On May 3rd the Tropical Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar, taking thousands of lives and leaving much of the coast including Irrawaddy Delta flooded. In the midst of this disaster is a greater tragedy, Myanmar's ruling junta’s refusal to allow foreign aid workers into the country. This has left most survivors living in miserable conditions without food or clean water. First, the state controlled media did nothing to warn residents of the incoming Cyclone, and with a continuing possibility of an additional cyclone continue to do nothing.
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. "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 few reporters and aid workers who have made it down to the Irrawaddy Delta continue to report heartbreaking scenes of hungry, homeless people who have lost everything and are now forced to wash and draw water from flooded plains where dead bodies are still floating.
The military, which has ruled since 1962, has taken control of most supplies sent by other countries, including
the United States, which began its third day of aid delivery today as five more giant C-130 transport planes headed to Myanmar with help. The directors of several relief organizations in Myanmar said Wednesday that some of the international aid arriving into the country for the victims of Cyclone Nargis had been stolen, diverted or warehoused by the country’s army. Marcel Wagner, country director of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, confirmed that aid was being diverted by the army. He said the issue would become an increasing problem, although he declined to give further details because of the sensitivity of the situation. The junta has barred all foreigners, including credentialed diplomats and aid workers, from accompanying any donated aid, tracking its distribution or following up on its delivery. Mr. Wagner said he and his agency’s foreign staff members were now barred from the Irrawaddy Delta, even to areas where the group has ongoing projects dating from before the storm. Fortunately, he said, he has Burmese staff are permitted come and go through an increasing number of military checkpoints. A number of countries have offered to bring in aid and deliver it from the south, by ship, but the junta has adamantly refused. One of the generals’ most enduring fears is a seaborne invasion by Western powers it refers to as “foreign saboteurs.” “These guys really believe we are planning an invasion,” Ms. Villarosa said. The United States said this week that several of its military ships were in the area and ready to provide help in Myanmar. “It’s nuts! We’re not! But if they hear that a large U.S. ship is off the coast, they don’t receive the message that it’s a genuine humanitarian effort,” she said. Myanmar has long been suspicious of the outside world, which the junta fears could bring in destabilizing ideas and values, such as Western concepts of democracy and human rights. The junta has brutally suppressed any sign of dissent. At least 31 people were killed when troops crushed monk-led pro-democracy protests last September.
Myanmar's ruling junta told visiting Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej that it is in control of the relief operations and doesn't need foreign experts. "They have their own team to cope with the situation," Samak said after returning from Yangon. Despite condemnation over its stance, Myanmar's military government tightened access to the cyclone disaster zone Wednesday, turning back foreigners and rejecting new pleas from Thailand's premier Samak Sundaravej. He said the junta gave him a "guarantee" that there was no starvation or disease outbreaks among survivors. In Yangon, Samak visited a government relief center. Yet Un They insisted they can take care of their people and their country. They can manage by themselves," he said after the meeting with Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein.
Such insisting falls on deaf ears as the international community remains unfooled by such blatant lies. A top European Union humanitarian official said there was now a risk of famine, after the May 3 storm destroyed rice stocks in a main farming region in one of the world's poorest and most isolated countries. As for Samak, it is quite evident that his history is similar to that of the heartless generals. Currently the Prime Minister of Thailand since January 2008, yet in 1968 Samak became head of the renegade right-wing faction of the Ruling Party. In the 1976 general election, he defeated Kukrit Pramoj and was made Deputy Interior Minister in the cabinet of Seni Pramoj. He quickly became prominent for arresting several left-wing activists. In 1992, as Deputy Prime Minister in the Suchinda administration, Samak justified the military's brutal suppression of pro-democracy demonstrators by declaring that the government had the right to do so as long as the United States could send troops to kill people in other countries, a reference to the Gulf War against Iraq and Saddam Hussein taking place from 2 August 1990 to 28 February 1991. He remains unrepentant and continues to stand by his justification, stating that the military was merely trying to restore law and order after the pro-democracy demonstrators, which he branded as "troublemakers", had resorted to "mob rule".
This Friday a Thai medical team will be the first foreign aid group allowed to work in the ravaged region. That’s 13 days after the disaster! The European Union's top aid official, Development Commissioner Louis Michel, said today he is not opposed to the idea of air-dropping aid in Myanmar but does not think it will work. Others have suggested unilateral air drops to circumvent the junta's restrictions. Red Cross warned that the death toll from Cyclone Nargis could be at least 68,833 and as high as 127,990 -- considerably higher than the government's official count of 34,273 dead. Un’s Ban has made several attempts to speak directly with General Than Shwe, Myanmar's military leader, UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said Myanmar's mission to the UN gave Ban two phone numbers to call and no one has ever answered those phones. Ban said the operation to help the Myanmar people was entering its "second stage", reflecting views that almost two weeks after the storm hit, it may already be too late for many sick and hungry victims who have got little aid from a government that insists it can manage the catastrophe alone.
Yet of course the government is willing to except money. Myanmar's government told the UN yesterday that at least $260 million will be needed for rice planting next month, replacing livestock destroyed by the cyclone and rebuilding the nation's fishing industry. Yet in the delta town of Labutta, where 80 percent of homes were destroyed, authorities were providing only one cup of rice per family per day, a European Commission aid official told Reuters. The United Nations appealed for $187 million in aid, even though it is still not confident the food, water and tents flown in will make it to those most in need because of the junta's reluctance to admit international relief workers. India and Thailand both have been satisfied with unloading their supplies at the airport and leaving them for the junta to distribute. The UN is balking at that kind of an arrangement and threatened Friday to suspend relief fights when a shipment of its energy biscuits was impounded by the military. It quickly backed down, but it is still trying to negotiate an agreement that will ensure the world community's aid goes to those who need it most.
The U.S. has repeatedly criticized Myanmar's military, which has ruled the nation since 1962, over its corrupt and oppressive rule. Bush said two days ago the world ``ought to be angry'' at the way the junta has delayed the relief effort. The US has made attempts in the past to stop the human atrocities that occur in Myanmar, but with little results. While impervious to Western economic sanctions, the generals have avoided total isolation by using Myanmar's vast natural gas reserves to befriend energy-hungry China and India.
Groups opposed to the Myanmar regime are calling for an international day of protest on Saturday. These troubles added on top of global rice prices skyrocketing (triggered in part by export restrictions in countries worried about food scarcity) will cause further hardships for the Myanmar people, prices are expected to remain high.
There was even talk for a a UN-led "invasion" of Myanmar -- to rescue a desperate population from its ruthless dictatorship. Can’t say congress would justify “Humanitarian justice” as reason for making our casus belli. Not that such a threat would put that government off its lunch. Undistracted by global cries of horror and outrage, the country's ruling generals prefer to watch their citizens die by the thousands, rather than open the border to foreign aid workers who are trained to save lives by distributing tons of urgently needed food, water and medicines in a disaster zone. But still the junta refuses to let aid shipments land from the United Nations or from numerous international relief agencies who refuse to turn their precious humanitarian shipments over to a corrupt regime. The notion of human rights is not in this government's policy book. While the number of avoidable deaths after the cyclone may be greater than any other atrocity in its closet, this week's events are nonetheless just the latest evidence of a repugnant regime.
France is set to deliver 1,500 tons of rice aid aboard the warship Mistral, which would arrive in Myanmar's waters in the middle of this week, the French foreign ministry said on Sunday. France wants the aid on the Mistral to be distributed either by the ship's crew, or by the staff of NGOs already on the ground, or by U.N. teams, a foreign ministry source said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told French newspaper Le Figaro on Saturday that France would not consider entrusting aid to the Myanmar authorities
Despite alarm bells from the international community about feeble cycle relief effort, the junta kept its focus on a weekend referendum on a new constitution, part of a "roadmap to democracy" culminating in multi-party elections in 2010. Myanmar's ruling junta, facing growing domestic and international pressure to ease its authoritarian rule, recently announced it will hold the constitutional referendum on May 10 as part of a "road map to democracy." Critics have said the charter is a sham designed to perpetuate military rule and to keep pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi from running for office.- Myanmar's generals diverted manpower from the cyclone aid effort Saturday to oversee a controversial referendum on a new constitution, while more than a million victims of the tragedy continued to wait for rescue. Myanmar's top general, Than Shwe, made his first public appearance since the cyclone, casting his ballot in the new capital of Nyapyidaw. State-run TV warned of "foreign interference" in a broadcast message urging people to vote yes for the constitution. Most people were expected to do just that. Of the 20 people Reuters interviewed near polling stations in Hlegu, only two admitted to voting no. Even then, it was in a whisper and with a nervous glance over the shoulder first. Critics say the referendum, which comes in the wake of the junta's grudging response to the devastation of Cyclone Nargis, only will serve to further cement the military's hold on power.
The referendum was the first vote of any kind in Myanmar since 1990, when Aung San Suu Kyi's National League to Democracy swept to victory in an election the general refused to honour. To the xenophobic regime, getting the vote out in areas not affected by the cyclone appeared as important as getting clean water, food and shelter to the 1.5 to two million of its citizens the United Nations now estimates were "severely affected”. Today Myanmar announced a 92 percent vote that keeps them in power (fake democracy). If the rulling Generals would take their foots of the necks of the people, the vote's to keep them would only be six, one for each general.
For a background on the distrust between the Burman government and countries in power, copy and paste the link in your Browser:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_Kingdom
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