Burma Today

Isolating Burma Won't Help

2008-05-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

THE devastating natural disasters in Burma and China illustrate the difference between having a competent government and an incompetent one.

The Burmese military, unlike the Chinese, has done little to help its people, of whom more than 100,000 are already dead. The Burmese Government's reluctance to allow foreign aid in will condemn many more tens of thousands to unnecessary deaths.

Optimistic analysts in Southeast Asia and in the West hope the appalling suffering in Burma may lead to the collapse of the military junta and its replacement by a government led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

Sadly, this is pretty unlikely. The Burmese junta, led by Than Shwe, still controls the army and the army is willing to kill civilians in large numbers. That means the junta stays in power until there is a split within the army and one part allies itself with broader forces in civil society, in this case Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy or perhaps Burma's Buddhist monks.

I believe the West, specifically the US and Europe, bear a share of moral responsibility for the calamity that has just consumed Burma.

This is not to sink into a swamp of moral relativism. The Burmese Government is wholly morally responsible for its own actions, which have reduced its people to being among the poorest and the least free in the world. I agree with every nasty thing that has been written about the Burmese Government.

But two stark realities ought to be faced. The first is that the right of humanitarian intervention, the duty to protect and any other international law cliche you care to cite adds up to precisely nothing. There is not the slightest chance of anybody intervening militarily in Burma, or indeed intervening in any other way in opposition to the Burmese Government. Even to talk of it is to partake in self-indulgent prattle, which is an alternative to action.

Second, the policy of sanctions and isolation that has been applied by the US and Europe during the past decade and more has been a disastrous failure. Yes, the primary responsibility for Burma's plight lies with the Burmese Government. This is no nonsensical Edward Said-style argument about everything being the fault of imperialism or Western hegemony.

But the West pursues policies to have an effect. When those policies have the opposite effect to their intentions they should be discarded. Moreover, these policies, so morally high-blown in intent, must be judged, morally, on their consequences.

The Burmese generals pursue a policy of isolation, for themselves and for their society. The Burmese generals have had no better friends, no more effective allies, in effect if not in intent, in achieving this isolation than the governments of the US and Europe and their human rights lobbies.

Australia occupies an uneasy middle ground. We do not apply trade sanctions to Burma but place some restrictions on the movements of its leaders should they wish to come to Australia. We have an embassy in Burma but neither encourage nor discourage trade.

China and India fully engage Burma, as do most of its Southeast Asian neighbours. That means there is no chance of Western sanctions producing regime change. However, even without the support of its Asian neighbours, there is little chance of sanctions producing regime change.

What Western sanctions ensure is that Burma is cut off from the most liberalising of all Western forces, Western commerce.

Periodically, Burma has flirted with economic liberalisation. US and European sanctions ban investment in Burma and imports from Burma. This truly is moral vanity and the only people who suffer for it are the Burmese people. Suu Kyi supports the sanctions, but they are the wrong policy nonetheless. Merely reciting Suu Kyi's name, utterly admirable woman that she is, does not constitute a sensible Burma policy.

Trade and development for Burma would not mean democracy, but they would mean a vast improvement on the situation today. The Burmese generals rightly fear trade and development because they believe the importing of Western companies into Burma would involve the importing of Western values.

The situation in Vietnam in the late 1980s and early '90s is an instructive comparison. The Vietnamese Government several times aborted its early moves to economic liberalisation because it feared the West had a secret policy of "peaceful evolution", under which economic liberalisation would ultimately lead to political liberalisation and the death of the Vietnamese Communist Party.

The Vietnamese were right, in the sense that every Western liberal concerned with Vietnam does hope its economic liberalisation will, through peaceful evolution, ultimately result in political liberalisation. The Chinese example helped convince the Vietnamese that they could remain Stalinist politically but open up economically.

And eventually that economic opening does lead to an expansion of political space, of human freedom, even without democracy.

Say there were five Western factories opening in Burma each year. And each factory employed 2000 people. Each of these people would support, say, four other family members and have as well a multiplier effect through the economy, in terms of small industries servicing the factories, of another five.

That would mean commerce would create 100,000 modestly middle-class people in a year. In 10 years this would be a million, with enough money to spend a little extra on education or health care.

The children of the ruling elites would start to go to the US or Europe or Australia for education and on their return would want their society to modernise and would have the technical skill to achieve this. That is a way that we might improve Burmese society over time.

There are no guarantees it would work. While maintaining our criticism of Burma on human rights, we would need to convince the generals we didn't want them dead. We would have to be able to hold two contrasting thoughts in our head at the one time, often a very difficult feat in democratic debate of the dumbest common denominator.

Drawing the Burmese ruling class into the wider international environment ought to be one big object of our policy towards Burma. Cyclones, HIV-AIDS, illegal drug industries: the Burmese Government neither can, nor wants to, ameliorate these disasters for the Burmese people.

As things stand, the West can feel complacent in its condemnation of the Burmese Government.

We should remember, though, that we pay no price for these condemnations and many people die whom we otherwise might help.

Burma Today May 2008

ASEAN to Handle Foreign Aid

2008-05-19T06:48:00.000-07:00

SINGAPORE (AP) — Myanmar agreed to open its doors to medical teams from members of Southeast Asia's regional bloc as the country estimated losses from Cyclone Nargis will exceed $10 billion, Singapore's foreign minister said Monday.

An emergency meeting of foreign ministers from the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations decided that the bloc will work with the U.N. to hold a donor conference in Yangon on May 25, the foreign minister, George Yeo, told reporters.

In a major concession after being slammed for blocking foreign aid, Myanmar also agreed to open its doors to medical teams from all ASEAN countries, Yeo said.

At least 134,000 people were killed or left missing in the May 2-3 cyclone, and another 2.5 million people are living in poor conditions, most of them without shelter, enough food, drinking water or medical care.

Yeo said the meeting, which included Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win, agreed to set up an ASEAN-led task force for redistributing foreign aid. ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuan will go to Myanmar soon for planning.

The effort, Yeo said, will "facilitate" the distribution of international aid, including the deployment of medical and other relief workers.

But this does not mean the junta will open its doors to foreign experts immediately, which aid agencies and the United Nations say is required immediately.

"There will not be an uncontrolled entry of foreign personnel into Myanmar," he said

European Union nations have warned that the junta could be committing a crime against humanity by blocking aid intended for the survivors faced with hunger, loss of their homes and potential outbreaks of deadly diseases.

Yeo said Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win told the meeting that losses are expected to be well over $10 billion.

The bloc hopes to raise funds for Myanmar at the May 25 meeting and will also work closely with the World Bank and Asian Development Bank on aid packages, he said.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in an editorial in the daily Le Monde on Monday that the U.N. Security Council would be guilty of "cowardice" if it does not force Myanmar to accept international aid.

But the ASEAN meeting rejected suggestions foreign ships carrying aid make a forced entry into Myanmar

"That will create unnecessary complication. It will only lead to more suffering for Myanmar people," Yeo said.

Burma Today may 2008

Children Might Starve to Death in Myanmar

2008-05-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Thousands of children who survived Myanmar's cyclone will starve to death in two to three weeks unless food is rushed to them, an aid agency warned Sunday.

The warning case as an increasingly angry international community pleaded for approval to mount an all-out relief effort.

The United Nations said Myanmar's isolationist ruling generals were even forbidding the import of communications equipment, hampering already difficult contact among relief agencies.

A U.N. report said Saturday that emergency relief from the international community had reached an estimated 500,000 people. But the junta insists it will handle distribution to victims of Cyclone Nargis.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was sending U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes to Myanmar this weekend. Myanmar's leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, has refused to take Ban's telephone calls and has not answered two letters. Holmes will be carrying a third, U.N. spokesman Michele Montas said in New York.

Holmes was expected to arrive Sunday evening in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, said Amanda Pitt, a U.N. spokeswoman in Bangkok, the capital of neighboring Thailand.

"He's going at the request of the secretary-general to find out what's really going on the ground, to get a much better picture of how the response is going and ... to see how much we can help them scale up this response," Pitt said. Details of the visit, she said, were still being worked out.

The U.N. report said all communications equipment used by foreign agencies must be purchased through Myanmar's Ministry of Posts and Communications — with a maximum of 10 telephones per agency — for $1,500 each. Importing equipment is not allowed.

State-run radio said the government has so far spent about $2 million for relief work and has received millions of dollars worth of relief supplies from local and international donors. It said the government was distributing assistance promptly and efficiently to the affected areas.

State radio on Sunday also said the government was providing "full health services" to the victims, saying that except for the "usual diseases" there were no epidemic outbreaks.

Aid agencies were not convinced, and international outrage mounted over Myanmar's handling of the crisis. Save the Children, a global aid agency, said Sunday that thousands of young children face starvation without quick food aid.

"We are extremely worried that many children in the affected areas are now suffering from severe acute malnourishment, the most serious level of hunger," said Jasmine Whitbread, who heads the agency's operation in Britain. "When people reach this stage, they can die in a matter of days."

Britain's prime minister accused authorities in the country, also known as Burma, of preventing foreign aid from reaching victims and said the military regime cares more about its own survival than its people's welfare.

"This is inhuman," Gordon Brown told the British Broadcasting Corp.

In one town near Yangon, tired and hungry refugees stood in the baking sun beside flooded rice paddies, demolished monasteries and thatched huts. With the arrival of each vehicle carrying precious food and water, they jumped with excitement and surged ahead to get a share.

At least they were getting something.

"The farther you go, the worse the situation," said an overwhelmed doctor in the town of Twante, just southwest of Yangon, Myanmar's main city.

"Near Yangon, people are getting a lot of help and it's still bad. In the remote delta villages, we don't even want to imagine." The doctor declined to give her name, fearing government reprisal.

The government flew 60 diplomats and U.S. officials in helicopters to three places in the Irrawaddy delta, the hardest-hit area, on Saturday to show them progress in the relief effort.

"It was a show," Shari Villarosa, the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar, told The Associated Press by telephone after returning to Yangon. "That's what they wanted us to see."

A French navy ship that arrived Saturday off Myanmar's shores loaded with food, medicines and fresh water — a potentially lifesaving cargo — was given the now-familiar red light. France's U.N. ambassador, Jean-Maurice Ripert, called it "nonsense."

"We have small boats, which could allow us to go through the delta to most of the regions where no one has accessed yet," he said. "We have small helicopters to drop food, and we have doctors."

The USS Essex, an amphibious assault ship, and its battle group also have been waiting to join the relief effort. U.S. Marine flights to Yangon from their makeshift headquarters in Utapao, Thailand, continued Saturday — bringing the total to 500,000 pounds (227,000 kilograms) of aid delivered — but negotiations to allow helicopters to fly directly to the disaster zone were stalled.

Myanmar's state-run television, which has repeatedly broadcast footage of generals reassuring refugees calmly sitting in clean tents, announced Friday that the cyclone death toll had nearly doubled to 78,000 with about 56,000 still missing.

Aid groups say even those estimates are low.

The International Red Cross says the death toll alone is probably about 128,000, with many more deaths possible from disease and starvation unless help gets quickly to some 2.5 million survivors.

But seeing that the help gets to the victims does not appear to be a top priority for Myanmar's rulers. The military, which took power in a 1962 coup, has even barred foreigners from traveling outside of Yangon, putting up a security cordon around the city.

Myanmar has been slightly more open to aid from its neighbors, accepting Thai and Indian medical teams, which arrived Saturday. The 32-member Thai team was expected to travel to the delta in the coming days, said Dr. Surachet Satitniramai, director of Thailand's National Medical Emergency Services Institute.

The Indian team consists of 50 doctors and paramedics from the Army Medical Corp., said Indian Air Force spokesman Wing Cmdr. Manish Gandhi. He could not immediately say if they would be allowed to go to the delta.

May 18, 2007 Burma Today

Military Leader Visits Refugees

2008-05-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

YANGON, Myanmar (CNN) -- Two weeks after Cyclone Nargis devastated Myanmar, the country's reclusive junta leader Than Shwe visited a refugee camp outside Yangon, according to video broadcast on state television.
Surrounded by fellow junta members all dressed in olive-green military suits, Shwe walked through streets talking with the people who lined up outside their neatly constructed tents.

The 75-year-old military ruler touched the cheeks of young survivors held by their mothers.

The junta leaders -- who traveled about 320 km (200 miles) south to Yangon from the new capital Naypyidaw -- looked on as aid workers at the camp opened plastic cases filled with relief supplies.

The visit comes on the day that United Nations humanitarian chief John Holmes is expected to arrive in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, to assess the scope of the disaster.

Last week, Holmes said the death toll from the cyclone which struck the country on May 2-3 could be "in the region of 100,000 or even more." Millions more are homeless.

The official death toll provided by Myanmar's government is much lower.

Aid agencies have struggled to gain access to the country from the secretive military junta that rules Myanmar, though some relief flights landed. The regime has indicated that it would like supplies but not international aid workers.

Forecasts show that in the coming days, the Irrawaddy Delta -- the part of the country hardest-hit by the cyclone -- could receive another 12 cm (4.7 inches) of rain, adding to the woes of the cyclone-affected masses.

The lack of access makes it hard to bring the scale of destruction into sharp focus.

Citing figures from 22 organizations in 58 townships, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said estimates of the death toll in Myanmar range from 68,833 and 127,990.
"They are all estimates, which may or may not be right," said spokesman John Sparrow. "There is no way to verify the figures, no way any organization could substantiate them."

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies does not formally estimate death tolls, he said. It compiled figures through an informal survey of numbers cited by other organizations. Those groups say the cyclone affected from 1.6 million and 2.5 million people.

"Clearly there's a huge frustration that while (aid workers) may be able to get into the country and into Yangon, they're not at the moment able to move into the affected areas and carry out the tasks they normally carry out," Holmes said.

In recent days, Myanmar has agreed to let in some foreign aid.

A U.S. Marine spokesman told CNN that the government had authorized five more U.S. flights to land in Myanmar with supplies. The flights will deliver 46 pallets loaded with bottled water, plastic sheeting and hygiene kits as well as crackers and powdered milk.

Three additional U.S. flights have already gone to Myanmar -- one on Monday and two on Tuesday. They carried food, mosquito netting and tarpaulins.
Meanwhile, Pentagon officials said the USS Essex, USS Juneau and USS Harpers Ferry are in international waters off the coast of the country, laden with more than 14,000 containers of fresh water and other aid and awaiting orders to deliver by air or landing craft.

On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown asked U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to convene an emergency summit on Myanmar aid. Ban has blasted the reclusive regime for what he called an "unacceptably slow response" to the disaster, and called, "in the most strenuous terms, on the government of Myanmar to put its people's lives first."
May 18, 2007 Burma Today

Pressure on Myanmar Junta Is Building

2008-05-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

YANGON, Burma Today — International pressure on the ruling military junta in Myanmar continued to grow over the weekend as a senior United Nations envoy was due to arrive in Yangon on Sunday to talk with government officials about what the United Nations has called a slow response to international aid offers after Cyclone Nargis.

John Holmes, under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, has talks scheduled with top members of the government, although diplomats in Yangon said it was unlikely that Mr. Holmes would be allowed to meet with the junta’s leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe. The general has remained in the remote capital of Naypyidaw, far from the storm-damaged delta in the south.

In the two weeks since the cyclone hit, the junta has allowed in a modest amount of supplies from a number of nations, but relief workers say it is far short of what they need to fend off starvation and disease. The United Nations says only 20 percent of the survivors have received even “rudimentary aid.”

In some of the harshest comments, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain told the BBC on Saturday that a natural disaster “is being made into a man-made catastrophe by the negligence, the neglect and the inhuman treatment of the Burmese people by a regime that is failing to act and to allow the international community to do what it wants to do.”

The French ambassador, Jean-Maurice Ripert, warned on Friday that the government’s refusal to allow aid to be delivered to people “could lead to a true crime against humanity,” according to The Associated Press.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations also called an emergency meeting of its foreign ministers for Monday in Singapore.

The association has asked to see a disaster report from the junta and wants to discuss the regime’s refusal to accept more aid and its refusal to allow foreign relief experts into the country. Traditionally, however, the bloc’s political clout with individual members has been weak; one of its founding principles is “non-interference in the internal affairs of one another.”

A French government statement said a navy ship was waiting about 15 miles outside Myanmar’s territorial waters on Saturday, hoping to go in and unload its cargo of 1,000 tons of food — enough to feed 100,000 people for 15 days. The aid also includes shelters for 15,000 people, according to the statement.

France is negotiating with Myanmar on delivering the aid, Rear Adm. Alain Hinden, the ship’s commander said, The A.P. reported.

India also sent 50 Army doctors and paramedics, along with medical supplies to set up emergency medical clinics, to Yangon on Saturday, although it is unclear if they had government approval to travel to affected areas.

All foreigners have been expelled and banned from the hard-hit Irrawaddy Delta, even humanitarian aid workers with long experience in Myanmar. Impromptu aid convoys by local groups and private citizens — often with supplies donated by Burmese companies — have been turned back at military checkpoints.

“These guys are xenophobic,” Shari Villarosa, the senior diplomat at the United States Embassy in Yangon, said in a recent interview, referring to the military leadership.

The government said that almost 78,000 people have died and nearly 56,000 more are missing. The Red Cross put the possible death toll at 128,000.

Ms. Villarosa was able to tour parts of the delta on Saturday with Myanmar’s foreign minister, Nyan Win, riding in one of the government’s few working helicopters. They left Yangon at 7 a.m. and returned early in the afternoon; it was the first chance for an American diplomat to see the area since the storm.

“It was a show. That’s what they wanted us to see,” Ms. Villarosa told The A.P. in a telephone interview.

In addition to roadblocks and checkpoints, the junta’s shutdown of the country has included an Internet firewall that blocks most e-mail access. It also has disabled access to a number of computer programs that can evade firewalls, as well as access to dissident Web sites run by exiled Burmese.

Many residents of Myanmar get their daily news from the Burmese-language radio services run by broadcasters like the BBC and Voice of America. They listen to shortwave radios at home, away from neighborhood snitches. If they are discovered listening to the foreign stations, several Yangon residents said, they could be detained or beaten, or they could lose their jobs.

Parts of Yangon, Myanmar’s main city, were still without power Saturday night, two weeks after the storm, and water supplies were sporadic. Gasoline was still being rationed and prices in the market continued to rise — along with civic anger and frustration.

A large banner was hung on the outside of a seven-story apartment building in Yangon that read: “We don’t want gold, we just need water.” In the Burmese language, the written words for gold and water are nearly identical. The banner also took a swipe at General Shwe. In Burmese, shwe means gold.

When a soldier passing through the neighborhood saw the sign, a local resident quickly tore it down.

Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from New Delhi.

Posted: Burma Today 2008

Myanmar's Junta Rulers Oblivious to Sanctions

2008-05-18T08:22:00.000-07:00

With US President George W. Bush slapping fresh sanctions on Thursday against state-run Myanmar firms, offer little help to the Myanmar people. More pressure needs to be applied by the civilized world to help the poor people of Myanmar. Imposing sanctions against Myanmar’s Junta Rulers is just another wasted attempt by the Bush Administration.
In October of 2007 Myanmar Monks peacefully protested against the Junta Rulers with regards to soaring food and fuel costs only to be crushed by the Military Rulers. Many Monks were beaten and Killed for standing up for the people of Myanmar.
The News of this rocked the world and reports were telecasted world wide of the events unfolding in Myanmar (Burma). As time passed after the Military Regime suppressed the uprising Myanmar was again forgotten.
Now a cyclone has left two million survivors short of food, clean water, shelter and aid groups are being refused entry into Myanmar buy the Military Rulers. When will World leaders say “Enough is enough” and force Myanmar strategically for change?
Now more than ever is the time for World leaders to take a stance against Myanmar’s Rulers and come to the aid of the Myanmar people.
More Problems to Come:
One of the darkest problems on the horizons in Myanmar is the next rice harvest, which will be essential to keep a massive food shortage at bay. The Irrawaddy Delta hit hardest by the storm is the impoverished country's rice bowl.
"Extensive damage to agriculture production risks the loss of the November harvest," the United Nations said in a new internal report on the situation Sunday, warning that planting had to be carried out within seven weeks.
"If this planting season is lost, then assistance will be required for some months to come."
The UN's food agency has already warned that more than 20 percent of rice paddies in the cyclone-hit area were destroyed, including in districts outside Yangon and the delta region.
An intricate system of embankments and irrigation systems critical to the success of the crop will require an enormous amount of work to restore -- work by people who are grieving, homeless and weak from hunger.
How is this to happen if the Ruling Junta won’t allow foreign aid into the country?
Sanctions will do nothing to help the people of Myanmar let alone stop the ruling Junta from continuing their disregard for the welfare of the poor and suffering.
May 18, 2007 Burma Today
Oblivious

John Holmes arrived in Myanmar

2008-05-18T07:09:00.000-07:00

YANGON (AFP) — The UN's top disaster official John Holmes arrived in Myanmar on Sunday on a three-day visit to convince the reluctant regime to open the doors to a massive relief effort after Cyclone Nargis.

He arrived just hours after the latest UN emergency report on the country -- where around two million survivors are lacking food and water more than two weeks after the storm hit -- said needs were still critical.

The international community has been turning up the pressure on the regime over its handling of the tragedy, which has left nearly 134,000 people dead or missing since tearing into the southern Irrawaddy Delta on May 2.

Holmes was carrying a letter from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the head of the junta, Than Shwe. The UN chief has made repeated calls to the military leader but failed to reach him since the tragedy.

The secretive military rulers have been letting more foreign experts into the country in recent days, but aid groups say it is not enough to ensure that victims get the food, water, shelter and medical care they need.

British aid group Save the Children said Sunday that thousands of children could starve to death within weeks, and the latest UN internal report said it was still awaiting government approval to import rice, pulses and oil.

It also warned that time was running out to start planting for the coming rice harvest.

"If this planting season is lost, then assistance will be required for some months to come," the report said.

Holmes was to visit the delta on Monday and hold talks with regime officials, local UN representative Dan Baker told reporters.

The international community has been toughening the rhetoric on the regime, which has limited the access of foreigners with expertise in managing disaster zones, despite warnings they are essential to the relief effort.

South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner have both raised the spectre of crimes against humanity by the junta over its handling of the catastrophe.

Tutu said the regime had "effectively declared war on its own population."

Despite the government's insistence that the relief effort is going well, witnesses who managed to sneak through the security cordon around the hard-hit Irrawaddy Delta said the situation remained dire.

"It was horrible beyond description," said a foreign businessman, one of a bout a dozen eyewitnesses interviewed by AFP.

"Most of the devastated huts looked like they were empty at first glance. But there were actually survivors inside," he said.

"One hut with no roof was full of about 100 people, crouching in the rain. There was no food and no water. Each person had nothing more than the clothes on their bodies, shivering in the cold."

The junta has continued to insist it can handle most of the operation by itself, and state media are full of photos of smiling citizens receiving handouts from generals.

The junta's English-language mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper, on Sunday carried more than two dozen stories praising its own relief efforts.

"Rescue and relief works can be expedited effectively thanks to the measures the government has taken to materialise the relief undertakings as scheduled," it said.

Aid agencies are hoping that Holmes will have some sway on the regime, which keeps an iron grip on one of the poorest and most isolated nations on the planet.

Aid groups say the government cannot possibly handle the tragedy alone, with hundreds of tonnes of supplies and high-tech equipment piling up in warehouses, bottle-necked by logistics and other problems.

Children May Starve to Death in Myanmar

2008-05-18T07:07:00.000-07:00

YANGON: Thousands of children in Myanmar will starve to death in two to three weeks unless food is rushed to them, an aid agency warned today as an increasingly angry international community pleaded for approval to mount an all-out effort to help cyclone survivors.

The United Nations said Myanmar's isolationist ruling generals were even forbidding the import of communications equipment, hampering already difficult contact among relief agencies.

A UN situation report said yesterday that emergency relief from the international community had reached an estimated 500,000 people. But the regime insists it will handle distribution to victims of Cyclone Nargis.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has been unable to sway Myanmar's leaders by telephone, said he was sending UN humanitarian chief John Holmes to Myanmar this weekend.

Holmes was expected to arrive this evening in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, said Amanda Pitt, a UN spokeswoman in Bangkok, the capital of neighbouring Thailand.

"He's going at the request of the secretary-general to find out what's really going on the ground, to get a much better picture of how the response is going and ... to see how much we can help them scale up this response," Pitt said. Details of the visit, she said, were still being worked out.

Myanmar death toll soars, devastation "huge"

2008-05-17T11:58:00.000-07:00

* Diplomat tour finds "huge" damage in delta

* Official toll of dead and missing above 133,000

* Monks fill gaps in aid distribution (Adds comments from diplomatic tour)

By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON, May 17 (Reuters) - Diplomats witnessed "huge" devastation in the Irrawaddy delta on Saturday and the toll of dead and missing from the cyclone rose above 133,000 people, making it one of the most damaging to hit Asia.

With about 2.5 million people clinging to survival in the delta, and the military government refusing to admit large-scale outside relief, disaster experts say the death toll from Cyclone Nargis which struck on May 2 could rise dramatically.

"It was useful to catch the magnitude of the devastation. It's huge," Bernard Delpuech, head of the European Commission Humanitarian Office in Yangon, said of the trip.

"For the recovery you can't expect it to be six months or a year. It will take longer," he told Reuters from Yangon, the former Rangoon.

Helicopters took some 60 to 70 diplomats split in three groups to different parts of the delta, where Nargis struck with 120 mph (190 kmh) winds and a 12-foot (3.5 metre) wall of water.

The itineraries were arranged by the Myanmar government, under fire for refusing to allow significant numbers of foreign aid workers and major international aid operations. The generals running the country say they have things in hand.

"The purpose was to show the situation was under control. Where we were they didn't hide anything but of course they selected the places we visited," Delpuech said.

In the last 50 years, only two Asian cyclones have exceeded Nargis in terms of human cost -- a 1970 storm that killed 500,000 people in neighbouring Bangladesh, and another that killed 143,000 in 1991, also in Bangladesh.

PLEA FOR MORE ACCESS

During the Saturday tour diplomats tried at every chance to tell the accompanying Myanmar minister that the government should provide more international aid access, Delpuech said.

He said the answer was: "Yes, they're willing, but they don't want the people who will create more problems".

The insistence of the military, which has ruled unchecked for the last 46 years, on handling the bulk of aid distribution seemingly stems from fear an influx of helpful foreigners might loosen its vice-like grip on power.

Myanmar state television said on Saturday media reports were inaccurate in suggesting the government was not doing enough.

There have already been tens of millions of dollars spent and extensive aid deliveries and other efforts by the army, navy and air force, state television said.

However, near the town of Kunyangon this week columns of men, women and children stretched for miles alongside the road, begging in the mud and rain for scraps of food or clothing from the occasional passing aid vehicle.

Witnesses say many refugees are crammed into monasteries and schools, fed and watered by local volunteers and private donors who have sent in clothes, biscuits, dried noodles and rice.

Buddhist monks play a major role.

"We have distributed over 100 tonnes of rice and more than 3,000 tin roofing sheets so far. We are trying to distribute more," said the Venerable Nyanissara, who oversees a makeshift relief centre in the town of Kunthechaung.

There, robed and shaven-headed monks receive carefully measured quotas of food for their storm-hit home villages.

MORAL AUTHORITY

Given the monks' moral authority in the devoutly Buddhist southeast Asian nation, private donors are happy to see the men take charge of goods brought in rickety trucks and boats.

The generals have admitted aid flights to Yangon, including around four daily from staunch critic the United States.

They have allowed in some foreign aid workers, especially from countries considered friendly. Medical teams from Thailand and India arrived on Saturday, state television said.

But aid agencies say only a fraction of needed relief gets to the inundated part of the delta, an area the size of Austria, and more lives are at risk unless the situation improves.

In a rare sign of agreement with international aid agencies, the junta on Friday night sharply raised the official toll from the disaster to 77,738 dead and 55,917 missing.

The news came on state TV, which has mainly shown footage of generals handing out food at model tented temporary villages.

People in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, are snapping up bootleg video discs of bloated corpses, desperate refugees and ravaged villages to get a fuller picture of the situation.

"Myanmar television is useless," said a Yangon businessman.

Given the junta's virtual ban on foreign journalists and restrictions on aid workers, independent assessment is difficult.

As international frustration mounts, envoys fly in to try to coax the junta out of its deep distrust of the outside world.

The latest is the U.N.'s top humanitarian official, John Holmes, expected to arrive in Yangon on Sunday.

A spokeswoman said Holmes will carry a third letter from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to junta leader Than Shwe, who has repeatedly ignored Ban's requests for a conversation. (Writing by Ed Cropley and Jerry Norton) (For more stories on Myanmar cyclone click on [nSP152717] or follow the link to Reuters AlertNet http:/www.alertnet.org)

Why Myanmar's generals stand firm

2008-05-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

The cyclone might even end up bolstering junta chief Than Shwe's status because of his 2005 decision to move the capital to Naypyidaw, 400 kms (250 miles) north of Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon.

With Yangon strewn with rubble and fallen trees, the junta's escape from the destruction is likely to confirm in its leaders' minds that they have a near supernatural mandate and can ignore pressure from within and without.

"It is said that Than Shwe's astrologer told him to move the capital because Rangoon would suffer a calamity," said Derek Tonkin, a former British ambassador to neighbouring Thailand.

NO WORRIES

The generals' confidence was demonstrated after the cyclone when they ignored widespread calls to indefinitely postpone a planned referendum on a constitution the government calls a step to democracy but critics say will further cement their power.

The first round of a two-stage ballot was held on May 10 in all but the worst-hit areas.

The result, according to the government?

A 92.4 percent win for the charter, demonstrating either incredible popularity for the junta or, according to opposition National League for Democracy spokesman Nyan Win, a referendum "full of cheating and fraud across the country".

(Reporting by Ed Cropley; Editing by Jerry Norton)

Myanmar's cyclone victims pay the bill

2008-05-16T19:45:00.001-07:00

Realism comes with a hefty price tag. Iraq was supposed to have put paid to the internationalist impulse in foreign policy. The gathering outrage at the behaviour of the military junta in Myanmar reminds us that foreign policy, like life, is never quite so simple

For realists on the political right the heavy cost in blood and treasury of toppling Saddam Hussain has provided an object lesson in the folly of regime change and nation building. At the other end of the spectrum, what Britain's Tony Blair called the doctrine of international community has been denounced as a flimsy excuse for US-led imperialism.

These critics hold aloft the centuries-old Treaty of Westphalia: now as then, the mantra runs, nations should eschew interference in the domestic affairs of other sovereign states. The effort to foist Western values on others has always been scorned by the realists; for their new allies on the left of politics, the pro-democracy mission is simply colonialism by another name. My guess is that if Slobodan Milosevic had waited 10 years before marching into Kosovo, the West would have wrung its hands and turned its back.

The implications of live and let live are self-evident. To respect the inviolability of national frontiers is to invite nasty regimes everywhere to do as they please. The Sudanese regime has thus been given a free pass over genocide in Darfur; so has Robert Mugabe for the systematic impoverishment of Zimbabwe. You could add probably another dozen lesser-known despots to the list.

Events in Myanmar are a dramatic reminder of the costs of looking the other way. Systematic repression soon drops from the headlines. Horrible events grab our attention. And this one is truly horrible. In the aftermath of cyclone Nargis, Myanmar's military junta has turned an unavoidable natural calamity into a calculated human catastrophe. Six months ago the generals were crushing peaceful protests led by Buddhist monks. Now they are denying aid to the wretched victims of last week's storm.

Tens of thousands seem likely to die because of the refusal to accept large-scale aid. The military rulers are unabashed. General Than Shwe, head of the junta, has refused to take the calls of Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general. An effort to discuss the crisis in the Security Council was blocked by China because France suggested decisions could be made under the rubric of the UN's "responsibility to protect" provisions.

Clear implications

So the clamour is for something to be done. The call has been heard from every Western government and aid agency and from every part of the political landscape. In Britain, the Conservatives' David Cameron has been if anything more outspoken than Labour's Gordon Brown. France's Nicolas Sarkozy has echoed America's George W. Bush. Angela Merkel of Germany has been characteristically forthright.

The sentiment is admirable and the outrage genuine. But it all counts for nought if these leaders take at face value that section of the UN's founding charter that enshrines the sovereignty of states. The implications of such literalism are clear: outsiders can exhort, plead and voice outrage. But Myanmar has committed no act of aggression, so they are powerless to intervene. The death of a million people in Myanmar is not "a threat to international security".

One response has been to say that if the generals remain impervious to reason, the UN charter could be respected by dropping supplies from the air. The US and France, after all, have military assets in the region.

The idea is well-intentioned and profoundly naive - a fig leaf to salve the conscience of realism. As the aid agencies admit, dropping packages from 10,000ft in the hope they land in the right place is a hopelessly inadequate response to the grave threats of disease, water and food shortages. And what if the junta shot down one of the aircraft? Would that be a moment to send in the Marines?

The problem with the Myanmar regime, as we perhaps should have learnt during the past several decades, does not lie in its response to a single tragedy, however horrible. The regime is the problem, entirely indifferent as it is to the fate of citizens when weighed against the preservation of its own power.

For those at the hard edges of foreign policy realism, inaction in the face of such a standoff carries no dilemma. The West cannot right all the terrible wrongs in the world, so why pretend? Sure we should offer Myanmar our help, even feel the pain of its people. But if aid is refused all the rest is futile bleating.

Liberal internationalists confront a more complicated world. The ideal would be to help the people of Myanmar overturn a regime as loathed by its own people as reviled abroad. But how could that be done except by force?

Yet the reality denied by the realists is that the world has moved decisively beyond Westphalia; and beyond the strict interpretation of sovereignty in the UN charter. Inviolate frontiers were fine for an age when all that really mattered was whether armies crossed them. But global interdependence demands more - a truth attested to by the plethora of UN treaties and conventions that have successively qualified the sovereignty of states. The responsibility on states, and failing that on the international community, to protect is a staging post on this uncompleted journey.

International order, of course, will always require respect for national sovereignty. But the security of all demands that states also respect some basic rules of the international road. The trouble is there are no straight lines between the two. Deciding which should take precedence will always be an uncomfortable balancing act.

As a matter of principle, the junta has bestowed the right, if not the obligation, on the international community to intervene. But the geopolitical circumstances of that country also remind us that what should be done will always be tempered by what can be done.

There is no escape. Liberal internationalism can never be a comfortable place. Weighing the moral against the practical will always involve contradictions and sometimes hypocrisies. Better that, though, than the ugly certainties of realism.

Should We Invade Myanmar?

2008-05-16T19:37:00.000-07:00

On May 3, Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar, one of the poorest nations on the planet. With a 12-15 foot tidal wave following it and winds around 150 miles per hour, devastation was the only result. Current Red Cross estimates of the dead range from 68,883 to 127,999. Up to 2.5 million people have been displaced. Obscenely high food prices were forced even higher by the destruction of the rice crops. And, as is always the case in such scenarios, sanitation and medical concerns mean that what happens in the ensuing weeks could easily wind up making the event itself seem like only the preamble. What is the world doing to help? Everything it can … which is to say virtually nothing at all.

Because, you see, Myanmar is ruled by a group of petty tyrants who care more about their own paranoid fears than about the lives of millions of their people. And as international aid shipments are seized or sit because they have so far kept their borders mostly closed to outsiders, we have to ask ourselves a very serious question: Just how many lives have to be at stake before it’s no longer possible to hide behind the flimsy excuse that we are honoring the emaciated abstraction of national sovereignty?

This is more than just some theoretical question political science grad students might debate over darts and micro-brews, and we enable a grave evil if we let it remain merely that. This is real people’s lives hanging in the balance in a situation where hours, let alone days, matter. And if I have one regret at this moment, it is only that I did not write this column yesterday … or the day before that.

I confess that I don’t know whether we should invade Myanmar. But that’s only because the particular facts of the military scenario, the location of the people, and the likely cost in human life and materiel are well beyond the scope of my knowledge. But I want my President to make one of two statements. I either want him to explain to the rest of America why the facts of the situation justify using military force, or to explain why they do not. Because when considered as a theoretical question without the input of such details, this case is beyond obvious.

When your next door neighbor swears at his children, feeds them French Fries and cake, and allows them to watch Tyra on TV, you pray for him and swallow the bitter pill of parental authority. But when a tornado hits his home and you can hear his children screaming for help as he sits on his lawn telling you to mind your own business, you wouldn’t wait for the sheriff to arrive. How else would you live with yourself at night?

Our Declaration of Independence proclaims a profound belief “that ALL people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life….” Well? Are they, or aren’t they? And if they are, why does it boggle the imagination that we would do something to save the lives of tens of thousands in a far away place just as we would to save the lives of a few—or just one next door?

Unfortunately, American foreign policy hasn’t always been motivated by what it should be: our serious commitment to this simple idea that all people matter equally. And yet, this is the principle which has made this country great and could serve to make our foreign policy equally great. This is a chance for us to do the right thing for no other reason than that it is the right thing—a chance to be truly proud of our ability to project force beyond our borders. Myanmar is a country with no strategic value whatsoever. It is nothing but a humanitarian opportunity, which may in fact give it the greatest strategic value of all. What will the slogan be this time: no war to deliver food in Burma?

We all know the United Nations will not act in time. Too many of the world’s governments fear putting their own oppressive sovereignty in jeopardy by setting a precedent like this. Let them rot in the guilt of their indecision. This is not tomorrow’s problem.

So what do I want? Only to force this discussion to take place and quickly. Besides, if my suspicions are correct, then real military action may be unnecessary. The mere threat of it may be sufficient to get them to relent. The Junta say they don’t want aid brought in because it will generate rebellion. Let’s change their calculus by threatening something worse than rebellion. Even paranoid fools would prefer the mere chance of insurrection over the guarantee of invasion. Thus my hope is that we’ll have to do nothing more than rattle our very loud sabers.

But if more is necessary, I submit two simple ideas. In principle, this is the best possible use of our military might. But in practice, I defer to the judgment of people far more informed about the particulars. Perhaps military action is impractical. Perhaps it jeopardizes the activities of NGOs already on the ground in small numbers. Perhaps the window of opportunity has already passed. Perhaps we’re just stretched too thin already. Or perhaps there’s just no good way to deliver food at gunpoint. As I say, these are questions for others to answer. But as for me, I would desperately hope that at the very least we would be willing to use our vast resources for the short time such an operation would likely last to at least have a chance at saving the lives of so many thousands of people. Lives which our most cherished documents affirm are supposed to matter as much as our own.

Junta Vote for Themselves

2008-05-16T19:30:00.000-07:00

YANGON, MYANMAR -- Myanmar's ruling generals announced Thursday that a new constitution viewed by critics as a pro-government sham had been overwhelming approved by voters.

The commission in charge of the Saturday referendum said 92.4% of voters approved the constitution, state-run media reported. The pro-democracy opposition says the new constitution will enshrine military rule.
Voting was postponed in the country's largest city, Yangon, and the rest of the country's south after Tropical Cyclone Nargis hit just days before the balloting.

Most residents of the storm-ravaged areas, where disease and widespread shortages of food, clean water and medical treatment threaten the lives of injured and weak survivors, are scheduled to cast their ballots May 24.

But the military regime, which has ruled Myanmar since 1962, didn't wait for complete results before declaring that the constitution had been ratified. The announcement was made the day that the government raised the official death toll from the cyclone to 43,318, still far below estimates by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

News on the referendum results appeared to be greeted with quiet resignation in rain-soaked Yangon, also known as Rangoon.

Many of the city's 7 million people still don't have electricity and running water 13 days after the storm struck. The price of rice has shot up by 50%, the cost of fuel has more than doubled, and other basic needs are sapping meager savings.

Heavy rain fell in the region throughout Thursday, and foreign aid agencies, frustrated by the government's refusal to open the isolated country to a massive international relief effort, warn that the early monsoons increase the risk of another catastrophe.

The U.N. and European Union have sent officials to Yangon to try to persuade the military regime to allow foreign teams and equipment into Myanmar, also known as Burma, to assess needs and supervise the distribution of supplies.

But so far, they have met only lower ranking government ministers and officials in Yangon, not the top generals ensconced 200 miles to the north in their remote new capital in Pyinmana.

The U.N.'s humanitarian chief, John Holmes, is preparing to go to Myanmar, but like dozens of other international aid workers, he needs a visa. Holmes applied Wednesday to enter Myanmar aboard a U.N. World Food Program plane carrying supplies.

U.N. spokeswoman Michelle Montas said he hoped to go within the next five days, but had not yet received a visa, adding that "we expect he will get it."

U.N. officials are debating whether Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should also try to enter Myanmar to show the world's eagerness to help. But Myanmar's top leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, has not answered Ban's phone calls or letters since the cyclone struck.

Human rights activists say the referendum was rigged by the government, which has made criticism of the regime a criminal offense.

The generals say the 194-page constitution is a key step toward democracy and have promised multiparty elections in 2010.

But the new constitution bans pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from running for public office because she was married to a foreigner, British academic Michael Aris. He died in 1999. Many of her supporters also would be blocked from power because they have criminal records for opposing the regime.

There are at least 1,890 political prisoners in the country, including hundreds of people arrested after pro-democracy demonstrations last year, according to the Assistance Assn. for Political Prisoners, based in neighboring Thailand.

Under the new constitution, the military will appoint one-fourth of the members in both houses of parliament, ensuring that it will have veto power over future constitutional changes. The military also will have a leading role in choosing the president and two vice presidents.

Times staff writer Maggie Farley at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Number of Injured and Missing People Increase Dramatically

2008-05-16T15:17:00.000-07:00

Today, torrential rains blasted the up to 2.5 million survivors of Cyclone Nargis, many of whom were migrating from the most affected areas in search of basic survival necessities. Damaged infrastructure and communications, as well as flooding, have posed significant logistical challenges to relief efforts and movement of international relief workers to disaster-hit areas is still restricted.

"In Yangon, our assessment team reached all the way down to the coast, going mainly by motorbikes. Roads are deteriorating because of the rain, so we are hiring small boats to reach these areas," said CARE’s Country Director in Myanmar, Brian Agland. "We have to go up estuaries and we have to look at how we get food to these areas."

Meanwhile, Myanmar state television reported the latest casualty numbers from the cyclone: the official number of dead and missing people has nearly doubled to 78,000 and 55,917 respectively, and the number of injured persons has increased from 1,403 to 19,359.

Severe weather warnings are issued for the Irrawaddy delta region for the next 24-36 hours, with heavy rainfall predicted. Even worse, Myanmar’s annual monsoon season is only a couple of weeks away. As explained in Dr. Jeff Masters’ Wunder Blog, "the capital of Yangon averages about one inch of rain per month in the period just before the monsoon starts, and twenty inches per month thereafter."

Access to Myanmar by essential expatriate staff has improved, flights carrying relief items have been getting in to the country, and the Myanmar government and humanitarian partners are reaching an increasing number of affected persons, but the levels of aid getting into the country remain far below what is required to meet the needs on the ground. It is critical that more personnel and emergency supplies are granted entry into the country, not only to assist people with basic necessities, but to provide them with seeds and fertilizer and prepare them for the upcoming rice production season.

To date, CARE has been able to assist 80,000 people in Myanmar who need it most.

Rain pushes Myanmar death toll higher

2008-05-16T14:57:00.000-07:00

YANGON (Reuters) - Torrential rain lashed survivors of Cyclone Nargis on Friday as Myanmar's junta raised its toll sharply to more than 133,000 people dead or missing, putting the disaster on a par with a 1991 cyclone that killed 143,000 in neighbouring Bangladesh.

In a shocking update to a count that had consistently lagged international aid agency estimates, state television said 77,738 people were dead and 55,917 missing after the May 2 storm in the military-ruled country formerly known as Burma.

Up to 2.5 million survivors are clinging to life in the low-lying Irrawaddy delta, with thousands of people lining roadsides to beg for help in the absence of large-scale government or foreign relief operations.

In the town of Kunyangon, 100 km (60 miles) southwest of Yangon, men, women and children stood in the mud and rain, their hands clasped together in supplication to the occasional passing aid vehicle.

"The situation has worsened in just two days," one aid volunteer said as children mobbed his vehicle, reaching through the window for scraps of bread or clothing.

The generals insist their relief operations are running smoothly, justifying their refusal to allow major aid distribution by outside agencies and workers to victims of the cyclone, which flooded an area the size of Austria.

The junta issued an edict in state-run media saying legal action would be taken against anybody found hoarding or selling relief supplies, amid rumours of military units expropriating trucks of food, blankets and water.

Aid groups, including U.N. agencies, say only a fraction of the required relief is getting through and, unless the situation improves, thousands more lives are at risk.

Given the junta's ban on foreign journalists and restrictions on the movement of most international aid workers, independent assessment of the situation is difficult.

RECLUSIVE REGIME

The United Nations said its top humanitarian official, John Holmes, would arrive in Myanmar on Sunday to try to establish contact with its reclusive generals, the latest face of 46 years of unbroken military rule.

U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said Holmes was carrying a third letter from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the junta's senior general, Than Shwe, who has repeatedly ignored Ban's requests for a conversation.

Four U.S. C-130 planes landed in Yangon on Friday and "two of the shipments were handed directly" to non-governmental organizations, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

He did not name the NGOs but said there was progress because this was the first time Myanmar's government had not taken possession of some of the U.S. aid.

"We're planning four to five flights for both Saturday and Sunday and it is our hope that some of those shipments, again, will be handed over directly to international NGOs," he said.

Myanmar's government was organizing a trip of diplomats to the affected areas this weekend, McCormack added.

In a sign of the tensions between the generals and the international community, Myanmar's U.N. envoy accused France of sending a warship to his country. France's U.N. ambassador said the junta was on the verge of a "crime against humanity."

French envoy Jean-Maurice Ripert said the ship is operated by the French navy but is not a warship. It is carrying 1,500 tonnes of food and medicine as well as small boats, helicopters and field hospital platforms.

"We are still trying to convince the authority of Burma to authorize us to go there," Ripert said. "The ship will be off the coast of the delta, but in international waters, tomorrow. We still hope they will not refuse that."

Two weeks after the storm, ordinary people in Myanmar were taking matters into their own hands, sending trucks into the delta with clothes, biscuits, dried noodles and rice provided by private companies and individuals.

'TIME IS LIFE'

With international pressure and outrage at the generals' intransigence growing, the European Union's top aid official flew to Yangon to push for more access for foreign aid workers and relief operations.

Like so many envoys before him, the EU's Louis Michel came away empty-handed but continued to urge the junta to shelve its pride and paranoia about the outside world.

"Time is life," he told reporters at Bangkok airport. "No government in the world can tackle such a problem alone. This is a major catastrophe."

Many refugees, crammed into monasteries, schools and other temporary shelters after the devastating storm, have already contracted diarrhoea, dysentery and skin infections.

Officials said one international health agency had confirmed cholera in the delta, although the number of cases was in line with normal levels at this time of year in a region where the disease is endemic.

"We don't have an explosion of cholera," World Health Organisation official Maureen Birmingham said in Bangkok.

Earlier, the generals signalled they would not budge on their position of limiting foreign access to the delta, fearful that doing so might loosen their grip on power.

"We have already finished our first phase of emergency relief. We are going onto the second phase, the rebuilding stage," state television quoted Prime Minister Thein Sein as telling his Thai counterpart this week.

(Additional reporting by Ed Cropley and Darren Schuettler in Bangkok, Susan Cornwell in Washington and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; writing by Ed Cropley and John O'Callaghan; editing by Mohammad Zargham)

US lawmakers ask Bush to consider Myanmar "intervention"

2008-05-16T14:51:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US lawmakers have asked President George W. Bush to consider "humanitarian intervention" in cyclone-hit Myanmar after its military rulers refused to allow foreign experts direct relief efforts amid a rising death toll.

Forty-one members of the House of Representatives wrote to Bush on Thursday asking him to "strongly consider" backing efforts by France, Britain, Germany, Denmark and other nations to gain entry into the devastated Irrawaddy Delta region "to provide urgent life-saving humanitarian aid."

They asked the US leader to "immediately and urgently" consult with the French, British, German, Danish and other supportive and regional governments" as Myanmar's military junta announced Friday that more than 133,000 people were dead or missing in the cyclone disaster.

The new toll, nearly double the official number two weeks after the storm left the country's rice-growing south in ruins, came as the junta again rejected calls to let foreign experts direct the massive relief effort for 2.5 million needy survivors.

The lawmakers said Bush should pursue the talks to determine the extent to which the United States could provide support for a "peaceful international humanitarian intervention and life saving humanitarian aid" to Cyclone Nargis victims amid "the military regime's intransigence."

The junta has insisted it can manage the catastrophe alone, despite urgent international pleas to open up their doors and avert a second wave of death among desperate victims short of food, water, shelter and medical care.

The generals have accepted hundreds of tonnes of relief supplies but have all but sealed off the disaster zone, keeping out most foreigners and insisting that the country can rebuild on its own.

Jean-Maurice Ripert, the French envoy to the United Nations, called on the world body Friday to take stronger action to persuade Myanmar to open up to foreign assistance, warning that hundreds of thousands more people could die.

He told reporters in New York that he appealed during a UN General Assembly session for the United Nations "to finally react strongly, very strongly" to the Myanmar military regime's defiance.

"Tens of thousands of lives have been lost, hundreds of thousands could be lost," he said.

The US State Department meanwhile said that four more US relief flights landed Friday in Myanmar, with two of the shipments handed over directly to international relief groups for the first time.

The United States is planning to send four to five relief flights for both Saturday and Sunday, the State Department said.

Myanmar People Forced to Beg

2008-05-16T13:53:00.000-07:00

KUNGYANGON, Myanmar, May 16 (Reuters) - The rows of beggars on either side of the road stretched for miles, twin columns of human misery left by the winds and waves of Cyclone Nargis.

Without clothes or shoes, the thousands of men, women and children made destitute by the cyclone could only stand in the mud and rain of the latest tropical downpour, their hands clasped together in supplication at the occasional passing aid vehicle.

Any car that did stop was mobbed by children, their grimy hands reaching through a window in search of bits of bread or a t-shirt.

The desperate entreaties expose the fragility of the claims by Myanmar’s military government to be on top of the distribution of emergency relief in the worst-hit Irrawaddy delta, where up to 2.5 million people are now clinging to survival.

They also make all the more questionable the reclusive junta’s refusal to admit large-scale foreign aid operations and the workers to run them.

That refusal is motivated by fear the operations might threaten the generals’ grip on power in a country that has known only military rule for the last 46 years, critics say.

Aid volunteers were shocked by the roadside scenes, which suggest conditions in the delta are deteriorating rapidly with what little rice and food that could be salvaged from the ruins of inundated villages now running out.

“The situation has worsened in just two days. There weren’t this many desperate people when we were last here,” one relief volunteer said.

In the storm-struck town of Kunyangon, around 100 (60 miles) southwest of the former capital, Yangon, the situation was little better, even though the former Burma’s military rulers have started distributing small amounts of emergency food there.

“I am one of the few survivors,” said one lady in her 60s, who did not want to be named. “I came here to ask for some rice.”

Her clothes — a grubby grey top and faded black longgyi, or sarong — are the same she wearing when the May 2 storm struck, sweeping away her home and possessions.

“I only survived by climbing a tree,” she said.

Around the town, the countryside remains a mess of half-submerged trees, snapped electricity pylons or bamboo poles — the skeletal remains of a house — leaning at crazy angles.

Villagers say they are slowly burying the bloated corpses of friends and relatives that have littered the rice fields for the last two weeks. But the stench of death remains.

PRIVATE AID

Frustrated by the speed of the official response, ordinary people were taking matters into their own hands, sending trucks and vans into the delta with clothes, biscuits, dried noodles, and rice provided by private companies and individuals.

“There are too many people. We just cannot give enough. How can the government act as if nothing happened?” said one volunteer, who declined to be named for fear of reprisals.

Some said pro-regime thugs were even harassing volunteers in the western suburbs of Yangon.

Soldiers at military checkpoints leading out of the city were seizing digital cameras from aid volunteers to try to stop news leaking out to the outside world, others said.

With almost total distrust of the government, private aid is being left in the care of Buddhist monasteries, to be distributed by the monkhood, whose immense moral authority makes it the only institution capable of standing up to the military.

Going through the roll-call of the needy is a grim task.

“We need to give aid to this family,” said one monk pointing to a list in a temple in one village.

“No,” another monk beside him interjected. “They’re all dead.” (Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Jerry Norton)

2008-05-16T13:43:00.001-07:00

BANGKOK — International relief agencies racing against the clock to bring food, medicine and supplies to thousands of Myanmar cyclone victims say a fresh storm headed toward the stricken region could further hamper aid efforts.

The smaller tempest was expected to hit the stricken Irrawaddy delta region early Friday, bringing more rain to the sodden disaster area, where thousands are homeless, missing and threatened by hunger and disease.

“If the second strong storm does hit them, it is the worst possible scenario imagined,” Joe Lowry, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent, told a news conference in Bangkok Thursday.

“It will affect more people. It will bring more water to it, an area that is already saturated. It won’t run off quickly. There is potential of outbreak of disease,” said Mr. Lowry, who recently returned from Rangoon, Myanmar’s largest city.

Vast swaths of the low-lying delta rice bowl, which is Myanmar’s bread basket, are now cut off from roads and supply routes. The May 2-3 cyclone, which brought raging winds and rain to the heavily populated region, forced thousands of residents from their homes.

More rain would make transportation of relief supplies by road, foot and boat more difficult, Mr. Lowry said, prompting survivors to pick up and move again to more distant dry areas.

Nearly two weeks after Cyclone Nargis tore through the region, supplies of food, medicine and temporary shelter have made it to the devastated areas only in dribs and drabs.

The most daunting challenge for international aid workers remains their inability to mount a full-scale relief effort. Myanmar’s notoriously secretive military government has refused to grant visas to most international relief workers. As a result, these groups still don’t have a clear picture of the scope of the disaster.

Myanmar is permitting aid shipments but won’t allow foreign workers to help distribute food and supplies, nor assess what is needed and where.

As a result, groups such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent must rely on local volunteers, whom they are now training.

Mr. Lowry praised the efforts of local people, whom he called “humanitarian heroes,” but it’s clear that confusion reigns though much of the disaster zone.

International aid groups still don’t have precise figures on how many are dead, homeless, missing or orphaned. Their numbers are based on estimates, extrapolated from second-hand accounts.

It’s believed that up to 200,000 may have been killed by the cyclone, according to estimates from the Red Cross and United Nations.

Paul Risley, a spokesman for the World Food Program, said the difference between the Myanmar relief effort and the response to the 2004 Asian tsunamis is “staggering.” For example, at Banda Aceh in Indonesia, one of the worst affected areas of the 2004 disaster, there were more aid workers on the ground within 24 hours than there are in Myanmar 15 days after the cyclone.

Meanwhile, Myanmarese exiles in Thailand say they doubt that Myanmar volunteer workers can be trusted to deliver aid to victims.

Khin Ohmar, a Burmese activist, said Myanmar relief volunteers are loyal first to the military regime.

“I’m not criticizing the International Red Cross, but I am saying that the Myanmar Red Cross is not capable of reacting to this crisis,” she said. “They aren’t trained to help people. They are trained to listen to the government.”

Ms. Ohmar said she’s also heard reports of refugees being pushed out of monasteries where thousands have sought shelter.

About 1,000 people who set up makeshift camps on the grounds of a monastery outside Rangoon have been ordered to leave, Agence-France Press reported Thursday.

It’s not clear why the order was issued, but monasteries were at the centre of protests against Myanmar’s military government last year, and the ruling generals fear the influence they may wield over people.

Separately, the junta announced an overwhelming vote in favour of an army-backed constitution in a referendum held after the cyclone despite calls for a delay in the light of the disaster.

Public health experts, meanwhile, say an outbreak of water-borne disease – namely cholera – threatens the overcrowded, makeshift refugee camps. Without clean water and preventative medicine, thousands more people, especially children, are at risk, said Josh Ruxin, an associate professor of public health at Columbia University.

“I suspect, first, the government has no idea how vast this disaster is; and second, has no clear idea how quickly the public health threat can spin out of control,” Prof. Ruxin said in a telephone interview from Rwanda, where he’s running a development project.

With a report from Reuters News Agency

S.E. Asian Governments to Pressure Junta

2008-05-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

As hold-ups continue in the supply of foreign aid to Myanmar, Asian leaders have been urged to pressure the country”’s military rulers into taking swift action to address a growing humanitarian catastrophe. Amnesty International believes that by deliberately blocking life-sustaining aid, the government of Myanmar may be violating the right of the population to life, food and health.

“Time is of the essence if lives are to be saved,” said Mika Kamae, chair of Amnesty International’s Asia Pacific Forum in Hong Kong.

Myanmar’s government claims that it needs no help in efficiently providing and distributing food and aid to victims, but UN agencies, independent observers, and international and local humanitarian workers speak with growing urgency of deteriorating conditions for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by Cyclone Nargis.

Myanmar’s government has not facilitated visas to expert aid workers. This is in stark contrast to the behaviour of fellow-ASEAN member Indonesia, which responded to the 2004 tsunami by cooperating with international efforts (including the US and other militaries).

Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific directors have called on the region’s governments to increase the pressure on the Myanmar authorities to receive and support massive international assistance required to protect the rights to life, food and health of the victims of Cyclone Nargis.

“The ASEAN countries, Japan, India, South Korea and China are best placed to influence the Myanmar authorities to lift the blockages and allow aid, expertise and materials to reach the millions now in need,” Kamae said.

It is now over a week since Cyclone Nargis devastated the Irrawaddy delta, killing tens of thousands and leaving over a million homeless, without essential food, shelter or healthcare and in need of instant relief assistance. The UN estimates that the number of affected people is between 1,200,000 and 1,900,000.

The official death toll has climbed to almost 32,000. However, as international relief agencies on the ground are reaching further into the devastated areas, the enormity of the crisis is becoming clearer. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Saturday the number of deaths could range from 63,000 to 100,000, and that 220,000 people are reported missing.

A UN flash appeal has attracted millions in government donations, and many disaster relief agencies are assembled on standby in Thailand. However, the Myanmar government is still impeding such life-saving assistance. It is slowing distribution and not waiving visa requirements, or else urgently issuing visas to foreign aid workers, including those from three international agencies it has approached for assistance; World Vision, JICA and UNICEF. Myanmar even observed a full 3-day holiday in its embassies while experts waited for visas.

Instead, in a briefing on 11 May, the Minister for National Planning and Economic Development U Soe Tha maintained that international relief workers were not required. He claimed: “Aids from any nations are accepted and delivery of relief goods can be handled by local organisations,” according to state-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar.

“The Myanmar authorities must also give complete priority to mobilizing their own resources for disaster response. Instead, considerable government resources were tied up conducting Saturday’s constitutional referendum, even in close proximity to the devastation. There can be no clearer message to the destitute about the priorities of those in power,” said Milabel Cristobal, Director of the Amnesty International Hong Kong section.

Children are particularly vulnerable to the after effects of natural disasters, as they are prey to malnutrition and communicable diseases. Myanmar’s failure to provide adequate aid to thousands of children could result in many preventable deaths. As a state party to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Myanmar authorities also have legal obligations to uphold their rights to life, adequate food and health “to the maximum extent of their available resources, and where needed within the framework of international co-operation”.