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Myanmar reopens schools 1 month after cyclone
UN warns of 'urgent work' to help Myanmar cyclone victims
Myanmar monks a vital lifeline for cyclone survivors
Save the Children launches a Burma Appeal
A Day in Loi Tailang
SHAN IDPs

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Myanmar reopens schools 1 month after cyclone
AP
1 hour, 20 minutes ago

One month after a cyclone left more than 130,000 people dead or missing, Myanmar's military government reopened many of the country's schools Monday despite worries that the extent of damage could put children in harm's way.

And although the military rulers pledge a speedy rehabilitation, demand and prices have soared for the material needed to rebuild homes. Many survivors say they have been forced to pick through the storm's rubble in search of anything left intact.

In Hlaingthayar Township, fisherman Ko Niang has managed to patch together a rickety lean-to from scavenged bamboo bits and soggy palm fronds.

He said he tried to borrow money from friends and family to build a new shack, "but there was no one to borrow it from. Everyone is in need."

Cyclone Nargis killed 78,000 people and left another 56,000 missing when it struck Myanmar on May 2-3. The military government was criticized for its response, with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying the government had acted with "criminal neglect."

Foreign aid workers say the regime in Myanmar, also known as Burma, is still dragging its feet on allowing quick and full access to survivors of the disaster.

"Access remains problematic both for logistic staff inside Burma to the delta and for staff trying to get in from the outside," said Lionel Rosenblatt, president emeritus of the U.S.-based Refugees International.

Myanmar Deputy Defense Minister Maj. Gen. Aye Myint said at a conference in Singapore that the government moved quickly to rescue and provide relief to the estimated 2.4 million survivors.

In its struggle to return to normalcy, the junta reopened many schools in areas hit by the cyclone in the Irrawaddy delta, though some were scheduled to reopen in July.

The United Nations Children's Fund said more than 4,000 schools serving 1.1 million children were damaged or destroyed by the storm and more than 100 teachers were killed. As a result, the government planned to train volunteer teachers and hold some classes in camps and other temporary sites, UNICEF said.

Anupama Rao Singh, UNICEF's regional director, said reopening schools in the delta "may be too ambitious," since construction materials were still on the way and there was not enough time to rebuild schools and train new teachers.

The Irrawaddy delta region also was Myanmar's center of production for Nipa palm, whose feathery leaves are woven into a low-cost thatch widely used for walls and roofing. The storm destroyed many of the palm plantations and prices have since tripled.

In Yaw Par Gyi, a village on the northern edges of Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, villagers were relying on a patchwork of old thatch, cardboard and blue tarpaulin handed out by monks at a nearby monastery to protect them from daily downpours.

One resident, 45-year-old Hla Kyi, is luckier than most. He still has a floor to sleep on, even though the storm plucked most of the thatch off his roof.

Hla Kyi's tiny dank hut houses his wife, four children and three other relatives. With so many mouths to feed, he said he is not able to put money aside for a new roof.

"It leaks all over when it rains, but what can we do?" said Hla Kyi, a day laborer who earns about $3 a day.

At least 35,000 homes were destroyed, according to an initial estimate by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, or IFRC. Thousands of other buildings will also have to be rebuilt, UNICEF has said.

Ma Myoe We, the owner of a construction material shop in Yangon, said a sheaf of 100 palm sheets, which used to sell for about $6.50 now goes for $17.50.

But she said she has run out of stock and has no idea when more will be delivered.

The price of sturdy bamboo poles, onto which the thatch is anchored, has nearly doubled from 70 cents per pole $1.20.

Ramesh Shrestha, who represents UNICEF in Myanmar, confirmed prices in the country have risen since the cyclone — not only for construction materials, but also for food, petrol and other essentials.

With bridges smashed and roads impassable, "the supply lines have been severed and nothing can get to market," said IFRC staffer Eelko Brouwer, who heads a group of international organizations and aid groups working to shelter storm victims.

Brouwer said that if thatch prices remain high, aid groups will consider importing palm from neighboring Bangladesh or Thailand in a bid to drive the cost down.

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UN warns of 'urgent work' to help Myanmar cyclone victims
AFP
by Hla Hla Htay1 hour, 44 minutes ago

A month after Myanmar's cyclone left 133,000 people dead or missing, the UN's food agency chief warned Monday that "urgent work" is needed to help hundreds of thousands of survivors stave off hunger.

The United Nations estimates that around 2.4 million people are in need of food, shelter, clean water or other humanitarian aid, with 60 percent yet to receive any help at all.

Myanmar's isolationist military regime -- deeply suspicious of the outside world -- has limited international help and restricted access for humanitarian workers to the hardest-hit parts of the Irrawaddy Delta, where whole villages were washed away in the storm.

Josette Sheeran, the World Food Programme chief who visited Myanmar at the weekend, said progress had been made in receiving visas for international aid workers, whose expertise is needed to oversee the complex relief operation.

But she said aid workers still faced bureaucratic hurdles in travelling to the delta, which suffered the brunt of Cyclone Nargis on May 2-3.

"What we need is a seamless global lifeline of relief supplies," Sheeran said Monday, after her visit.

"Progress has been made, but urgent work remains on the critical last leg."

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon wrapped up a visit here more than a week ago, saying that he had convinced junta leader Than Shwe to allow a full-scale foreign relief effort.

But aid agencies say access to the delta remains spotty, although more visas have been granted.

Myanmar flatly refused to accept help from US, British and French naval ships, which were laden with thousands of tonnes of supplies and helicopters to deliver them.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has accused the regime of "criminal neglect" for refusing their help, saying Myanmar's initial delays could have cost tens of thousands of lives.

"Unless the regime changes its approach, its policy, more people will die," he said after a weekend regional security forum in Singapore.

Malaysia's deputy prime minister Najib Razak urged the regime to allow military helicopters from neighbouring countries to deliver supplies, insisting such help would be purely humanitarian.

"We have proven time and time again that our involvement is strictly humanitarian in nature and there is no other agenda," he told the security forum.

Southeast Asian countries and the United Nations have formed a new coordinating body with junta officials in Yangon in a bid to clear obstacles to the relief effort.

Sheeran said she met with the head of the panel, Myanmar's deputy foreign minister Kyaw Thu, to urge him to do more to speed the relief effort.

So far, the WFP has dispatched enough food to give a first ration of rice to 575,000 people, but many people have not been reached and others are now due for a second ration, the agency said.

WFP says it is trying to reach a total of 663,000 people in the worst-hit parts of the delta.

In the former capital of Yangon , also pounded by the storm, the agency is providing 200,000 people with 50 cents a day so they can buy their own food in local markets, the statement said.

"WFP is committed to being resourceful and finding better ways to reach a large number of people who are struggling to put their lives back together," Sheeran said.

The project in Yangon "allows us to focus our food delivery efforts on the delta, where most food stocks have been destroyed and markets are not functioning properly," she added.

Some ordinary residents in Yangon are trying to deliver supplies on their own to hard-hit regions of the delta, and victims have lined the roadsides to beg for food.

"Stop, just a minute," said an old man named Maung, sitting on the outskirts of the city in tattered clothes and reaching to passing cars with his empty, gesturing as if to eat.

He sat with a young boy carrying a small bag with all that remains of their possessions, staring blankly into space.

"No one here, not even the junta seems to stop to help," he said.

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Myanmar monks a vital lifeline for cyclone survivors
AFP
Sun Jun 1, 12:50 PM ET

A Buddhist monk in his maroon robe silently guards boxes of noodles, while another monk tries to plot an aid route to cyclone survivors using satellite print-outs of Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta.

These monks at the Sitagu Buddhist monastery on the outskirts of Yangon are providing a vital lifeline to the storm survivors, as the United Nations estimated more than one million people have not received any international aid.

"I cry when they tell me their stories," said 71-year-old senior monk Nanissara.

"The situation remains very grim. The government news is just for show," he said, adding that government officials only receive "paper reports" from the the field and have never visited where aid was needed.

"Government figures are heavily edited," Nanissara said. He worries that the true death toll could be far higher than the government numbers of 133,000 dead or missing.

Myanmar's government "is not only materially, and physically poor, they are also mentally poor," he said.

Nanissara has received tonnes of aid from both private groups and foreign governments for distribution to survivors in the delta.

He has silently marshaled his loyal followers in missions across the region for weeks, reaching remote areas still unseen by foreign aid workers and where he said the ruling junta has not bothered to check.

One week ago, Myanmar offered assurances that foreign aid and relief workers would be able to enter the most devastated regions of the Irrawaddy.

But progress remains slow, and international frustration is again mounting at the pace of aid deliveries to 2.4 million cyclone victims who need food, shelter and medicine.

Nanissara said he knows of instances when foreign aid workers with truckloads of supplies were "restricted" and later told to head back. Other witnesses said they have seen the military distribute the aid among themselves.

Nanissara himself has just returned from Bogalay, one of the hardest-hit areas, where he supervised the distribution of 500 sacks of rice and more than 10,000 galvanised iron sheets for roofing.

With heavy rains pounding the delta, the monk said more deaths were possible.

"In my opinion, it is important to rebuild the houses now because the rains are very heavy," he said.

Volunteers have come to Sitagu from around the world, coordinating their work and fanning across the delta to deliver supplies and offer comfort to the grieving and shell-shocked populace.

One foreign monk volunteering here said that in Bogalay, he saw the military forcing hundreds of survivors to leave a school that had been converted into an evacuation camp.

"They were being relocated back to their villages, which remain submerged in water. So how are they expected to live like that?" he said. "And there are so many people that still need to be reached."

One month after the storm, countless human and animal remains lay uncollected, decaying in streams and rivers, he said.

Mar Mar, a 41-year-old Myanmar volunteer who has lived abroad for the past 20 years, said the outside world needs to rally aid to the impoverished country.

"I have been here for four weeks, and there has been no actual help from the government. Basically, we have had to do this on our own. We couldn't afford to just wait," she said.

"It is fair to say that many, many villages have not been reached. That is an undeniable fact," she said.

Mar Mar said she will stay as long as needed, and will continue to raise funds from her contacts privately, after handing over a 10,000-dollar check to the monastery.

The military, she said, should focus on helping rather than playing up a macho image of a tough government.

"This is very cruel," she said. "They are just returning the survivors to the villages now without any proper infrastructure or water or food."

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Save the Children launches a Burma Appeal

Save the Children has launched a global emergency appeal to help children and families after their homes were destroyed by Cyclone Nargis. The charity is already providing food, water purification tablets, plastic sheeting, kitchen equipment and rehydration salts to an initial 30,000 families whose homes have been destroyed. Trucks and boats and other logistical support are also needed to help distribute the materials. Read More

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A Day in Loi Tailang
The Shan People Live a Beautiful Culture which is being Driven to Extinction
By Antonio Graceffo

All over the village boys are fashioning bows from natural materials, preparing to compete in the big archery contest. Small children kick a Tagrow ball, a small hollow ball made of rattan. I pull out my camera, but the mothers quickly tell the children to hide their faces. Photographing people who are planning to live permanently at Loi Tailang is OK. But photographing civilians who plan to return to Burma is a No-no. If the photos get into the wrong hands, THEY, the SPDC, could find out that they have ties with the Shan State Army, and kill them. 

Just past the village square, we buy some treats at the SS Mart a convenience store chain, with three locations, conveniently located through out Loi Tailang. Each SS Mart proudly displays its colorful logo, with a Shan flag background. Perhaps you could be the first to open a franchise in your province. Walking along the main street, you won’t see the Cu Chi Tunnels, but the Shan have dug their own, less touristy tunnels and trenches as part of their defense system one more reminder that these kind, gentle people are living in a war zone.

There are about five restaurants in Loi Tailang, mostly serving noodles, which my translators Hsai Lern and Tun Yee love to eat. Some of the restaurants have my favorite, fried chicken. The boys know when I come to Loi Tailang they get to eat every time I do. They are always excited about eating noodles, it is a big treat for them. The normal Shan diet consists primarily of rice and soy bean. The Soy bean is sometimes ground and pressed into paddies, which are dried. These patties can be backed on a grill and used as a meat substitute. The other common source of protein is eggs. But not everyone can afford them. I let the guys order whatever they want.

In the school yard and in the various houses throughout the village, young people gather together to sing and play guitar. Singing clubs are easily the number one source of entertainment in Loi Tailang. Takraw is a close second. But nearly all Shan people sing well. They are the most musical people I have ever been around. When possible, the singing clubs like to hold a gin jot, a happy eating, when they all gather around mu gu taw, Thai barbecue. They sing and eat and drink beer, for hours, if they have the money. But for most of them this activity would be limited to Shan New Year when they get a small bonus from the Shan government.

On Shan New Year, every soldier was give 200 Thai Baht. That night, all of the restaurants were full. Some soldiers had looked forward to eating noodles for months. The next day, there were gin jots in many houses. The Shan are normally a happy, positive people to be around, but when they have meat and beer, and there are guitars close by, there is no group I would rather be with.

Beside a small house, we meet a woman making thatch for roofs. It was toward the end of the dry season, when people would begin re-thatching their roofs in preparation for the rains. The army provides the civilians with food, but there isn’t a lot of cash floating around. Making and selling thatch is one way that people can earn extra money. The woman, Bamat, was forty-three years old and had lived in Loi Tailang for five years, since the SPDC had driven her people from their village. Now, her husband, an SSA soldier, was in hospital at Loi Tailang. He had injured his hand on a landmine out on the front lines. She had three of her children living with her. The other two left home, seeking work. She has had no word of them and doesn’t know if they are in Shan State or in Thailand . She told us that in the rainy season, they had a farm to grow some crops, but during dry season, she could only raise animals. The bulk of her family’s food came from an NGO who supports the IDPs.

Most Shan would rather live free in their Shan State , but Bamat was not unhappy with her life in Loi Tailang. She was pleased that her children could attend the school on the base.

“It is safer here, and we have enough food. Back in Shan State , there was a school, but it cost money, so my children didn’t attend.” 

At another home, an amputees, fifty-one year-old Tong Sai looked like he was seventy. He told us his sad story, of how the SPDC forced him to walk ahead of the Burmese army, as a human landmine detector. They had stolen him from his village and forced him to work as a slave, an unpaid porter, carrying the army’s heavy equipment through the jungle. He was initially arrested because the SPDC accused him of having had contact with the SSA rebels. After four years, they took him out of the jail and forced him to work forced labor. 

“I was tortured frequently.” He told us. “We were fed a steady diet of soy bean and rice, twice a day. They forced us to work, digging by hand with no tools. And the beta us all the time.”

After he stepped on the landmine, the SPDC simply left him to slowly bleed to death. He spent six days, laying there, slowly dying, but luckily, he was found by an SSA patrol, who took him to Loi Tailang. In addition to tearing off one of his legs, the landmine had broken his remaining leg and one of his arms.

He showed us the massive, ghastly jagged scars on his elbow and his remaining leg.

“When I lay in the jungle, the insects were eating the flesh of my broken leg, and it never grew back.” 

His leg wasn’t enough. The SPDC took even more from him. “I had a family before, but I haven’t seen them for years.” Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to get a message to his family, so they think he is dead. He heard from others that his wife had remarried.
He didn’t have any information about his children. He shook his head and repeated. “They think I am dead.”

Tong Sai said he cant go back to Shan State . First of all, missing a leg, it would be impossible to walk so far. Even if he reached his village, the SPDC would arrest him, and probably torture and kill him.

“I will live here in safety till I die.”

He lives with another family now, and the children call him grandfather. He likes to come sit in the sun and watch all of the neighbor children playing football.  When they take a break from their play, the children all gather around their adopted grandfather, climbing on his back or on his lap.

Hsai Lern told me that most of the children probably don’t have a grandfather because their grandfathers were lost in the war, or lived far away in Shan State .

I handed out cookies and drinks to the children. There wasn’t enough for all of them, so they imnmediately began sharing.

A little girl offered half of a cookie to Tong Sai. The old man smiled a toothless grin.  The leg was missing, but his heart remained.  

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Antonio Graceffo has been embedded with the Shan State Army inside of Burma . This article is part of the “In Shanland” project. To raise awareness about the plight of the Shan people Antonio will release one print article and one video per week for a year. He is giving these media away for free to ensure that they will reach the largest audience. You can watch all of the Shan videos released to date on youtube.
http://ie.youtube.com/results ?search_query=antonio+graceffo+shan+state+army &search_type=&search=Search

Antonio is self-funded. If you wish to contribute to the “In Shanland” film project, you can do so through paypal, through the Burma page of his website.
http://speakingadventure.com/burma.htm

You can contact Antonio: Antonio@speakingadventure.com

Currently, Antonio is attending paramedic training in Manila , while waiting for word that he can return to Burma as part of a medical aid mission.

shan,state,army,burma,burmese,junta,war,rebel,shanland,antonio,graceffo,cyclone,myanmar

Checkout Antonio’s website http://speakingadventure.com/

Get Antonio’s books at amazon.com
The Monk from Brooklyn
Bikes, Boats, and Boxing Gloves
The Desert of Death on Three Wheels
Adventures in Formosa

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SHAN IDPs

While the SPDC junta wants $11 billions for reconstruction works  in the Irrawady Delta, the Thai Burma Border Consortium’s deputy director Sally Thompson is asking for only $140,000  to make up for the deficit in its budget.

And while Sally Thompson talks about reconsidering the system of assistance being provided by TBBC to the border Shan IDPs (internally displaced persons) are already feeling the pinch of the global food crisis and the cyclone Nargis.

Although Shan IDPs as a whole are not starving yet, many of them are already hungrier than others and the camp elders now have the insurmountable task of finding 125% more money to buy rice to feed the present number of IDPs.

According to Debbie Stothard from the Human Rights Group ALTSEAN, there are frequent reports in eastern Shan State of SPDC military units seizing food and supplies from the local Shan population since cyclone Nargis hit the Irrawaddy Delta.

More IDPs are expected to trickle into the existing camps in their search for security, shelter and food. They come there by themselves in small groups or units of the SSA lead them on their way from patrols. By the time they reach the safety of IDP camps most of them will have been on the road for weeks and months hiding in jungles from SPDC troops in the day and daring to trek only at night. The wretched souls have absolutely nothing except the clothes they have on, when they arrive.  Clothes, blankets, mosquito nets, pots and pans and rice are the first things they receive. A few days after they have rested they begin to build their own huts.

Already natural building materials like bamboo and thatch grass for roofing are not available in the immediate neighbourhood of the camps. They are now usually found in valleys as far away as two to three hours march. An able-bodied man can carry no more than a single bamboo pole, which weighs roughly 20-30 kilograms, at a time. Thatch grass has to be harvested and brought to camp in bundles. Cutting and bringing a bamboo pole or a bundle of thatch grass is a whole day’s exhausting work.

In three years termites make the huts unfit for living and the roofing begins to leak. The huts need to be rebuilt.

Since the new Thai Government took office at the beginning of the year bulldozers and graders have not been allowed to cross into Shan territory. We need them to carve out construction sites for huts and houses in the hills. Building materials like cement, sand, nails and iron rods, etc., etc. are not allowed to be brought across the border.  They are strategic materials.

Medics at the dispensaries and clinics care for the sick and the post- operative patients.  Thanks to HwF (Help without Frontiers) our clinic is fitted to take care of 30 in-patients. Although we do our best to provide adequate health care to the needy there are always a few who gripe at us.

Two months ago, Sita, one of our senior medics, delivered a set of twins. The mother, the twins and the midwife are doing well.

We intend to send Sita for formal training in midwifery at Dr. Cynthia’s hospital in Mae Sot soon.

Cases that require immediate specialist attention, surgical and difficult obstetrics cases, are referred to Thai hospitals. Each month we have 6,000 baht at our disposal for referral cases. Thanks to donation from HwF our clinic now has its own motorbike and the chief medic is able to go and see his patients in Thai hospitals. When they are discharged from hospital he gives his hosts the 6,000 baht he has and says, “This is all I have now. Please take them. I will come and settle the rest when I have more”. The longer our patients have to stay in hospitals the higher the bills.

The need for us to have a ‘guest house’ or ‘safe house’ is obvious. When the acute phase of the treatment in the hospital is over we can continue to take care of our referral cases in our ‘house’ with lower expense. We need funds for a small house with two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom.

Malnutrition, especially in the young, is omnipresent.

Treating and minimizing common skin diseases is difficult undertaking in the face of inadequate water supply and the lack of a second set of clothes to change into and bedclothes. World health officials talk about the urgent need for water purification systems in the Irrawaddy Delta. IDPs should and must have them too.

Now that the monsoon has set in common colds, chest and abdominal complaints and malaria are rampant.  If we had diagnostic kits we could easily diagnose AIDS/HIV and pulmonary TB and treat them.

Once a week we hold prenatal clinic. More and more pregnant women are attending it.
In family planning the use of condoms is not popular. It looks as if women have no say in the matter.

It is not a rare sight to see a mother with two small toddlers, one her own and the other her grandchild. Often I see a small child carrying an even younger sibling on her back and taking care of her while the parents are away picking tea leaves in the plantations.

Picking tea leaves is a family affair. Whole families work in the plantations the whole day. It is good money when they bring home 100 baht at sundown. There is always the potential danger of being exposed to pesticides in the plantations.

The plight of refugees and IDPs on the border falls into oblivion while donor nations of the world are appeasing and cajoling the Burmese junta to accept material aid and pledging financial help.

Shan refugees and IDPs are no less entitled to receive such aid. 

Let us not waste time classifying who are refugees and who IDPs and who is entitled to what. The Burmese junta has robbed all of them of their homes, land and means of self-sustaining and self-esteem. They are hungry, thirsty, exposed to the elements without proper shelter, vulnerable to abuse and exploitation on both sides of the border.

When the callous and brutal junta relents and allows UN and other international aid workers into the Irrawaddy Delta to render aid to the victims of the cyclone Nargis, in the name of equality and humanity, help should and must be made available to Shan refugees and IDPs.

Maw Htun

Links

Thailand Burma Border Consortium
http://www.tbbc.org/

ALTSEAN (Alternative Asean Network on Burma)
http://altsean.org/

Help without Frontiers
http://www.helpwithoutfrontiers.org/

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