Aid for Cyclone Relief in Burma urgently needed

http://www.necn.com/Boston/World/Myanmar-referendum-held-amid-cyclone-re...

(NECN/ABC) - Families sit alone, no food, no water. But on state television, the government launches a promotional campaign for today's referendum.

The country's military rulers hold photo-ops with boxes of relief, and promote a vote that that will entrench their power, as their people die.

Villager: "the country, the areas which were struck by the cyclone, should get the foreign aid." Much of that country is still underwater... Bodies lie on the sides of rivers, left to rot.

There is some aid coming in, from the UN and from china. But largely relief still sits undistributed, aid workers still refused entry.

The aid that is being handed out is a fraction of what's needed.

Richard Horsey/United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs: "we are running out of time here. There is a huge risk that diarrhea disease; cholera and so on could start to spread, because there is a lack of clean drinking water, a lack of sanitation facilities. This could be a huge problem and it could lead to a second phase which could be as deadly as the cyclone."

The price of rice and water has shot up. A debilitating increase in a country where millions make less than $2 a day. Now the international community is debating whether to send in aid despite the objections of the Myanmar government. It can't come soon enough. The forecast next week... Is for more rain.
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http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jtAWCwytnms90A8dVTvdNVrhfcYQD90IVP901

Stifled by regime, Myanmar cyclone victims suffer in silence

LABUTTA, Myanmar (AP) — Apart from the sound of children crying, the town of Labutta is strangely silent.

Traumatized by the ordeal of surviving Cyclone Nargis, few people have anything to say. But it is also fear bred by 46 years of repression by military regimes that keeps them quiet.

Although overwhelmed by the worst disaster in Myanmar's recent history, the junta has turned down foreign help and insists on using its ragtag infrastructure and poorly equipped military to conduct a grossly mismanaged relief operation for some 2 million people in distress.

And no one dares to protest. Few survivors wanted to speak to an outsider, as military trucks drove constantly through the town. Most cowered in corners.

On the outskirts of Labutta, 12 people were crammed into one tent pitched on a rice field. They were the only survivors from the village of Pain Na Kon and had fruitlessly searched Labutta for family members.

"We are family now. We are from the same place. We are together," said U Nyo, one of the survivors, his eyes red from tears and fatigue. "We need food. There isn't enough space in the town so we decided to stay here."

Aid agencies are also cautious.

"There are certainly parameters around whatever we do. It is very sensitive politically, but within those parameters we are getting through," said Tim Costello of World Vision in Yangon, one of the few foreign aid workers allowed in.

Aid workers said critical supplies were reaching Labutta, a town of 20,000 people whose population more than doubled with 30,000 refugees streaming in from dozens of surrounding villages devastated by the May 3 cyclone.

But efforts to rush food and medicine from Labutta to lower-lying parts of the delta that were hardest hit have been slowed by the military's intense micromanaging.

"The government wants total control of the situation although they can't provide much and they have no experience in relief efforts," said a leading aid worker for an international aid organization. "We have to report to them every step of the way, every decision we make.

"Their eyes are everywhere, monitoring what we do, who we talk to, what we bring in and how much," the aid worker said in a soft voice, constantly looking around nervously as his assistant turned off all the lights except one dim lamp.

He agreed to the interview at night after being assured he wouldn't be named or identified in any way.

"We don't want them to see you here. They don't trust us, as it is," he told a foreign reporter in Labutta.

The town, about 600 feet inland, is littered with flattened thatch-roofed homes and fallen trees. But it fared better than most neighboring villages, with several structures withstanding the cyclone's 120-mile per hour winds and the tidal surge it whipped up.

But its ramshackle survival presents a picture of misery.

Schools, large houses and monasteries have become temporary shelters. Hundreds of survivors crowded the floor of a monastery's open-air hall lit by dim kerosene lamps and candles. Only a few houses, mostly those belonging to people connected with officials, have generators.

Other than the sound of hungry children wailing, the town was silent and grim.

People quietly ate whatever food was available while others tried to sleep. Most people were sitting up because there was no space to lie down.

What lies beyond Labutta is the worst of the devastation, an area that remains difficult to access.

Fishing boats along the coast have helped ferry survivors to safety but can't make enough rounds a day to rescue everyone and the trip is a stomach-wrenching journey, said Maung U, a 36-year-old driver of a rescue boat.

"Each trip takes five or six hours through a narrow waterway littered with dead bodies," he said. "Every few meters (yards), you see another dead body, human or animal."

He said every family has at least two or three missing or dead, and many people had to leave the bodies of their family members in the water or in the fields.

Diesel supplies are running low and rescuers fear that time is running out to help the people stranded in remote delta villages.

"Some have been living on coconuts," he said. "But even those are running out."
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http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=2...

Crisis in Myanmar offers a chance for junta to reform

Story by KEN KAMOCHE | FROM THE FAR EAST
Publication Date: 5/11/2008

The Burmese junta prides itself on its resilience, its capacity to take whatever the world, critical of its brutal dictatorship, throws at it. External criticism, sanctions, internal protests, name it. They take it all within their stride and still refuse to budge.

For 46 years, this once-promising country has been in the grip of one of the most brutal and ruthless regimes on earth.

Cyclone Nargis may have dented that resilient image, even as it unleashed its own brand of terror on the population, leaving more than 22,000 dead and hundreds of thousands homeless.

With wind speeds of 190km per hour, Burma reels from the worst cyclone to hit the region since 1991 when 143,000 perished in Bangladesh, another poverty-stricken country. Some reports suggest that even more people were killed by the tidal waves that rose over three metres high.

Just nine months ago, the junta was clobbering monks and innocent protestors. Monks have been out on the streets again, this time clearing the debris and offering help as the junta drags its feet in response to the crisis.

As many cyclone survivors are pointing out, the junta’s crackdown on the monks’ peaceful protest last year was quick, decisive and unsurprisingly uncompromising.

This time, when a real disaster struck, it took them days to mobilise the army to come to the people’s aid and clean up the debris, leaving the work to monks and catholic nuns who are not particularly well-equipped for the job.

Cynics claim that the soldiers were focusing their efforts in the areas where the leaders live. These claims have only served to alienate the junta further and portray the generals as insensitive.

When you have a very bad reputation from a history of repression, it is difficult to make people see any sincerity in your actions.

This explains why some claim that soldiers are being exhibited for the cameras in front of fallen trees that they have no intention of clearing away.

The junta missed a chance to earn some goodwill by its slow response. If they had acted promptly, by issuing early warnings, and subsequently galvanising their resources to clear the streets to allow rescue and emergency operations, people might have been able to say, oh, they do care, after all.

But the generals are not without a sense of humour, or at least an understanding of public relations. Their belated response has been something of a publicity stunt.

The generals who are more at home issuing decrees, talking tough and ordering soldiers to inflict pain, have been out and about, emerging from helicopters, armed with grim expressions, greeting victims, possibly even offering a few words of comfort.

The victims must be finding it a very strange experience, especially those who have been visited in temples that house monks who came face to face with the full force of military operations last September.

That this time the junta has agreed to welcome some foreign help should not be interpreted to mean a willingness to open up and welcome other forms of much-derided foreign intervention. It simply shows that on this occasion they are unable to cope.

Sanctions, mostly American, have had an impact, but only a minor one, as Europe refuses to lend its support, but cracks are beginning to show.

Four years ago when a tsunami struck, they spurned approaches for help, in an ill-advised attempt to demonstrate they could do without the rest of the world’s concerns about their capabilities, both the more obvious economic at the time, as well as the implied social-political.

They were trying to say to the international community, we can handle this tragic disaster, and we will jolly well handle our politics ourselves. But tables have turned. Extending the analogy, since they cannot handle Cyclone Nargis, their ability to handle the political crisis comes into question.

Whether this results in a dissipation of their power or not remains to be seen. At least it shows the oppressed citizens that these generals are not really as tough as they have been claiming for almost half a century.

They are fallible, just like the rest of us. If they can deign to accept help from those who frequently criticise them, they’ve been exposed as mere mortals, and whatever divine decree they might have imagined they governed by, is no longer tenable.

Accepting help is also calculated to shore up their popularity and portray themselves in a positive light. But it is a strategy that is likely to fail if they continue insisting on going ahead with the proposed constitutional referendum that is a part of their so-called road to democracy.

As one victim exclaimed, the last thing those who have been rendered homeless and are grieving the loss of loved ones need, is democracy.

They need water, food and medicine. But I would question if the proposed referendum is really about democracy. If and when it takes place, it will be a sham, a charade, a disingenuous effort to retrench military rule behind the façade of “democracy”.

Meanwhile, Asia maintains a troubling silence over the state of Burma. Now, they have an opportunity to take the lead in tackling the humanitarian crisis while the emergency door yawns ajar, and begin a reasoned debate with the junta on the crisis that has lasted 46 years.

Professor Ken Kamoche is an academic and a writer.
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And the NZ government does business deals with the regime.... http://indymedia.org.nz/feature/display/71757/index.php

TO DONATE TO THE CYCLONE RELIEF OPERATIONS PLEASE GO TO:

http://www.foundationburma.org/
http://www.theirc.org/news/irc-cyclone-emergency-myanmar0509.html
http://www.redcross.org/article/0,1072,0_312_7710,00.html
or visit the Golden Lotus Restaurant in Brooklyn, Wellington to make a donation in their donation box (goes to Red Cross).