Two of Burroughs' boys are ethnic Chins and all are Christians, and neither of those is currently a good thing to be in Myanmar. The United States admitted nearly 14,000 refugees from the country in 2007, eight times more than the year before.
Her wards fled military service or the threat of it, made their way through the jungle, found refugee camps in Malaysia and were welcomed by Lutheran Social Services in Lansing, one of only 14 agencies nationwide that works with unaccompanied refugees younger than 18.
Now they are learning about pizza and the peculiarities of English, and she is learning that no dinner is complete without spice and rice.
A home away from strife
Burroughs took in her first two foster kids, a brother and sister from Rwanda, when she was only 26.
She was a renter with two bedrooms in Rochester Hills, and she had paid minimal attention to the Rwandan genocide. A social services manager she knew floated the idea and told her to pray on it.
"Like God's going to say 'no,' " Burroughs says. The siblings were with her for two years, and when they went on with their lives the way they're supposed to, "it left a hole in my heart.."
In September, the boys from Myanmar filled it.
A former middle school teacher, Burroughs has a degree in social work and works as a residential care specialist at a private psychiatric hospital. She read about Lutheran Social Services someplace, dialed the phone, loaned a friend her Chrysler Sebring, bought a Town & Country, and switched her shift to overnights so she could drive her new kids to school.
School starts at 8 a.m. -- half a day of English, half of standard education. They're ready by 7:20.
Adjusting to a new life
Amawong, the oldest, turns 19 in August. He arrived in the United States in June, three months earlier than the others, and tends to speak for all of them because he's better at it.
He's the Alpha dog, the one who automatically sits up front in the minivan. Before Lien went door-to-door over the winter, Amawong wrote a note for him on an index card: "The weather is bad today. I would like to shovel your snow."
Thang, 17, is the least fluent and most extroverted. He'll phone Burroughs' mother in Detroit, "and I'm thinking he's talking to someone from his country," she says. "He starts out in English and then he gets excited and doesn't realize he switched to Burmese."
Sai Sai, 18, bears the tattoo. He's a talented artist, something he didn't realize until he arrived here. Translating, Amawong says Sai Sai "was not interested to draw" in Myanmar.
Lien, 18, is the only one of the four without a nickname. He likes movies. He left a girlfriend back home.
The proper pronunciations are Amung, Tung, Sigh Sigh and LEE-an. Amawong is an orphan, but he has a 15-year-old brother at a refugee camp who will meet with a United Nations caseworker soon. They all have friends or relatives in Myanmar, so out of caution, they don't want their last names in print.
Thang and Sai Sai call Burroughs "Mom." Amawong and Lien call her "Auntie." All four are learning guitar, all four keep asking when they can go to work, and all four have become protective of their foster mother: "Where are you going? How long?"
They share a range in height from 5 foot 2 inches to 5 foot 5 inches and musical tastes that range from country to Christian. Within minutes after Burroughs picks them up from school, someone has an Olivia Newton-John song playing: "If you love me, let me know ..."
They do not expect to return to Myanmar, which they call Burma, and where as far as they know their relatives survived the cyclone unscathed. When Amawong outlines their plans, the others nod. They will go to college, and they will become doctors and lawyers.
Burroughs reminds them that the first step is to improve their English. "You have to speak it to learn it," she tells the quiet ones.
"It's like having babies," Burroughs says. "I'm the only one who understands them."
Oreos, lost in translation
Burroughs has rules and concerns, just like any parent. She worries about influences the boys might find outside the house.
"You start walking around looking crazy with your pants hanging off your butt," she tells them, "and you will not be employable."
She wants them to be optimistic but also realistic. They drove through some of the dicier parts of Detroit one day, just so they understood that "America is no instant scratch-off ticket."
Not that they'd have grasped the concept if she'd phrased it that way. Some references don't translate. Neither, she discovered, do Oreos.
The first box she bought sat untouched for a week and a half. Finally, she took them into the boys' bedrooms with glasses of milk to demonstrate the concept of cookies.
Judy Burroughs, Denise's mother, says her daughter was always giving and always precise. She would keep a dictionary open on her lap when she talked on the phone with friends, so she could respond if someone challenged one of her new words.
"When Stormey was little" -- it's Stormey Denise Burroughs, but she's never liked the first name -- "she'd get out of kindergarten and stop by all the old people's houses," Judy says. Denise would tell their 90-year-old neighbor, "I'm going to have 100 kids when I get older. And guess what, Aunt Mary? You're going to be the babysitter."
She has opted so far for temporary dependents, teens with accelerated childhoods who move on to independent living when they turn 20. Plenty of kids here need help, too, she realizes, but there's no other safety net for someone from Rwanda or Myanmar.
There's nowhere else for them to sling their cargo shorts over the chairs in their rooms, to strum their guitars, to thumb through "My First Picture Dictionary." There's no other way to make such an enormous impact in such a fleeting amount of time.
At Christmas, she gave Lien a rice cooker. Months later, she realized he had never used it, and she asked him why.
"So when I get married," he told her, "I can say, 'This is the rice cooker my Auntie Denise got me,' " back when everything was new and strange and there was someone who showed him how much she cared.
Reach Neal Rubin at (313) 222-1874 or nrubin@detnews.com.
Aid worker enters 'unrecognizable' Myanmar delta
(AP) - The first international aid official allowed into the cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy delta by Myanmar's military leaders described towns rendered unrecognizable, thousands of survivors without shelter in heavy rains and local volunteers saving lives.
Soldiers have barred foreign aid workers from reaching cyclone survivors in the areas hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis, but gave access to an International Red Cross representative who returned to Yangon on Tuesday.
"People who have come here having lost their homes in rural areas have volunteered to work as first aiders. They are humanitarian heroes," said Bridget Gardner, the agency's country head.
The ruling junta has been blasted by aid agencies for refusing to allow most foreign experts into the delta and not responding adequately to what they say is a spiraling crisis.
Relief workers also reported some storm survivors were being given spoiled or poor-quality food rather than nutrition-rich biscuits sent by international donors, adding to fears that the ruling military junta in the Southeast Asian country could be misappropriating assistance.
U.N. officials warned that the threat was escalating for the 2 million people facing disease and hunger in low-lying areas battered by the storm unless relief efforts increased dramatically.
Ten days after the tempest, reaching the worst-affected areas was getting more and more difficult.
Checkpoints manned by armed police were set up Tuesday on roads leading to the Irrawaddy River delta and all international aid workers and journalists were turned back by officers who took down their names and passport numbers. Drivers were interrogated.
"No foreigners allowed," one policeman said after waving a car back.
However, Gardner, the Red Cross expert, and her assessment team were able to visit five locations in the Irrawaddy delta. In one of them, 10,000 people are living without shelter as rain continued to tumble from the sky.
"The town of Labutta is unrecognizable. I have been here before and now with the extent of the damage and the crowds of displaced people, it's a different place," Gardner was quoted as saying in a statement by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
In Labutta and elsewhere she said volunteers were giving medical aid to hundreds of people a day even though "they have no homes to go back to when they finish."
Supplies piled up at Yangon's main airport, which does not have equipment to lift cargo off big Boeing 747s. It took 200 Burmese volunteers to unload by hand a plane carrying more than 60 tons of relief supplies, including school tents, said Dubai Cares, a United Arab Emirates aid group.
A report from a Tuesday meeting of the U.N. center overseeing logistics said the airport was a bottleneck in the aid effort. "Discharging operations at Yangon airport are hampered by limitations of handling equipment, fuel availability and worsening weather conditions," it said.
The report said Britain's Department for International Development had offered to send in machinery for unloading jumbo jets and other aircraft.
With rain falling on Yangon on Tuesday and downpours predicted later this week, aid officials also said there was not enough warehouse space to protect the supplies beginning to flow in after the regime agreed to accept foreign help.
Even the quicker pace is not enough, U.N. officials warned.
"We fear a second catastrophe (in Myanmar) unless we're able to put in place quickly a maximum of aid and a major logistical effort comparable with the response to the (2004) tsunami," said Elisabeth Byrs of the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs.
The tsunami killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen nations around the Indian Ocean, prompting the largest relief operation ever known. Tens of thousands of aid workers poured into devastated areas and the world community donated billions of dollars.
Myanmar's state television said the number of confirmed deaths from Cyclone Nargis had risen by 2,335, to 34,273, and the number of missing stood at 27,838. The United Nations estimates the actual death toll from the May 3 storm could be between 62,000 and 100,000.
Some victims and aid workers said that in many cases spoiled or poor-quality food was being given to survivors.
A longtime foreign resident of Yangon told The Associated Press that angry government officials were complaining that high-energy biscuits rushed in on the World Food Program's first flights were sent to a military warehouse.
Those supplies were exchanged for what the officials described as "tasteless and low-quality" biscuits produced by the Industry Ministry to be handed out to cyclone victims, the resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity because identifying himself could jeopardize his safety.
A spokesman for the military regime would not comment.
U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said that while Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had expressed concern about food aid being diverted to non-cyclone victims, so far there was no evidence that was happening.
"It is a fact that a very small percentage of victims so far have received the aid, but from yesterday until today ... the situation has improved in terms of the delivery," she told reporters in New York.
Speaking at the U.N. in New York, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the U.S. is concerned that the aid reaches the neediest.
"We want to make sure that aid goes to the people that are intended to be the recipients, that they're not diverted for other uses, and therefore we want more people there to be able to distribute the aid," he said.
CARE Australia's country director in Myanmar, Brian Agland, reported problems with some rice going to survivors.
He said members of his local staff brought back samples of rotting rice that was being distributed in the Irrawaddy delta.
"I have a small sample in my pocket, and it's some of the poorest quality rice we've seen," he said. "It's affected by salt water and it's very old."
It was unclear whether the rice, which Agland described as dark gray in color and consisting of very small grains, had come from the government or from mills or warehouses in the delta.
"Certainly, we are concerned that (poor quality rice) is being distributed," Agland said by telephone from Yangon. "The level of nutrition is very low."
The military, which has ruled Myanmar since 1962, has taken control of most supplies sent in by other countries.
Among those are the United States, which made its first aid delivery Monday and sent in another cargo plane Tuesday packed with blankets, water and mosquito netting. A third shipment was en route.
The head of Myanmar's navy, Rear Adm. Soe Thein, told Adm. Timothy J. Keating, commander of the U.S. Pacific forces, that basic needs of storm victims were being fulfilled and that "skillful humanitarian workers are not necessary," according to state television.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington was pressing the junta and its foreign allies to allow in not only food and supplies but disaster relief experts.
"We are doing everything we can, because this is a humanitarian issue, not a political issue," she said. "We want to make very clear that our only desire is to help the people of Burma."
Survivors are jamming Buddhist monasteries or camping in the open. Drinking water has been contaminated by fecal matter, and dead bodies and animal carcasses are floating around. Food and medicine are scarce.
The international Red Cross said its delegation in Myanmar found an urgent need for more medical supplies in the Irrawaddy delta.
"During the cyclone, many people held (AP) - onto trees to avoid being blown away," Red Cross official Bridget Gardner said. "They were almost 'sand blasted' by dirt and saltwater; (many) lost the top layer of their skin and it's important that these injuries are treated before infections can set in."
---
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Alexander G. Higgins in Geneva contributed to this report.
Soldiers have barred foreign aid workers from reaching cyclone survivors in the areas hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis, but gave access to an International Red Cross representative who returned to Yangon on Tuesday.
"People who have come here having lost their homes in rural areas have volunteered to work as first aiders. They are humanitarian heroes," said Bridget Gardner, the agency's country head.
The ruling junta has been blasted by aid agencies for refusing to allow most foreign experts into the delta and not responding adequately to what they say is a spiraling crisis.
Relief workers also reported some storm survivors were being given spoiled or poor-quality food rather than nutrition-rich biscuits sent by international donors, adding to fears that the ruling military junta in the Southeast Asian country could be misappropriating assistance.
U.N. officials warned that the threat was escalating for the 2 million people facing disease and hunger in low-lying areas battered by the storm unless relief efforts increased dramatically.
Ten days after the tempest, reaching the worst-affected areas was getting more and more difficult.
Checkpoints manned by armed police were set up Tuesday on roads leading to the Irrawaddy River delta and all international aid workers and journalists were turned back by officers who took down their names and passport numbers. Drivers were interrogated.
"No foreigners allowed," one policeman said after waving a car back.
However, Gardner, the Red Cross expert, and her assessment team were able to visit five locations in the Irrawaddy delta. In one of them, 10,000 people are living without shelter as rain continued to tumble from the sky.
"The town of Labutta is unrecognizable. I have been here before and now with the extent of the damage and the crowds of displaced people, it's a different place," Gardner was quoted as saying in a statement by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
In Labutta and elsewhere she said volunteers were giving medical aid to hundreds of people a day even though "they have no homes to go back to when they finish."
Supplies piled up at Yangon's main airport, which does not have equipment to lift cargo off big Boeing 747s. It took 200 Burmese volunteers to unload by hand a plane carrying more than 60 tons of relief supplies, including school tents, said Dubai Cares, a United Arab Emirates aid group.
A report from a Tuesday meeting of the U.N. center overseeing logistics said the airport was a bottleneck in the aid effort. "Discharging operations at Yangon airport are hampered by limitations of handling equipment, fuel availability and worsening weather conditions," it said.
The report said Britain's Department for International Development had offered to send in machinery for unloading jumbo jets and other aircraft.
With rain falling on Yangon on Tuesday and downpours predicted later this week, aid officials also said there was not enough warehouse space to protect the supplies beginning to flow in after the regime agreed to accept foreign help.
Even the quicker pace is not enough, U.N. officials warned.
"We fear a second catastrophe (in Myanmar) unless we're able to put in place quickly a maximum of aid and a major logistical effort comparable with the response to the (2004) tsunami," said Elisabeth Byrs of the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs.
The tsunami killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen nations around the Indian Ocean, prompting the largest relief operation ever known. Tens of thousands of aid workers poured into devastated areas and the world community donated billions of dollars.
Myanmar's state television said the number of confirmed deaths from Cyclone Nargis had risen by 2,335, to 34,273, and the number of missing stood at 27,838. The United Nations estimates the actual death toll from the May 3 storm could be between 62,000 and 100,000.
Some victims and aid workers said that in many cases spoiled or poor-quality food was being given to survivors.
A longtime foreign resident of Yangon told The Associated Press that angry government officials were complaining that high-energy biscuits rushed in on the World Food Program's first flights were sent to a military warehouse.
Those supplies were exchanged for what the officials described as "tasteless and low-quality" biscuits produced by the Industry Ministry to be handed out to cyclone victims, the resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity because identifying himself could jeopardize his safety.
A spokesman for the military regime would not comment.
U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said that while Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had expressed concern about food aid being diverted to non-cyclone victims, so far there was no evidence that was happening.
"It is a fact that a very small percentage of victims so far have received the aid, but from yesterday until today ... the situation has improved in terms of the delivery," she told reporters in New York.
Speaking at the U.N. in New York, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the U.S. is concerned that the aid reaches the neediest.
"We want to make sure that aid goes to the people that are intended to be the recipients, that they're not diverted for other uses, and therefore we want more people there to be able to distribute the aid," he said.
CARE Australia's country director in Myanmar, Brian Agland, reported problems with some rice going to survivors.
He said members of his local staff brought back samples of rotting rice that was being distributed in the Irrawaddy delta.
"I have a small sample in my pocket, and it's some of the poorest quality rice we've seen," he said. "It's affected by salt water and it's very old."
It was unclear whether the rice, which Agland described as dark gray in color and consisting of very small grains, had come from the government or from mills or warehouses in the delta.
"Certainly, we are concerned that (poor quality rice) is being distributed," Agland said by telephone from Yangon. "The level of nutrition is very low."
The military, which has ruled Myanmar since 1962, has taken control of most supplies sent in by other countries.
Among those are the United States, which made its first aid delivery Monday and sent in another cargo plane Tuesday packed with blankets, water and mosquito netting. A third shipment was en route.
The head of Myanmar's navy, Rear Adm. Soe Thein, told Adm. Timothy J. Keating, commander of the U.S. Pacific forces, that basic needs of storm victims were being fulfilled and that "skillful humanitarian workers are not necessary," according to state television.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington was pressing the junta and its foreign allies to allow in not only food and supplies but disaster relief experts.
"We are doing everything we can, because this is a humanitarian issue, not a political issue," she said. "We want to make very clear that our only desire is to help the people of Burma."
Survivors are jamming Buddhist monasteries or camping in the open. Drinking water has been contaminated by fecal matter, and dead bodies and animal carcasses are floating around. Food and medicine are scarce.
The international Red Cross said its delegation in Myanmar found an urgent need for more medical supplies in the Irrawaddy delta.
"During the cyclone, many people held (AP) - onto trees to avoid being blown away," Red Cross official Bridget Gardner said. "They were almost 'sand blasted' by dirt and saltwater; (many) lost the top layer of their skin and it's important that these injuries are treated before infections can set in."
---
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Alexander G. Higgins in Geneva contributed to this report.
Kick out victims, monks ordered
The monks who spearheaded an uprising last fall against Burma's military rulers are back on the front lines, this time providing food, shelter and spiritual solace to cyclone victims.But the junta has moved to curb the Buddhist clerics' efforts, even as it fails to deliver adequate aid itself.
Authorities have given some monasteries deadlines to clear out refugees, many of whom have no homes to return to, monks and survivors say.
"There is no aid. We haven't seen anyone from the government," said an abbot of the Kyi Bui Kha monastery sharing almost depleted rice stocks and precious rainwater with some 100 homeless villagers in its compound.
Similar scenes are being repeated in other areas of the Irrawaddy Delta and Rangoon, where monasteries became safe havens after cyclone Nargis struck on May 3.
Complicating the situation, survivors in the Irrawaddy Delta were pelted by heavy rains yesterday.
A senior monk said he tried to argue with military officials who ordered the more than 100 refugees to leave.
"I don't know where they will go. But that was the order," he said.
Other monasteries in Rangoon have been told to clear out victims in coming days, the monk said, but in the delta refugees were being allowed to remain or told they could come to monasteries for supplies but not shelter.
"They don't want too many people gathering in small towns," said Hla Khay, a delta boat operator. The regime "is concerned about security. With lots of frustrated people together, there may be another uprising."The junta has rejected growing international pressure to accept aid workers, insisting against all the evidence they could handle the relief effort alone.
"The nation does not need skilled relief workers yet," Vice Admiral Soe Thein said.
Aid agencies say up to two million people are without sufficient food, water and shelter. They said there are about 100,000 people dead or missing. The junta's tally is 34,273 dead and 27,838 missing.
The agencies also feared the junta is hoarding high-quality foreign aid for itself while people make do with rotten food.
A foreign resident said the high- energy biscuits brought in by the World Food Program were sent to a military warehouse and exchanged with biscuits the Industry Ministry produced.
The Standard
US Lawmakers Urge Burma Military to End Aid Restrictions
By Dan Robinson
Washington, 13 May 2008 (VOA) - Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives have criticized Burma's military government for restricting broad international humanitarian support for cyclone victims. VOA's Dan Robinson reports from Capitol Hill, discussion of the situation in Burma came as the House prepared to approve a resolution urging Burma's military to lift all restrictions on aid.
Lawmakers express condolences and sympathy to the people of Burma for what the resolution calls the grave loss of life and vast destruction from Cyclone Nargis.
Pointing to the tens of thousands of people killed and thousands still missing, the measure notes that several hundred thousand people were left homeless, in dire need of emergency shelter and clean drinking water.
House lawmakers focus on what they call inadequate humanitarian assistance provided by Burma's military government and failure to address basic needs to prevent further loss of life.
New York Democrat Joseph Crowley says Burma's military lacks the capacity and skills to handle a humanitarian crisis, and he draws a comparison with the quite different attitude of the Indonesian government following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami:
"It has allowed only the smallest trickle of international aid into the country. At this point, in the post-tsunami relief operation, the hard-hit [Indonesian] region of Aceh was receiving one aid flight every single hour. In Burma, the regime is only allowing three or four flights a day after not allowing any in the first five days after the cyclone hit." he said.
By Tuesday, the cyclone death toll in Burma had climbed past 34,000, according to Burmese government figures. United Nations officials say the toll could reach over 100,000, with 1 1/2 million people severely affected by the disaster.
Burma's military only recently allowed two aircraft from the United States and Britain to land in the country.
Lawmakers urge Burma's the ruling State Peace and Development Council to "consider the well-being of [Burma's] people and accept broad international assistance."
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, referred to reports, denied by the military government, that Burma's military has diverted high quality food aid meant for cyclone victims.
"What kind of regime steals the food literally out of the mouths of starving babies? The answer is the one in Burma today," she said.
The House resolution also contains more criticism of the national constitutional referendum Burma's military rulers held, despite the devastation caused by the cyclone.
"Even if the Constitution was legitimate, the decision to go forward with the referendum as millions of the people of Myanmar [Burma] are fighting for survival totally defies any sense of logic and [is] a denial of human dignity," said Eni Faleomaevega, the representative in Congress of the U.S. Pacific territory of American Samoa.
The House of Representatives approved the Burma resolution by a nearly unanimous 410 to 1 vote, and after the vote, lawmakers stood and observed a moment of silence for the victims of the cyclone disaster.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate approved a similar resolution criticizing Burma's military government for blocking relief efforts in the country and urging it to allow free access to U.S. government disaster assistance teams.
Washington, 13 May 2008 (VOA) - Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives have criticized Burma's military government for restricting broad international humanitarian support for cyclone victims. VOA's Dan Robinson reports from Capitol Hill, discussion of the situation in Burma came as the House prepared to approve a resolution urging Burma's military to lift all restrictions on aid.
Lawmakers express condolences and sympathy to the people of Burma for what the resolution calls the grave loss of life and vast destruction from Cyclone Nargis.
Pointing to the tens of thousands of people killed and thousands still missing, the measure notes that several hundred thousand people were left homeless, in dire need of emergency shelter and clean drinking water.
House lawmakers focus on what they call inadequate humanitarian assistance provided by Burma's military government and failure to address basic needs to prevent further loss of life.
New York Democrat Joseph Crowley says Burma's military lacks the capacity and skills to handle a humanitarian crisis, and he draws a comparison with the quite different attitude of the Indonesian government following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami:
"It has allowed only the smallest trickle of international aid into the country. At this point, in the post-tsunami relief operation, the hard-hit [Indonesian] region of Aceh was receiving one aid flight every single hour. In Burma, the regime is only allowing three or four flights a day after not allowing any in the first five days after the cyclone hit." he said.
By Tuesday, the cyclone death toll in Burma had climbed past 34,000, according to Burmese government figures. United Nations officials say the toll could reach over 100,000, with 1 1/2 million people severely affected by the disaster.
Burma's military only recently allowed two aircraft from the United States and Britain to land in the country.
Lawmakers urge Burma's the ruling State Peace and Development Council to "consider the well-being of [Burma's] people and accept broad international assistance."
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, referred to reports, denied by the military government, that Burma's military has diverted high quality food aid meant for cyclone victims.
"What kind of regime steals the food literally out of the mouths of starving babies? The answer is the one in Burma today," she said.
The House resolution also contains more criticism of the national constitutional referendum Burma's military rulers held, despite the devastation caused by the cyclone.
"Even if the Constitution was legitimate, the decision to go forward with the referendum as millions of the people of Myanmar [Burma] are fighting for survival totally defies any sense of logic and [is] a denial of human dignity," said Eni Faleomaevega, the representative in Congress of the U.S. Pacific territory of American Samoa.
The House of Representatives approved the Burma resolution by a nearly unanimous 410 to 1 vote, and after the vote, lawmakers stood and observed a moment of silence for the victims of the cyclone disaster.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate approved a similar resolution criticizing Burma's military government for blocking relief efforts in the country and urging it to allow free access to U.S. government disaster assistance teams.
Myanmar's ill wind
Editorial: NST Online
THE toll of a cyclone like Nargis is measured not in the dead -- though they may number in the tens of thousands -- but the dying, in their hundreds of thousands. After the devastation of the storm itself comes the more insidious and much further-reaching effects of displacement, disease, malnutrition and exposure.
Shelter is gone. Food and essential supplies are gone. Injuries and debilitation are rife. Ten days since the storm lashed the Irrawaddy delta, literally changing the face of Myanmar, it seems that country will never be the same again. If, however, the wrenching transformations wrought by the cyclone also include the decline and fall of the military regime that has astounded the world with its deadly determination to keep out "foreign influence", perhaps the proverbial "winds of change" that have for so long eluded Myanmar took a very literal expression that fateful May 3.
The United Nations recognises the notion of "a responsibility to protect", the invocation of which some members, most notably France, are urging. But this is a provision for events of genocide and war, not natural catastrophe. Quite simply, international conventions have never conceived of a situation where a national administration would rather let its citizens perish than allow help to reach them from other than officially sanctioned quarters. Myanmar's Senior General Than Shwe's continuing refusal even to receive word from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon indicates that the junta seems hell-bent on drawing a line and making a stand, digging in its heels in obdurate refusal to capitulate to the humanitarian agencies that are waiting to alleviate the suffering of the 1.5 million people directly affected by the cyclone and its aftermath.
There are stories of heroic determination and resilience to be told in this tragedy, among the cyclone's survivors as much as those few foreign aid workers -- Malaysians included among the teams from Myanmar's Asean neighbours -- who have accessed the disaster zones. But they are subsumed beneath the over-arching saga of stubborn paranoia suffusing the response of their government, apparently still more concerned with garnering popular approval for its farcical "referendum" on the interminable "seven-step charter" touted as an alternative to the democratic processes that would have otherwise ousted the junta 20 years ago. Perhaps the cyclone might have succeeded where democracy, compassion and simple common sense have failed, in restoring a sense of reality to a regime where surrealism bizarrely reigns. But the generals are steadfast in denial.
THE toll of a cyclone like Nargis is measured not in the dead -- though they may number in the tens of thousands -- but the dying, in their hundreds of thousands. After the devastation of the storm itself comes the more insidious and much further-reaching effects of displacement, disease, malnutrition and exposure.
Shelter is gone. Food and essential supplies are gone. Injuries and debilitation are rife. Ten days since the storm lashed the Irrawaddy delta, literally changing the face of Myanmar, it seems that country will never be the same again. If, however, the wrenching transformations wrought by the cyclone also include the decline and fall of the military regime that has astounded the world with its deadly determination to keep out "foreign influence", perhaps the proverbial "winds of change" that have for so long eluded Myanmar took a very literal expression that fateful May 3.
The United Nations recognises the notion of "a responsibility to protect", the invocation of which some members, most notably France, are urging. But this is a provision for events of genocide and war, not natural catastrophe. Quite simply, international conventions have never conceived of a situation where a national administration would rather let its citizens perish than allow help to reach them from other than officially sanctioned quarters. Myanmar's Senior General Than Shwe's continuing refusal even to receive word from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon indicates that the junta seems hell-bent on drawing a line and making a stand, digging in its heels in obdurate refusal to capitulate to the humanitarian agencies that are waiting to alleviate the suffering of the 1.5 million people directly affected by the cyclone and its aftermath.
There are stories of heroic determination and resilience to be told in this tragedy, among the cyclone's survivors as much as those few foreign aid workers -- Malaysians included among the teams from Myanmar's Asean neighbours -- who have accessed the disaster zones. But they are subsumed beneath the over-arching saga of stubborn paranoia suffusing the response of their government, apparently still more concerned with garnering popular approval for its farcical "referendum" on the interminable "seven-step charter" touted as an alternative to the democratic processes that would have otherwise ousted the junta 20 years ago. Perhaps the cyclone might have succeeded where democracy, compassion and simple common sense have failed, in restoring a sense of reality to a regime where surrealism bizarrely reigns. But the generals are steadfast in denial.
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