Burma six months on: Children and their families are still in need of international assistance

11 Nov 2008 05:39:48 GMT

(Alert Net) - Cyclone Nargis cut a swath of destruction across Myanmar’s southern coast on 2-3 May 2008.

More than 130,000 people, including tens of thousands of children, died or disappeared, while more than 1 million people lost their homes. In addition, the agriculture and fishing industries in the Irrawaddy Delta were devastated, leaving families with no way to earn an income or feed themselves.

The storm also flooded low-lying areas, contaminating wells, containment ponds and rivers. Salinity of these traditional sources of drinking water remains high. As the dry season begins this month in Myanmar, families will have few options for obtaining clean drinking water, increasing the risk of disease.

“The water shortage that typically comes with the dry season is being exacerbated by the unusually high salt content in water sources in the Delta — a lingering result of the cyclone,” said Andrew Kirkwood, Save the Children’s country director in Myanmar. “The lack of clean water will directly impact the health of children. Scarce family resources will be further strained if they must purchase water, as will relationships among communities if they must compete for this resource.”

Source: Save the Children - Australia
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Veteran NLD MP Arrested - Ohn Kyaing

By MIN LWIN
The Irrawaddy News

Ohn Kyaing, a veteran Burmese journalist and elected MP who has already spent almost 15 years in prison for political activity, was arrested by the Special Intelligence Police Unit at 10 p.m. On Wednesday night at his home in Rangoon, according to a National League for Democracy (NLD) spokesman.

Ohn Kyaing, 64, is also the chairman of the NLD Cyclone Relief Committee and a member of the party’s organizing committee in Mandalay.

“We knew he was involved in cyclone relief activities,” said Nyan Win, a spokesman for the NLD. “But we don’t know why he was arrested.”

According to the NLD spokesman, Ohn Kyaing became actively involved in relief efforts for survivors of Cyclone Nargis, which swept the Irrawaddy delta on May 2-3, destroying homes and villages, and killing at least 134,000 people.

Ohn Kyaing graduated in journalism in 1972 and worked as the assistant editor then editor of Kyehmom (“The Mirror”), followed by positions at national newspapers Hanthawaddy and Botathang. He wrote under different pen names, such as Maung Chit Phwe, Aung Wint and Aung Tint.

Standing for the NLD in Mandalay in the 1990 election, Ohn Kyaing won a parliamentary seat in the party’s landslide victory. However, the Burmese military regime refused to recognize the result of the election.

Ohn Kyaing was imprisoned in September 1990 and sentenced to 17 years imprisonment for “writing and distributing seditious pamphlets and threatening state security.”

He was released on January 3, 2005, from Toungoo prison.

The Burmese military authorities have recently arrested several well-known social activists who were involved in relief efforts after Cyclone Nargis, including comedian Zarganar, journalist Zaw Thet Htwe and the chief editor of the Myanmar Tribune weekly journal, Aung Kyaw San.

Leaked Document Reveals Burma’s US Policy

By WAI MOE
The Irrawaddy News

Burma’s military leaders know they cannot stand alone in the world, but will react according to each situation with a view to balancing their relations with the world’s superpowers, said Home Affairs Minister Maj-Gen Maung Oo at a meeting of his ministers in July.

According to a confidential document acquired recently by The Irrawaddy detailing the minutes of a July 6 meeting, Home Ministry officials were briefed on relations with the United States, China and Indonesia, as well as the junta’s policy toward the 2010 elections, the National League for Democracy (NLD) and how the junta would react to future demonstrations.

According to the leaked minutes of the meeting, Maj-Gen Maung Oo told Home Ministry officials that in reaction to the global influence of the US and the West, Burma would continue to pursue “strong relations” with China, but that didn't mean that the junta was pro-Beijing. “In the modern world, we cannot stand alone,” Maung Oo reportedly said.

The leaked document also revealed that the regime plans to deploy riot police in the event of future protests or civil unrest.

“The international community criticized us for using the armed forces to crack down on [last September’s] demonstrators,” the home minister is quoted as saying. “Therefore we need to reorganize our riot police.”

He also warned officials to be prepared for the coming elections in 2010.

On foreign policy, Maung Oo criticized the US for “using humanitarian issues and democracy as a policy to overthrow governments that it disliked.”

Maung Oo slammed the US for using the UN and the “Responsibility to Protect” paradigm as part of an agenda to accuse the Burmese government of “Crimes against Humanity.” He also said the UN and associate international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) were “puppets” of the US and the CIA.

According to the minutes of the meeting, Maung Oo forewarned his subordinates of the possibility of a third UN Security Council resolution on Burma and subsequent economic sanctions and an embargo.

“In the event of a third presidential statement,” Maung Oo said. “There could be a resolution that the 192 members of the UN will have to follow—led by the US.”

According to the 14-page document, Maung Oo went on to accuse the US, the UN and INGOs of pushing Burma to the top of their agendas. On the Cyclone Nargis disaster, the home minister accused US relief items of providing aid to the victims “just for show” and said the US only delivered drinking water, instant noodles and medicine.

The minister is reported to have accused international aid agencies of spending humanitarian aid money on themselves and not on the cyclone victims.

“We told them to send construction materials instead of instant food,” Maung Oo continued. “But nobody did.”

He also expressed the regime's skepticism and resentment that aid was not delivered through government channels, so the authorities could not see what was being delivered.

Regarding the US naval ships’ inability to deliver aid to cyclone survivors in the Irrawaddy delta, Maung Oo is reported as saying that the Burmese junta denied the request because the regime believed the US military would find an excuse not to leave until after the 2010 elections.

He also pointed out that although the Burmese government calculated that about US $11.7 billion was needed in relief after Cyclone Nargis, the Tripartite Core Group—comprising the UN, Asean and the Burmese regime—only approved about $0.9 billion in aid, which was 12 times the difference of the junta’s calculations.

The ministry’s minutes of the July 6 meeting also make reference to the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD). Maung Oo reportedly said the regime was “not scared” of the opposition winning the election, but said that they would have to be careful because the party was backed by the US, British and French embassies.

According to the leaked document, the home minister also referred to the diplomatic standoff between Burma and Indonesia. He reportedly confirmed that there were currently no relations between the two countries at an ambassadorial level and that the first step was for the Indonesian parliament to endorse Burma's ambassador to Jakarta.

Will Soe Tha Get It Right this Time?

The Irrawaddy News
Intelligence - Sep'08

Stung by charges that millions of dollars are being creamed off cyclone aid in a sophisticated currency scam, the Burmese regime has come up with a proposal it hopes will allay the accusations.

The military government’s minister for national planning and economic development, Soe Tha, suggests that aid agencies could bypass dubious currency exchange regulations by paying dollars directly into the bank accounts of Burmese vendors from whom they purchase goods and services.

At present, aid agencies have to exchange their dollars for foreign exchange certificates at a rate below the real value of the US currency. The discrepancy results in the disappearance of large amounts of dollars, and some donor countries are demanding to know where the money goes.

However, Soe Tha’s proposal hasn’t been received with much enthusiasm by the aid agencies.

Soe Tha is the man who exaggerated the cost of the damage wrought by Cyclone Nargis, telling the donor conference in Rangoon in May that US $11 billion would be required to rebuild the devastated areas and their economies. The Asean-Burma-UN group that surveyed the damage put the cost at $4 billion, however.

In another misleading statement, Soe Tha said the rice output in Irrawaddy and Rangoon divisions made up only 2.3 percent of the nation’s total production. Experts agree that the two regions, in fact, produce more than 50 percent of the country’s rice.

Soe Tha was appointed minister for national planning and economic development in 1999, after the dismissal of Brig-Gen David Abel. His area of expertise before this appointment was in the postal service and telecommunications—where observers say he should have gained greater skills in economic planning and reliable prognosis.

Nargis Orphan Numbers Don’t Add Up

By MIN LWIN
The Irrawaddy News

Despite an estimated 138,000 people dead or missing after Cyclone Nargis lashed the southern Burmese coast some four months ago, only 112 orphans are officially registered in state-run temporary orphanages.

However, the UN has estimated the number of children orphaned in the May 2-3 storm at about 2,000 and observers have told The Irrawaddy they fear that many orphans have been recruited into the Tatmadaw, Burma’s armed forces.

An official from Myaung Mya temporary camp confirmed that 112 orphans are officially registered at the shelters, although initial estimates in the wake of the cyclone put the number at more than 500.

“There are 100 orphans registered at Myaung Mya camp and 12 orphans at Maubin camp, all between the ages of four and nineteen,” she said, referring to the only shelters that have been founded for orphans of Cyclone Nargis.

However, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in June that at least 2,000 children in the region had been orphaned, while international and local aid agencies put the figure at much higher.

Sources in Laputta Township in Irrawaddy Division said there were more than 1,000 orphans in that area alone after Nargis struck.

Rev Lu Aye from Thanlyin Township, south of Rangoon, said that his church had planned to adopt 20 orphans from Pyapon, Bogalay and Laputta townships in the wake of the disaster, but had been unable to.

“We have already built the orphanages,” the Methodist church leader told The Irrawaddy. “However, although we are actively looking for orphans, we can’t get any information about them.

“I have no idea where they are staying,” he added.

The Burmese military authorities will not allow orphans to be adopted by any random organization or individual, according to an official from the Social Welfare Department.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official told The Irrawaddy on Monday that if a child had no parents the government would be responsible for them.

“We will not allow individuals to legally adopt orphans,” she said. “However, if family members can produce the correct documents we will allow them to be reunited with their orphaned relatives.”

She said that the government is also helping to locate the orphans’ surviving family members and is currently providing education for orphans up to university and institute level in accordance with the child’s educational standard.

Residents in cyclone-ravaged Laputta Township said that the military authorities had promised to build two orphanages in Laputta and Pyapon to house 300 orphans each.

However, according to a former teacher in Laputta, no facilities have yet been built.

“I was impressed by the local communities’ response to the orphans, especially by monks who offered shelters to orphans and took care of them,” she added.

Authorities extort money from cyclone victims

Aug 25, 2008 (DVB)–Villagers in Irrawaddy division have complained that local authorities have continued to extort money from cyclone victims under various pretexts, despite a letter of complaint they sent to SPDC leaders to report the practice.

U Than Zin, chairman of Mangay Kalay village Peace and Development Council in Dadaye township, PDC members and U Khin Kyaw (also known as U Htin Kyaw) of the township land survey department extorted money from villagers for receiving aid from donors.

U Ba Kyi, a farmer from Mangay Kalay, said locals had been forced to pay for diesel fuel that had been donated to them.

“There were 1383 gallons of diesel, and they collected 500 kyat a gallon from us – so 919,000 kyat,” U Ba Kyi said.

“But these were actually given to us as donations.”

U Ba Kyi said each household was also told to pay money to help cyclone victims.

“They collected 500 kyat each from 432 families on the pretext of helping the storm victims,” he said.

“We had to pay 216,000 each time and we had to pay four times, totaling around 864,000.”

The authorities reportedly told villagers they needed to collect money to fund the accommodation and hospitality for donors.

“Not satisfied with that, they collected 8000 kyat each from 212 farmers in order to buy fertiliser from the state agricultural organisation – 742 bags of fertilizers – amounting to exactly 1,696,000,” U Ba Kyi said.

“They have been misappropriating the money they have collected.”

The villagers sent their letter of complaint, which they had each signed and given their national identity card number, to junta leader senior general Than Shwe, prime minister general Thein Sein, the social and relocation minister and hotel and tourism minister, and the commander of Western Command, but no action has so far been taken by the authorities.

Similarly in Talokehtaw village in Rangoon division’s Twante township, the village authority chairman and members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association and the Women’s Affairs Federation have been profiting from aid, a villager told DVB.

“In Twante’s Talokehtaw village, when they’re distributing rice or medicine, there have been incidents when they have failed to give out the aid or extorted money,” the villager said.

The villager said that goods had mainly been distributed to people who supported the authorities, while others had to pay to receive materials.

“One day, they gave things out using a raffle ticket system, but each house had to pay 300 kyat to enter the raffle,” the villager said.

“Even if you won something you had to pay 1500 kyat [to receive it],” he said.

“U Maung Thaung, U Aye Thaung and Daw Cho are the main people involved in that.”

Reporting by Aye Nai

Cyclone Victims Turn to Towns for Handouts

A woman walks amongst the debris of homes still being occupied in the Irrawaddy Delta. (Photo: AFP)

By AUNG THET WINE
The Irrawaddy News

RANGOON — Economic hardships have forced a growing number of survivors of Cyclone Nargis to leave their homes in rural parts of the Irrawaddy delta to seek assistance in Rangoon and other urban centers, according to local sources.

“I came to Rangoon to look for donors,” said a 50-year-old man from Kyone Chin, a village in Dedaye Township. “We don’t have enough food in our village, and our farming and fishing businesses have still not recovered. We need assistance badly.”

Kyone Chin village lost 50 of its 1,400 inhabitants and ninety percent of its structures in the deadly cyclone, according to the man. He added that food supplies and other assistance from UN agencies and the government have been dwindling over time.

“The whole village was terribly destroyed. The worst thing is that now we are facing hunger,” he said, explaining why he had come to Rangoon to find support for his village.

Private donors played an important role in the early stages of the relief effort, but nearly four months later, their numbers have fallen. Due in part to government efforts to control movements in the cyclone-stricken region, few trucks carrying privately donated relief supplies are now reaching remote villages, say local people.

Other cyclone-hit villages in Dedaye Township, including Leik Kyun, Hmae Bi, Lay Ywa, Mae Kanan, Taw Pone and Yae Pu Wa, are also facing severe shortages of foodstuffs and other basic supplies, according to local residents.

They are not alone in waiting for aid. A volunteer from Rangoon who has been involved in relief and rebuilding efforts in the delta said that many villages in Kungyangone Township, including Taw Kha Yan Gyi, Taw Kha Yan Kalay, Mayan, Maezali and Hti Pha, are also desperate for additional assistance.

“The situation is hard to say,” said the volunteer. “They do get a little assistance from the government and they have received some from UN agencies. But it’s not enough.

“There are still many people living under make-shift temporary shelters constructed with bamboo posts and tarpaulins sheets. Some can’t get rice to eat, so they are just surviving on what little food is available to them,” the volunteer added.

A local journalist who recently returned from Laputta Township said that farmers there were also struggling, as seeds planted late in the season have not been growing well. Fishermen are also worried about their future food security, as poor-quality nets and boats provided by the government have proven to be almost useless.

“In Laputta, there is no immediate concern about rice, since it is mainly provided by the UN,” said the journalist. “The problem is with rebuilding livelihoods. The farmers are not doing well because the tillers provided by the government are often broken, and seeds are not growing properly. Fishermen also have trouble because the boats they received after the cyclone often need fixing, and the nets are useless for fishing.”

The journalist added that much of the aid that does reach some of the more remote villages soon ends up in the hands of village officials, as little effort has been made to rein in widespread corruption.

Meanwhile, in Mawlamyainggyun Township, there are also reports of severe food shortages in the villages of Yae Twin Kone, Pet Pyae, Ta Zaung, Alae Yae Kyaw, Myit Kyi Toe and Pya Leik.

According to a resident of Alae Yae Kyaw, some local villages have sent small groups to Laputta to appeal for aid from local relief organizations based there. The results of their efforts have been disappointing, however.

“When we asked an NGO in Laputta for assistance, they provided just 3 pyi (about 750 ml) of rice per person for the whole month.”

Little aid ever reaches the villages of Mawlamyainggyun Township because of their inaccessibility. Villages located on the boundary of Mawlamyainggyun and Laputta townships, such as Yae Twin Kone, Pet Pyae, Ta Zaung, Alae Yae Kyaw, Myit Kyi Toe and Pya Leik, are especially deprived because they can only be reached by chartered boats and are reportedly not on the government’s list of villages eligible for support.

If villagers in these areas do not receive aid to rebuild their lives soon, the hunger and destitution they face now could result in more severe problems in the future, said a local volunteer who has witnessed the situation.

“Unless they receive some means of surviving, the hunger of these villagers could lead to killings and robbing. If we can’t heal a small sore now, we may face more serious harm in the long run,” said the volunteer.

Aiding Burma's Recovery

VOA - 24 August 2008
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As Burma recovers from the devastation of the May 2nd, Cyclone Nargis, the United States and other international donors continue to provide needed help. The worst disaster in Burma's recorded history, Cyclone Nargis killed up to one-hundred-thousand people. Thousands more are still missing. Damage is estimated at over four-billion dollars.

Relief agency officials say that by now almost all of the more than two-million survivors of the storm and seawater surge have received some food aid. About half of the estimated four-hundred-eighty-eight-thousand households have received some building materials. But the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that despite the delivery of more than twenty-five-thousand tons of food assistance, people in remote areas, "are still living in dire conditions."

To help those most in need, the U.S. Agency for International Development is supporting nonprofit partners, such as Church World Service and the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development, a non-governmental organization based in France, to resume agriculture and other kinds work in vulnerable areas.

Already, eight-hundred drinking ponds that were fouled with salt water have been filtered and cleared of debris, dead animals, and, most tragic, human bodies. Work is underway to repair nine-hundred schools and establish four-hundred temporary safe learning places for sixty-thousand children.

Relief workers are distributing fishing nets as well as seeds and other agricultural inputs in time for the monsoon-planting season, which will end this month. After a tardy response that put many Burmese at risk, the Burmese government has gradually opened the country to outside help.

The U.S. government has given fifty-million dollars in disaster aid to Burma. From May 12 to June 22, the U.S. flew one-hundred-eighty-five airlifts of U.S., Thai, United Nations and non-governmental organization relief supplies from Thailand to Burma. At an August 7 meeting with Burmese democracy activists during his visit to Bangkok, Thailand, President George W. Bush said he is "pleased that a lot of the aid that we paid for is actually getting to the people themselves."

Ghosts amid the wreckage in Myanmar

By Seth Mydans
August 25, 2008

BANGKOK (IHT): Nearly four months after the cyclone, the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar is a flat, dark expanse of ruin populated by dazed survivors, unburied bodies and visions of wandering, moaning ghosts.

The region seems to have avoided mass starvation and epidemic, and people are rebuilding their precarious lives in this vast and often flooded marshland where the margin between survival and death has always been thin.

Within that thin margin, recent visitors say, many of the survivors seem to have lost their spark of life, and some of the dead seem not yet to have disappeared as they haunt the minds of those they left behind.

"There is a weariness in people's eyes here," said a photographer who has been chronicling the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, which struck on May 3. He spoke on condition of anonymity because access to the region is forbidden to foreign journalists.

"There's a lost feeling that you get," he said. "People are physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. Some of them don't have the strength to start over."

After an international furor over the government's refusal to admit foreign relief workers, a tightly controlled system has been put in place, and aid is reaching much of the area, where the United Nations says 2.4 million people were affected.

The cyclone left 138,000 people dead or missing and 800,000 homeless, according to UN figures, after tremendous winds and a storm surge that resembled a tsunami.

It leveled most of the fragile thatch homes in its path, uprooted trees, swept away the livestock and fishing boats that provided a livelihood and polluted many rice fields with salt.

For those fields that survived, this year's planting season has now passed, and experts say it may be more than a year before many people see their next decent harvest.

Although some houses are being rebuilt and some fields are being worked, the delta remains a vista of ruin and debris, where human and animal bones and the last decomposing bodies still cluster at the edges of waterways.

Fantastical tales circulate among the survivors, the photographer said, weaving a tapestry of stories from this world and the next.

There is the tale of the boy who survived by clinging to the back of a crocodile, and the story of the boatload of people stranded at low tide who sat waiting on the silt for the water to rise, surrounded by stranded corpses.

There is the story of the mother who was reunited with her baby after it was swept away in a washtub, and the story of the woman who gave birth as the cyclone hit and pulled her baby from the water by its umbilical cord.

And there are the stories of wandering ghosts, whose cries for help can be heard at night in haunted places that no villager dares to enter.

Among these phantoms and traumas, international relief workers have become the survivors' lifeline, delivering aid to all but the most remote parts of the delta.

More than 1,800 visas have been issued to these workers, aid officials say, though access to the hard-hit delta is slowed by an ever-more-complicated process of permissions and paperwork.

By now, most survivors have received aid, said Andrew Kirkwood, country director for the aid group Save the Children. "But very few people have received enough assistance to get them through the next three months, and almost no one has received enough assistance to enable them to rebuild their lives."

He said the reconstruction of schools, clinics and other infrastructure, which should be well under way by now, still lagged because of delays in delivering basic emergency assistance.

The xenophobic military junta that holds Myanmar in its grip prevented large-scale foreign aid deliveries for the first three crucial weeks after the cyclone, then loosened its controls only gradually and partially. It never did allow U.S. and French naval vessels to bring in tons of aid and equipment.

But despite the early demands from around the world that the government permit open deliveries of aid, the United Nations says that nearly half the assistance pledged by foreign donors has yet to appear. Recently it said it had received $339 million in international donations, a shortfall of $300 million.

But life has always been bitter for the people of the Irrawaddy Delta, with 8 out of 10 families living in poverty even before the cyclone, according to Save the Children.

For many people, the harshness of life today may not be so very different from the harshness of the life they have always known.

"They live on a thin line, every day of every year of every decade," the photographer said. "And that is what they are doing now. They just keep going, day by day by day."

UN Dodges Myanmar Questions as Losses and Arrests Mount, in Zimbabwe Too

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, August 17 -- As the UN in Myanmar moved to cover-up its foreign exchange losses to the Than Shwe military government, in New York its Associate Spokesperson spend last week evading questions about the country, neglecting to follow-up on some and deferring others to the upcoming trip by UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari.

On Monday August 11, Inner City Press asked Spokesperson Farhan Haq, according to the transcript:

Inner City Press: It is reported that the Government of Myanmar has extended the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi for another year, which is, some people say it violates... You can only be five years unless charges are being filed. Does the UN have any response to this?

Associate Spokesperson Haq: I believe that that decision was taken about a month or so ago... this is a topic that Mr. [Ibrahim] Gambari has brought up in previous meetings, and when he visits Myanmar again, which he is expected to do some time over the coming weeks, he does expect to bring up the issue.

But "a month or so ago" -- actually, May 28 -- the extended sentence was said to be six months, which would keep the confinement under the five year limit. CNN of August 11 quoted sources that the extension was for one year. But the UN relied on past statements and Gambari's upcoming trip.

Also on August 11, Haq dodged the question of UN Envoy Haile Menkerios having been barred from Zimbabwe, and why he spends so much time in South Africa, on which we'll have more.

On Tuesday August 12, Inner City Press asked Haq

Inner City Press: in Myanmar two opposition leaders have been now locked up by the Government. Two that actually wrote to Ban Ki-moon in mid-July, asking him to take a second look at expanding the scope of [Ibrahim] Gambari’s mandate. Does the Secretary-General have any comments on these interlocutors or these opposition leaders that wrote to him being arrested?

Associate Spokesperson Haq: We don't have a specific reaction to that. In general, we have wanted to see an end to the arrests of figures in the opposition, of members of civil society. Mr. Gambari has brought up the concerns about the need for all political detainees to be released in his past visits and we do expect that he will bring up those concerns again when he visits Myanmar in the coming weeks.

But it is alleged that these two were arrested because they wrote to Ban.

Also on Tuesday, while belatedly denying that Ban has received any negative comments on reducing the UN Mission in Kosovo's staffing by 70%, Haq dodged the question of whether the 70% will be implemented in Serbian-majority areas in North Kosovo. "Ask UNMIK," Inner City Press was told by email. But UNMIK had, at that time, said it didn't know if it would do the same in North Kosovo. Later in the week they said they will, but not update was provided by the UN Spokesperson's Office in New York. Wishing there'd be no coverage of Kosovo won't make it so.

On Wednesday, August 13, Inner City Press shifted questioning to Timor Leste, the report that Reinado was shot point blank, and the lack of UN follow-up on its commitment to investigate the actions of UN security for Jose Ramos-Horta.

Inner City Press: In East Timor, there was reported today that Reinado -- the one who attacked [Jose] Ramos-Horta -- may have been executed. That was found in an autopsy, based on the ballistics. So number one, given the UN's role in protecting Ramos-Horta at the time, was there ever an outcome to the UN's investigation into what went wrong in the protection of Ramos-Horta? And do you have any response to this new autopsy done in East Timor?

Associate Spokesperson Haq: I don't have a response, we'd have to check up. As you know, Reinado died during an exchange of gunfire. Apparently, the information we had at the time, which we had said, was that he died in an exchange of gunfire during the assassination attempt against Mr. Ramos-Horta. I am not aware of this latest report and will check with the Mission whether they have any response to that.

But four days later, there has been no response. The August 13 transcript, purportedly verbatim, does not include statements by Haq that no more questions would be allowed.

On Thursday August 14, Haq not only read out the UN's whitewash of its currency exchange losses in Myanmar, he also said he would "ask Bangkok" why the UN Human Rights Council's rapporteur had cancelled his scheduled press conference about human rights in Myanmar. Later Haq said this was just a scheduling conflict. But it has not been rescheduled. From the transcript:

Inner City Press: Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Mr. [Tomas Ojea] Quintana was supposed to hold a press conference in Bangkok after his visit to Myanmar. This was cancelled and nobody was given any reason why it was cancelled. Given the importance of the issue, why was it cancelled?

Associate Spokesperson Haq: I am not one of the people in Bangkok. You could consult with my colleague there and he might be able to help you with that.

[The Associate Spokesperson later added that scheduling conflicts were given as the reason for the cancellation.]

On Friday August 15, among the topics dodged was Zimbabwe:

Inner City Press: There are reports that the UN had asked to send a team to assess the political violence in Zimbabwe between 29 May and the run-off, but that the Government had refused entry to the UN team. Can you confirm first that the UN has tried to send such a team, and second that it has been denied access?

Associate Spokesperson: I will check. I am not aware of that one, but I'll check if we received such a request.

There has been no update; there was another mystery left unanswered on Friday on which we wll have more. For now we note that the dodging of Myanmar questions may not be entirely the fault of the Spokesperson's Office, but rather reflect instructions from higher in the UN building to avoid the issue. Why would the UN, faced with a scandal of loss of aid funds, issue a joint press release with the Than Shwe government? To be continued.

20th Anniversary of 8.8.88 – Two decades of ASEAN failing the people of Burma

(2008-08-08), Kuala Lumpur, 08 August, (Asiantribune.com): The ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus (AIPMC) in solidarity with the people of Myanmar / Burma reminded all ASEAN leaders that the bloody events of the 1988 uprising in Burma has yet to be addressed by ASEAN till this day.

ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus in a statement said, "ASEAN has further ignored the plight of the Burmese people who again in 2007, demonstrated against the injustices perpetrated against them.

The statement continued to add : “The ‘Saffron Revolution’ of 2007 was also brutally suppressed and ASEAN has yet to hold the Burmese junta accountable for its actions.

“Conditions have since worsened in Burma as a result of the devastation left by Cyclone Nargis and the poor management of this crisis, by the present military junta, leaves the people of Burma living in deplorable conditions.

“AIPMC disappointingly notes that to date the measures taken by ASEAN leaders to address the humanitarian and political crisis in Burma have been insufficient and unsatisfactory.

AIPMC President Kraisak Choonhavan said, “Burma continues to face rampant inflation, poor healthcare, the unceasing use of child soldiers and the continued imprisonment of political prisoners. ASEAN leaders have failed to ensure that, with the inclusion of Burma into ASEAN, the junta are compelled to respect the rights of its people.

AIPMC strongly urged ASEAN to compel Burma’s junta to engage in genuine political, economic and social reforms. Failing which, ASEAN should no longer protect the junta from international action. Without these comprehensive reforms, especially politically, regional lawmakers fear that Burma will continue to plunge in a downward spiral that would be especially damaging to countries in Southeast Asia.

“We want ASEAN leaders to ensure that the military junta is held accountable for all the Injustices perpetrated by establishing an ASEAN Human Rights mechanism to look into this matter. This must be done in accordance to international human rights standards and principles found in the ASEAN Charter,” added AIPMC senior adviser Loretta Rosales.

As stated in the preamble of the ASEAN Charter, AIPMC again reminds ASEAN leaders that they have agreed to adhere to the principles of democracy, the rule of law and good governance, respect for and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. There is no reason for ASEAN to delay the implementation of their promises.

UN in Myanmar Still Losing 20% on Currency Exchange, Asks for More, Problem Widens

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, August 5 -- While the UN in Myanmar has yet to resolve or even minimize the 20%, $10 million currency exchange losses it admitted eight days ago, it is going public with requests for more funds. At the UN's noon briefing on Tuesday, spokesperson Michele Montas quoted UN humanitarian coordinator for Myanmar Dan Baker that $51 million is needed for rice paddies, and that of the UN's July 10 revised appeal, there is a $285 million, or 59%, shortfall. Video here, from Minute 4.

Inner City Press, which back on June 26 first reported on the UN's losses to government-required currency exchange, asked Ms. Montas if the UN is still losing 20% of each dollar spent in Myanmar. "The information you have stands," Ms. Montas said. "I have heard of no changes." Video here, from Minute 12:03.

That each dollar of aid must be converted with Myanmar's military government for a Foreign Exchange Certificate with, now, 80% of the value means that 20% of aid is directly benefiting the regmine led by General Than Shwe. This puts in a different light -- bribery, some call it -- Chevron Corporation's self-described "$1 million cash contribution." $200,000 of that goes to the government, which controls licenses, including of those few money changers which in turn convert the devalued FECs. Other corporate contributors include French oil company Total, Siemens AG and JP Morgan Chase.

On July 28, the UN's John Holmes publicly admitted $10 million of losses and promised both to get to the bottom of it, and at Inner City Press' request to produce a list of other countries in which the UN is losing more than 5% to currency exchange. So far neither has been done.

UN's Holmes and Baker, follow-up to currency exchange loss admission not yet shown

A representative of the UN Development Program telephoned Inner City Press the day after Holmes' public admission, by contrast providing UNDP's answers only on a not for direct attribution basis. He said that the Myanmar government, in order to "control" foreign exchange, licensed a few approved money changers. He jotted down Inner City Press' request for UNDP's pre-cyclone currency exchange losses and a list of other countries in which UNDP is losing 5% or more to currency exchange, but said that UNDP will be relying on and deferring to John Holmes' inquiries in this regard.

Now, however, well-placed UN sources tell Inner City Press that the reason for the delay on making any disclosures, even about Myanmar, is that UNDP demanding a re-do of the numbers, trying to whittle down Holmes' admission of $10 million in losses. The attempt to re-fudge the numbers is being down through the UN Country Team, headed by UNDP's Bishow Parajuli, previously the head of the UN World Food Program in Egypt.

Meanwhile, UNDP has been unable to provide any figures about how much money it has converted in Myanmar, including for a program it calls "Micro-Finance." The spokesman-without-name repeatedly like a mantra, our work is good. But how much was converted and spent? How much money has been and is in UNDP's account with the Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank? There has still been no answer.

Belatedly joining its Western Permanent Five compadres the U.S. and UK, the French Mission to the UN provided Inner City Press with the following response to the scandal:

"Obviously, we are sharing the concerns expressed by John Holmes toward these difficulties. Since the beginning, France has been very engaged in the international effort to hurry assistance to the victims of Cyclone Nargis. Consistent with the principle of the responsibility to protect, we have also urged the Myanmar government to fully allow access of international aid to victims. We pay tribute to the UN involvement to improve the situation. It is obviously crucial that no financial resources dedicated to humanitarian assistance should be wasted, and we therefore support the UN efforts to find a solution to that problem."

But for now the efforts focus on cover-up, and nothing is being done to ensure that the problem doesn't continue, and in countries beyond Myanmar.

On August 5, to try to get answers since UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis has refused to answer questions or to hold a press conference, Inner City Press attended a meeting of UNDP's Executive Board. After a presentation by UNDP controller Darshak Shah, comments were sought by UNDP from the member states on the Board. Nothing was said about Myanmar or the currency exchange losses. Rather the talk was of boosting UNDP's "direct budget support" to governments, and ensuring "government ownership" of funds. This has been UNDP's priority in Myanmar.

[Since Kemal Dervis does not, as he puts it, "answer questions in the hallway," nor hold press conferences, Inner City Press has formally posed the questions here.]

Similarly, despite a commitment by World Health Organization official Eric Laroche -- previously of UNDP -- to provide a description of WHO's currency exchange practices and losses in Myanmar, no information has yet been provided by WHO, despite reminders to Mr. Laroche's spokesman. Apparently the cover-up mentality of UNDP spreads with its former employees.

Inner City Press asked Ms. Montas when the Holmes-promised list of other countries with currency losses would be provided, and how that would cover UNDP and UN Peacekeeping. Ms. Montas said that Inner City Press will have to ask each agency, even each department, separately. One agency spokesman told Inner City Press that the agency's controller / accounting department might not be tracking currency exchange losses, even now, and that if is such information were being collected, it is not the UN's job to "do research" for Inner City Press. How about making basic disclosure, of losses up to 25% of each aid dollar, to donors? Apparently the UN does not that that is required, either.

The time for semi-proactively disclosing other countries with currency losses is now.

Myanmar Cyclone Survivors Living in `Dire Conditions,' UN Says

By Paul Tighe

(Bloomberg) -- Villagers in areas of Myanmar's Irrawaddy River Delta are living in ``dire conditions'' three months after Tropical Cyclone Nargis devastated the southern region, the United Nations said.

``We have seen significant progress being made in the affected areas,'' Daniel Baker, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Myanmar, said yesterday, according to the UN. ``Much more urgently needs to be done in remote areas where affected communities are still living in dire conditions.''

Food will need to be supplied to about 924,000 people ``on a systematic basis'' for the next nine months, the UN said. Assistance to isolated villages in the delta ``remains a challenge,'' it said.

Nargis struck the delta, Myanmar's main rice-producing region, May 2-3, causing a tidal surge that left more than 138,000 people dead or missing and 2.4 million requiring assistance. The country formerly known as Burma needs aid to ensure that farmers are able to plant crops by the end of the season this month, the UN said in July.

The region lost 85 percent of seed stocks and about 50 percent of buffalos as a result of the cyclone, the UN said yesterday. The agriculture industry is the least funded among the UN's aid programs and requires emergency support of about $51 million, it said.

Damaged Houses

Relief workers have provided shelter materials for about half of an estimated 488,000 houses damaged in the storm.

``Aid workers now have access to cyclone-affected areas,'' Baker said, adding that recovery work is being boosted by cooperation between Myanmar's military government, the UN and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a 10-member group that includes Myanmar.

International aid was slow to reach survivors because Myanmar's military, which has ruled the country since 1962, delayed permission for relief workers to visit the delta until about three weeks after the cyclone struck.

More than 780,000 hectares (1.9 million acres) of rice paddy fields were flooded, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said last month. Livestock, fishing, agriculture and forestry-based industries need to be restored, it said.

The junta has set an exchange rate that has cost the UN about $10 million in cyclone relief funds, John Holmes, the emergency relief coordinator, said last week.

UN agencies have to buy foreign exchange certificates issued by the government which are then used to purchase local currency. The UN has made losses of as much as 25 percent when converting the certificates into cash, said Holmes, who visited the country last month.

To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net

Burma Without Blinkers - Editorial

Some help is arriving in the wake of Cyclone Nargis,
but for the Burmese
the real disaster is a despotic government.

(WP) - ON THE OPPOSITE page today, we publish the views of a senior U.N. official, John Holmes, on progress in Burma since a devastating cyclone struck more than three months ago. His rather upbeat assessment comes as President Bush and first lady Laura Bush, during a visit to Thailand, are about to draw the world's attention to persistent problems in Burma (also known as Myanmar), Thailand's neighbor in Southeast Asia.

You may recall that after Cyclone Nargis swept through Burma's Irrawaddy Delta on May 2, leaving 138,000 people dead or missing, Burma's dictator, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, refused almost all offers of international aid. U.S. Navy ships loaded with tents, food and other humanitarian supplies steamed in circles offshore but were never given permission to help. After weeks of begging and pleading, Than Shwe allowed more aid workers to enter, and they have been at work since. Having traveled to Burma twice, Mr. Holmes, who is U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, reports the good news that "the overwhelming majority" of survivors "have received help, even if in many cases they still need a good deal more."

It is difficult to know the true conditions in the delta, since the regime won't let foreign journalists look and imprisons any Burmese journalists who seek to report accurately. Just this week, a popular Burmese comedian and blogger and a sports journalist were brought up on charges -- "disturbing public order" -- that could bring two years in prison because they tried to help cyclone victims and talked about their plight. Aid agencies, meanwhile, tend to play down negative news because, understandably, they want to preserve their access. Still, a joint assessment last month, including from U.N. agencies, reported that most households in the hardest-hit delta region still lacked access to clean drinking water, a situation posing a risk of disease, and that more than half had food stocks for one day or less and faced "an increasing risk of acute malnutrition."

We agree with Mr. Holmes that the United Nations did the best it could -- for the simple reason that countries with influence in Burma, such as China, Thailand and India, were more interested in preserving their commercial and military ties to the Burmese regime than in pressing it to allow its people to be helped. We also understand Mr. Holmes's desire to separate humanitarian considerations from politics.

But Burma, before and after the cyclone, was and is a humanitarian disaster because of politics: because its regime systematically impoverishes much of the population, conscripts children into forced labor, sends its army on internal campaigns of mass rape and ethnic cleansing, and persecutes monks and others who seek to help their fellow citizens. To consider such issues, or the criminal neglect of cyclone victims, as separable from politics is similar to hailing visits of U.N. human rights ambassadors as successful simply because they take place, even as the number of political prisoners -- 1,900 at latest count -- steadily rises.

So we think it is highly useful that Mr. Bush will meet with Burmese exiles tomorrow while Mrs. Bush visits a camp that houses 40,000 Burmese refugees. We hope their visit will be a reminder that by almost every measure of human misery and political repression, Burma in the past year has gone backward. Friday will mark the 20th anniversary of Burma's massacre of 3,000 democracy protesters. We hope that when Mr. Bush travels onward to Beijing, he will tell his Chinese hosts that history will not judge kindly their unstinting support of Burma's misrule in the 20 years since that black day.

Disaster Lessons

By John Holmes

(WP)-Three months have passed since Cyclone Nargis and an accompanying tidal surge swept across Myanmar's fertile Irrawaddy Delta region, claiming nearly 140,000 lives and devastating the livelihoods of many more people. All told, some 2.4 million people were seriously affected by Nargis, ranking it among the worst cyclones in Asia in the past 15 years and the worst in Myanmar's history.

I recently completed my second trip to Myanmar, where I was again sobered by the immensity of the tragedy but was also cautiously hopeful about relief efforts. In May, government reluctance to allow international aid workers into the affected region sparked a storm of international criticism.

We have made a lot of progress since then. Touring the delta by helicopter, I could see that many houses had been repaired one way or another. There was agricultural activity in the fields and commercial activity on the waterways. Schools are in session, in tents if not permanent classrooms. And hundreds of international aid staffers are now working in the delta. The promises about access made to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon when he saw Myanmar's head of state, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, in late May have essentially been kept.

Without question, the international response has helped save lives and reduce suffering. While it is impossible to be sure all survivors have been reached, I am confident that the overwhelming majority have received help, even if many still need a good deal more.

Crucially, a much-feared second wave of deaths from starvation or disease has not happened -- no small achievement, given that 75 percent of hospitals and clinics in the affected areas were destroyed. The people's resilience has been remarkable, as was the degree of help and solidarity from individual citizens and organizations in Myanmar.

Challenges remain, of course, including over issues such as aid exchange rates, and it would be unwise to gloss over them. But the main priority now is to help remote communities further and to ensure that assistance is continued systematically until all concerned can feed themselves and rebuild their lives.

So, what can we learn from this crisis?

First, no nation, rich or poor, can go it alone when confronted by a natural disaster of the magnitude of a Cyclone Nargis. It would have been much better, not least for the survivors, if the government of Myanmar had recognized the value of an international presence from the start. I encourage Myanmar's leaders to continue down the path of cooperation, including in response to other humanitarian challenges, based on the universal principle of the impartial provision of aid.

Second, we must stay focused on the goal: assisting people in crisis. From the first, the aid operation in Myanmar -- as is true everywhere we work -- had to be about helping vulnerable people in need, not about politics. In this post-Iraq age, I am concerned that humanitarians are often pressured to choose between the hammer of forced intervention and the anvil of perceived inaction. Was there a realistic alternative to the approach of persistent negotiation and dialogue that we pursued? I do not believe so. Nor have I met anyone engaged in the operations who believes that a different approach would have brought more aid to more people more quickly.

This is not to say that there can never be a role for humanitarian intervention, even in natural disasters. But it must be the last resort, when all else has been tried and the only alternative is death and suffering on a mass scale.

Third, Nargis showed us a new model of humanitarian partnership, adding the special position and capabilities of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to those of the United Nations in working effectively with the government. This may prove the most important -- and, I hope, enduring -- lesson of the cyclone response, with implications for how we respond, anywhere, in the future.

ASEAN's leadership was vital in building trust with the government and saving lives. In recent years, ASEAN members have significantly stepped up participation in the humanitarian arena. Given that eight of the 10 worst natural disasters last year occurred in Asia, this represents a lifesaving investment, where the United Nations is helping to build local capacity.

Fourth, Nargis demonstrated once again the importance of disaster risk reduction and preparedness. Simple, low-cost measures -- local evacuation plans, shelters, community early-warning systems -- have saved tens of thousands of lives in neighboring Bangladesh when it has been faced with similarly devastating cyclones. We need to help the people of Myanmar strengthen their resilience and reduce their vulnerability. Building back better, to minimize future disaster risks, is a top priority.

In coming years we can expect to see more, and more intense, weather-related natural disasters as the effects of climate change become more pronounced. We must be better prepared and must cooperate as neighbors and an international community in meeting this challenge. The need for effective global humanitarian partnerships has never been more apparent -- or more necessary.

The writer is U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.

Bogalay authorities demand construction tax

Aug 4, 2008 (DVB)–Residents of Irrawaddy's cyclone-devastated Bogalay township have complained that local authorities have been pressuring them to pay a construction tax for repair work on their houses.

A Bogalay resident said municipal officials had told locals to apply for construction permits to repair damage caused by the cyclone and charged them between 100,000 and 200,000 kyat depending on the size of the house.

"Whenever they see a pile of bricks and sand in front of someone's house, they think they can make some money," she said.

"Our houses were damaged by the cyclone and they should not charge us for repairing them."

The resident said those who paid the tax were not given receipts by the officials.

Reporting by Naw Say Phaw

Cyclone Nargis response enters a new phase in relief and early recovery

Fourth Press Release of the Tripartite Core Group (TCG)

Yangon, Myanmar (Relief Web), 30 July 2008 - The Government of Myanmar organised a field trip involving more than 148 representatives of foreign missions, UN agencies, international non-governmental organisations, relief organisations and the media to the cyclone Nargis-affected areas in the Ayeyarwady Delta using six Myanmar Air Force helicopters on 29 July 2009.

‘This is to reassure that access to the disaster-affected areas continues to be unimpeded and is expanding. This is also to give first-hand information to encourage the international community to work with us to intensify the emergency relief and early recovery for the affected communities,’ explained U Kyaw Thu, Myanmar’s Deputy Foreign Minister and TCG Chairman. He also expects the field trip will bring forward and provide complementary support to the government’s 50-billion-kyat recovery programme. Other TCG members also joined the field visit.

The field trip follows the release of the Post-Nargis Joint Assessment (PONJA) Report on the sidelines of the 41st ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Singapore on 21 July and concurrently in Yangon. US$303 million is urgently needed to intensify the relief and early recovery efforts as presented in the 10th July Revised Appeal by the UN, while recovery needs are estimated at US$1 billion over the next three years as assessed in the PONJA Report.

On the ground, the TCG reported that all of the disaster-affected communities have received relief assistance at least once. Bishow Parajuli, UN Resident Coordinator and also a member of the TCG said, ‘Now, we have double challenges, one, sustaining the relief and two, advancing the support for early recovery in terms of livelihood and subsequently local level recovery on the ground. There is progress in the ongoing farming recovery activities. However there is still a lot to do and we are concerned that many farmers may be unable to catch up with the fast-ending monsoon paddy crop planting season, with their subsequent future food security concern’.

The TCG has facilitated more than 2,000 visas for humanitarian workers involved in Nargis-related tasks. Humanitarian clusters continue to deliver aid together with the line ministries and local governments.

Along that line, the TCG recently launched a Community-Based Early Recovery Pilot Project at Seik Gyi in Kungyangon Township. This TCG special project will focus on early recovery efforts, such as community infrastructure repairs including monasteries and cleaning of community dug wells; and livelihood stimulation support such as planting of betel leaves, building fishing boats and providing fishing nets for the affected communities.

During the first TCG’s visit to the village on Saturday, 26 July 2008, H.E. Bansarn Bunnag, Thailand’s Ambassador to Myanmar and senior ASEAN member of the TCG explained, ‘This project will serve as the model for an integrated relief and early recovery that we could replicate quickly in other places in the affected areas’.

* Note: The TCG is an ASEAN-led mechanism to facilitate trust, confidence and cooperation between Myanmar and the international community in the urgent post-Cyclone Nargis humanitarian relief and recovery work. The TCG started its work on 31 May 2008 and has been meeting at least once a week in a spirit of mutual understanding, trust and cooperation. It has been working closely with the National Disaster Preparedness Central Committee chaired by His Excellency Prime Minister General Thein Sein, Union of Myanmar.

The TCG comprises three members from the Myanmar Government: (Deputy Foreign Minister H.E. U Kyaw Thu who is the Chairman; Acting Director-General, Ministry of Social Welfare and Resettlement U Aung Tun Khaing; and, Deputy Director-General, Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation U Than Aye); three members from ASEAN (Thailand’s Ambassador to Myanmar H.E. Bansarn Bunnag; Dr Puji Pujiono, a senior UNDP officer seconded to the ASEAN Secretariat; and, Dr. Anish Kumar Roy, Director of Bureau for Resources Development of the ASEAN Secretariat alternating with Ms. Adelina Kamal of the ASEAN Secretariat); and three from the UN (UN Humanitarian Coordinator Mr Daniel Baker; UN Resident Coordinator Mr Bishow Parajuli; and, a rotating UN agency representative).

For further information, please contact:
Ms. Adelina Kamal
Head, Coordinating Office for the ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force
Phone No.: +951 544500 ext 417
E-mail: akamal.aseanhtf@gmail.com

Original Source: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); Government of Myanmar; United Nations Country Team in Myanmar

Myanmar aid scheme sows new fears among cyclone survivors

BOGALAY, Myanmar (Khaleej-AFP)- Myanmar's military regime is giving desperately needed aid to cyclone survivors on credit, requiring them to pay back to the government any assistance offered, officials said.

The secretive military last week officially allowed local journalists to visit the disaster zone for the first time since Cyclone Nargis slammed into the country on May 2.

During the tour, local officials laid out their system for delivering aid to farmers in the hardest-hit parts of the Irrawaddy Delta, where entire villages were washed away by the storm that left more than 138,000 people dead or missing.

The officials insisted that government aid had allowed for farmers to plant their fields and for fishermen to return to their boats -- but insisted that the cyclone victims would have to reimburse the regime for the aid received.

"If everything is free of charge, its value is very low. If something must be paid back, then they try their best to do it. This is the system," one senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. (JEG's: the junta is charging the victims for our generosity and profiting from it - dandy...)

"The government will distribute everything for them through a payback system. Otherwise, controlling the aid will be very difficult," he said.

About 2.4 million people are struggling to piece together their lives after the storm, according to UN estimates.

Farmers have no choice but to accept the loans, but say they don't know how they will ever repay them.

"We have received power tillers and diesel on credit from the government. Even then, we still need more help to get bank loans so that we will have cash to hire field hands," said Kyi Win, 57, a farm owner in Sat San village outside Bogalay.

But local officials insisted that farmers were ready to start surviving on their own.

"The World Food Programme is delivering rice for villagers. Even if they stop delivering rice, villagers can feed themselves with their own income," said Zaw Myo Nyunt, a local official in Sat San.

The official assessment differs markedly with opinions expressed away from the military's ears, as well as with assessments by UN officials, who have warned that many farmers were not able to plant their crops this year.

Over the last two weeks, many farmers in the delta told AFP that as much as one-third of the region's cropland could lie idle -- simply because so many farmers died that no one is left to tend the fields.

Others who have received aid and tried to plant their fields say that as much as half the donated rice plants did not sprout, while draught cattle brought in from mountainous parts of Myanmar have not adapted to the delta's marshy lowlands.

"If the UN cannot deliver rice and stops their assistance to us, we will be in trouble. We have no income now as our employers are finding it difficult to start their farming," said Moe Wah, a 24-year-old farm worker.

"I have no job now and am relying on rice aid from the WFP. All of us need jobs urgently to resume our lives. We lost everything in the cyclone," she said.

It's not just the farmers questioning Myanmar's official aid system.

Construction companies have donated (???) more than 100 new wooden homes in Sat San and the nearby village of Kyaine Chaung Gyi, but the people living there have been given no deed to the property nor any indication of how long they will be allowed to use the homes. (JEG's: pure show only... what's in it for the junta)

Bush and Burma

By AUNG ZAW
The Irrawaddy News

US President George W Bush has never been to Burma, and he once called the country’s detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate “Aung Suu San Kyi,” drawing laughter from journalists at an APEC summit in Thailand.

He has since learned how to pronounce the name of Burma’s most famous pro-democracy leader; and thanks in large part to the tutelage of his wife, Laura Bush, who has taken a strong personal interest in Suu Kyi’s struggle on behalf of her people, he now knows a bit more about the problems of a remote country that he still declines to visit.

Next week, the president and first lady will be in Thailand to mark the 175th anniversary of bilateral ties with the Kingdom. While he is here, he will also meet with Burmese activists on the eve of the 20th anniversary of a nationwide pro-democracy uprising that was brutally crushed by the regime that still holds power in Burma.

The United States has always strongly supported the efforts of Burma’s people achieve freedom from military rule. The current administration has been no exception. Though often criticized at home and abroad for his foreign policy, Bush has won the respect of most Burmese for his firm stance on the repressive regime in Naypyidaw.

In 2003, the US introduced the Freedom and Democracy Act in response to a ruthless attack on Suu Kyi and her supporters in the central Burmese town of Depayin. In 2005, Bush identified Burma as one of the world’s “outposts of tyranny,” together with Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Zimbabwe and Belarus.

Last year, following the crackdown on the September uprising, he blasted the regime and tightened sanctions against the generals and their cronies. As a further sign of support, the US Congress awarded its highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal, to Suu Kyi last December. And just this week, Bush signed into law the Burma Jade Act, which restricts the import of precious stones from Burma and extends existing import sanctions.

Bush has often been faulted for his tendency to see complex issues in black and white. But while many condemn him for trying to impose his political vision on Iraq, few can argue that in the case of Burma, he has taken a genuinely principled stand that is perfectly consistent with reality.

The Burmese people are indeed fortunate to have the support of both Bush and his wife, Laura, who has been a real driving force in keeping Burma at the top of the world’s political agenda.

She has met with Burmese activists in Washington and New York on a number of occasions and held video teleconferences with prominent exiles. She has also participated in several roundtable discussions on Burma with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his special envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari.

When the Burmese regime crushed protests last year, she called Ban to discuss the situation—a rare move by an American first lady, and one that shows the depth of her concern for the fate of Burma’s people.

At the height of the crisis, she even called on Snr-Gen Than Shwe, the junta’s supreme leader, to step down. Instead, he moved to consolidate his position, more determined than ever to move forward with his road map to “disciplined democracy.”

In May of this year, it became evident just how much Than Shwe has staked on the ultimate success of this deeply flawed political process, which promises only a continuation of military rule under another guise.

On May 3, one week before a planned referendum on a military-drafted constitution, Burma was hit by its worst natural disaster in living memory. But Cyclone Nargis did not stop the junta going ahead with its rigged referendum, putting politics ahead of the lives of millions of people.

The American response to this disaster was markedly different from that of the rulers in Naypyidaw. The US moved quickly to temporarily suspend its sanctions against Burma so that it could assist in the relief effort, offering aid and the use of military aircraft to transport international emergency relief supplies into the country.

Humanitarian workers in Burma praised the Bush administration for its bold decision to send C-130 flights into Rangoon with relief items, setting aside politics for the sake of saving lives.

But when the USS Essex and other US naval ships withdrew from their positions near Burmese waters, after weeks of hopes that Bush would invoke the UN’s Responsibility to Protect and order them into the delta, many Burmese were more than a little disappointed.

This raises the most serious question about US support for Burma’s pro-democracy movement: Is there any real political will in the US to effect substantive change in Burma, or is Washington simply offering moral support to the victims of a heinous regime to burnish its image as a defender of freedom?

While some cynics say that Bush’s stance on Burma is merely a distraction from the troubling consequences of other facets of his foreign policy, others suggest that ultimately, the US is seeking to use Burma to “contain” China, which has become the Burmese regime’s most important ally.

These critics of US policy point to Washington’s overtures to Gen Ne Win soon after he seized power in 1962 as evidence that the US has never been particularly troubled by military rule in Burma or anywhere else when broader geopolitical interests were at stake.

Although Ne Win accepted an invitation to the White House, he never became close to Washington. Even substantial development aid and other support in the form of weapons and helicopters for Burma’s anti-narcotics efforts failed to bring Burma within America’s sphere of influence—something US leaders were desperate to achieve in a bid to counter Communist China’s regional ambitions.

But a great deal has changed since the days of the Cold War. China is no longer the “red threat” that it once was, but a country that has opened up to the world in ways that were almost unimaginable even two decades ago. The US has no interest in reversing this process, any more than it has a desire to see Burma sealed off and stagnating under the same regressive regime that has ruled since 1988.

As part of his visit to Asia next week, Bush will be in Beijing to attend the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games on August 8. This will give him an opportunity to both celebrate China’s progress and to highlight the need for deeper changes, particularly regarding its attitude towards fundamental human rights.

By meeting with Burmese exiles the day before attending Beijing’s grand coming-out party, Bush is sending a reminder that August 8 is not only a day to recognize China’s achievements, but also an occasion to recall the unfulfilled aspirations of the Burmese people.

There is little more that the Burmese people can ask of Bush in the remaining months of his administration. And after eight years of unstinting support, which even the most skeptical Burmese activists have had to acknowledge as a major contribution to their cause, they can even learn to live with his occasional mangling of Burmese names.

'You could still see bodies floating about'

(Fileymercury) -Rev Jeff Hattan, who has previously been to Ghana, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, was originally due to visit Burma last November, but the trip was postponed following the monks' demonstrations.

Rev Hattan said: “After the cyclone, in one sense I wanted to go even more and stand with those people who had a hard enough life as it was. Life for everyone is hard, but for Christians it’s even more so.”

According to Christian organisations such as the charity Release International, which arranged the trip, the Burmese government ignored “whole groups of people” in the wake of the disaster – not least the mainly Christian communities, which have traditionally suffered.

Rev Hattan said: “There are people who have still had no help in re-building, food or clean water, and we were speaking to another Christian organisation that had been to another part of the Irrawaddy Delta where you could still see bodies floating about.

“We’re not a relief organisation, but we were giving rice to villagers, supplying building materials and everything needed to completely re-build a school for 140 children. We made up 1,364 children’s backpacks with uniforms and pencils and reading books, and we were supporting church leaders whose churches had spent just about all their money on helping others.

“There’s also a huge need for counselling, and we paid for 15 young Christians to attend counselling courses so they could work with people on a basic level. Sometimes it’s just about being there and talking to people – saying ‘you’re not alone’. You can’t comprehend what a boost it is for people to know you’ve come all that way.”

Rev Hattan said the persecution of the Christian population was more psychological than physical, but he had spoken to church leaders who had been imprisoned “on a whim”.

He added: “Burma hasn’t got a good record for human rights at the best of times, but the Government says to be Burmese is to be Buddhist. They say Christians have the ‘C-virus’ and put out that it must be eradicated by all and any means.

“There are ethnic groups that are 60 to 70 per cent Christian and they’re often the ones at the forefont of the pro-democracy movement, so to be part of those groups is to be automatically targeted.

“We spoke to church leaders who said they had regular visits by the authorities, sometimes two or three times a night, checking up on what they’re doing and who they’re with. Churches are routinely closed down and Christians are made to do jobs that are disgusting and live under the constant pressure of being harrassed or threatened.

“It also happens to Buddhist Burmese – it’s a country of intolerable suffering – but if you’re Christian it’s much worse.”

Rev Hattan said unlike other western visitors, his group was given a suprising amount of freedom to travel, partly because they were working with Burmese people who “knew what they were doing”.

He said: “We never felt we were in danger, but you were aware that people were encouraged to pass on to the Government anything that was unusual.

You’ve no idea if people are on the payroll of the Government – it’s like the old Soviet Union.”

l Release International, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, was originally formed to support Christians living in the old Communist world, but now operates in countries like Nigeria, Pakistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka and India where Christians may be persecuted by the Government, other religious groups or even drug barons – as in Colombia.

Rev Hattan has been involved with the charity for about 12 years and sometimes travels with his wife, Angie.