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Myanmar denies delays to cyclone aid, as relief effort lags
UN: 1 million in Myanmar aren't getting basic aid
Myanmar denies delays to cyclone aid
Myanmar charter 'washes away' Suu Kyi victory: state media
A month on, sickness and sadness in Myanmar's neglected villages
Second wave economic crisis in Myanmar
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Myanmar denies delays to cyclone aid, as relief effort lags
AFP
by Hla Hla Htay 28 minutes ago

Myanmar denied Tuesday any delays to cyclone aid, but the United Nations said the operation to help 2.4 million survivors is still moving too slowly a month after the deadly storm.

Cyclone Nargis left 133,000 people dead or missing when it ploughed across Myanmar one month ago, laying waste to vital farmlands and wiping villages off the map.

For the first three weeks after the storm, Myanmar stonewalled international efforts to deliver aid, yielding only after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon paid a personal visit here to meet with junta leader Than Shwe.

Ban left Myanmar saying he had convinced the senior general to allow a full-scale relief effort, but 11 days later, UN agencies say access remains spotty, with only a handful of foreign aid workers actually in the worst-hit parts of the Irrawaddy Delta.

Sixty percent of the storm victims have not received any international help, many of them in remote villages inaccessible by land, according to the United Nations.

But the government mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar newspaper insisted that the recovery was on track, and that farmers were ploughing devastated fields that have been soaked in sea water and littered with human and animal corpses.

"Myanmar was able to successfully carry out the relief and rehabilitation operation in a short time although it was hit hard by the severe storm," it said.

"Relief supplies from abroad to be donated to the storm victims are flowing continuously to the country by planes," the paper said.

"The relief supplies team accepted the items at the airport and transported them to the storm-hit regions without delay."

Chris Kaye, the country chief for the World Food Programme, said the aid effort was improving, but warned more needs to be done.

"It's gathering pace, it's gathering momentum. It's not enough, it's still not enough," he told AFP.
"We know that we haven't been able to access all areas in terms of the way we would like, the way we would have done in another situation, but we're making progress," he said.

Highlighting the difficulties, the first WFP helicopter to arrive in Yangon on May 22 only made its first trip to the delta on Monday, spokesman Paul Risley said.

Nine other helicopters have spent days waiting in Thailand, expected to fly to Myanmar at the end of the week, but it remained unclear if they could actually go into the delta, he added.

Myanmar has created a task force with UN and Southeast Asian officials to clear obstacles to delivering aid.

But the Association of Southeast Asian Nations ( ASEAN ) said that its so-called "Emergency Rapid Assessment Team" deployed on Friday would take three weeks to prepare its initial report, and that complete findings might not be ready until mid-July.

AFP reporters who have entered the delta say that military and police continue to stage roadblocks throughout the region.

Many villages visited by AFP are still devastated, with people scavenging for food and struggling to stay dry under makeshift shelters in the monsoon rains.

Many of the villagers are farmers whose fields have been flooded with sea water. The animals they used for ploughing have drowned and their stocks of seeds and fertiliser destroyed.

But the New Light insisted Tuesday that farmers had already begun starting to plant the new rice crop, which must get into the ground before the end of June.

"Farmers of storm-hit regions are able to resume their agricultural work," the paper said, claiming that sea water had already been washed from the fields.

Experts warn that Myanmar faces food shortages or even famine if the new crop is not planted on time.

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UN: 1 million in Myanmar aren't getting basic aid
AP
By MICHAEL CASEY, Associated Press Writer 31 minutes ago

More than 1 million people still don't have adequate food, water or shelter a month after a devastating cyclone swept through Myanmar, and it's not clear what the military junta is doing to help them, the United Nations said Tuesday.

Humanitarian groups say they continue to face hurdles from Myanmar's military government in sending disaster experts and vital equipment into the country. As a result, only a trickle of aid is reaching the storm's estimated 2.4 million survivors, leaving many without even basic relief.

Aid groups are unable to provide 1.3 million survivors with sufficient food and clean water, while trying to prevent a second wave of deaths from malnutrition and disease, the U.N. said in its latest assessment report.

Of the 1 million people who are getting help, most have been "reached with inconsistent levels of assistance," the U.N. said.

"There remains a serious lack of sufficient and sustained humanitarian assistance for the affected populations," the report said.

It also said the world body lacked "a clear understanding of the support being provided by the Government of Myanmar to its people."

It's shocking that cyclone victims still need basic relief after four weeks, said Sarah Ireland, regional director of the British aid organization Oxfam, which is trying to get permission to work in Myanmar.

"If we were in a normal response by week four, those affected should be working toward recovery," she said Monday. "They would be in a position perhaps to think about what they need to restart their lives. But we know people on the ground don't have food to eat."

Tidal surges as high as 12 feet reached some 25 miles inland as the cyclone churned through the country for two days beginning May 2. The storm laid entire villages in the Irrawaddy delta to waste and left 78,000 people dead and another 56,000 missing, according to the government's count.

But the relief has yet to match the scale of the disaster.

A big obstacle in providing relief has been reaching the delta. With only seven government helicopters operating, most relief supplies are being transported along dirt roads and by boat. Vessels able to navigate the debris-filled canals are scarce and efforts to import trucks and other vehicles have been hampered by governmental red tape.

"For aid agencies it is very important that those affected receive a full complement of appropriate aid," said James East, a spokesman for World Vision, a private aid agency operating in Myanmar even before the disaster. "To say that a certain percentage of people have received aid means little because some survivors may have received a tarpaulin but no food and vice versa."

Stories have emerged of survivors going days without food or being forced to drink from dirty canals. The Associated Press has interviewed survivors in recent days who still have not received any government or international assistance and turned to the country's revered monks for help.

Human rights groups have also accused Myanmar's military rulers of kicking homeless cyclone survivors out of camps, schools and monasteries and sending them back to their devastated villages to help restore the country's agriculture sector.

"It's unconscionable for Burma's generals to force cyclone victims back to their devastated homes," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Claiming a 'return to normalcy' is no basis for returning people to greater misery and possible death."

Myanmar's xenophobic military regime left survivors to largely fend for themselves. It barred foreigners from the delta until last week and refused entry to U.S. and French aid-laden naval vessels, which have been idling off the country's coast.

The junta's response was in stark contrast to that of Indonesia's Aceh province during the 2004 tsunami and Pakistan during its 2005 earthquake. Both countries allowed in hundreds of international aid groups and set aside their suspicions to let American troops ferry aid and evacuate survivors from remote areas.

The lack of foreign experts in the field has meant a chaotic and uneven aid effort, aid organizations said. Without them, it is nearly impossible to asses needs of survivors or set up systems that would now be in place in a normal disaster response, the groups said.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is still waiting for government approval to send six foreign experts into the field to help run its water treatment facilities. Until now, it has been able to provide only 5,000 people each day with clean water.

"It was much easier to get medical supplies, clean water, engineers and psychological consultants into the field in Aceh within the first month," IFRC spokesman France Hurtubise said. "Human resources and expertise remain a challenge in Myanmar."

One small sign of progress was registered Monday: except in the areas most devastated by the cyclone, most schools opened as scheduled at the end of a break that started in March.

In many cases, school buildings were still missing windows and parts of their roofs gone, but UNICEF and other education experts agreed that getting children back to their studies as soon as possible was an important part of the healing process.

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Myanmar denies delays to cyclone aid
AFP
43 minutes ago

Myanmar insisted Tuesday that cyclone aid was being delivered "without delay," even though the United Nations says more than one million people have yet to receive any help, one month after the storm.

The government mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar painted a rosy picture of the effort to aid 2.4 million people badly in need of food, shelter and medicine.

The United Nations says 60 percent of them have not received any aid.

"Relief supplies from abroad to be donated to the storm victims are flowing continuously to the country by planes," the paper said.

"The relief supplies team accepted the items at the airport and transported them to the storm-hit regions without delay."

"Myanmar was able to successfully carry out the relief and rehabilitation operation in a short time although it was hit hard by the severe storm," it added.

On the ground, the United Nations says more than one million people are still waiting for aid after the May 2-3 storm that left 133,000 dead or missing.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met personally with junta leader Than Shwe on May 23, and said he had convinced the senior general to allow foreign aid workers full access to the most devastated regions of the Irrawaddy Delta.

Eleven days later, however, aid agencies say that access remains patchy and security forces have maintained roadblocks throughout the cyclone zone, allowing in only a handful of foreign aid workers.

AFP reporters who have slipped past the security checks say that many villages are still devastated , with people scavenging for food and struggling to stay dry under makeshift shelters in the monsoon rains.

Many of the villagers are farmers whose fields have been flooded with sea water. The animals they used for ploughing have drowned and their stocks of seeds and fertiliser destroyed.

But the New Light insisted Tuesday that farmers had already begun starting to plant the new rice crop, which must get into the ground before the end of June.

"Farmers of storm-hit regions are able to resume their agricultural work," the paper said, claiming that sea water had already been washed from the fields.

Experts warn that Myanmar faces food shortages or even famine if the new crop is not planted on time.

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Myanmar charter 'washes away' Suu Kyi victory: state media
AFP
2 hours, 52 minutes ago

A referendum approving a new military-backed constitution for Myanmar has "washed away" the victory claimed by Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party in 1990 elections, state media said Tuesday.

Her National League for Democracy won by a landslide 18 years ago, but the military never recognised the result and has kept the Nobel peace prize winner under house arrest for most of the years since then.

The government mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar said Tuesday that the NLD's election mandate was "outdated" after the constitution was approved last month in a controversial referendum -- held while the impoverished nation was still reeling from the devastating effects of Cyclone Nargis.

"What will those who claimed themselves to have the mandate of the people according to the 1990 election results have to do? Will they have to throw the mandate down the drain?" the English-language paper asked.

"Now, their hope was washed away along the current of the vote of the people," it added.

The paper, which did not refer to Aung San Suu Kyi or the NLD by name, said the party would now have to seek a new election mandate in polls promised for 2010.

"If they want to have the mandate of the people in the new nation with the new system, they should stand for election in accordance with the rules and regulations" and display a sense of discipline and democracy, it added.

The NLD has rejected the result of the referendum, which Myanmar claims was approved by more than 92 percent of voters on a 98 percent turnout.

The party condemned the junta for holding the vote instead of focusing on the humanitarian crisis, and accused officials of rigging the outcome.

The cyclone left 133,000 dead or missing when it pounded the country on May 2-3, flooding entire villages and devastating the Irrawaddy Delta.

But the newspaper dismissed "the complaints of those who cling on to the outdated mandate," and warned that they should not "build castles in the air while ignoring the prevailing situations."

Myanmar says the constitution will clear the way for democratic elections, but the NLD insists it will merely enshrine military rule.

The new charter bans Aung San Suu Kyi from holding elected office, while reserving one quarter of the seats in parliament for serving soldiers.

The junta has come under fierce international pressure for its response to the cyclone, notably for sweeping restrictions on foreign aid designed to help some 2.4 million people the United Nations says are in dire need of shelter, food and medicine.

UN officials estimate 60 percent of them still have not received any help.

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A month on, sickness and sadness in Myanmar's neglected villages
AFP
Tue Jun 3, 12:37 AM ET

The Irrawaddy delta bore the brunt when Cyclone Nargis struck on May 2 and 3, instantly killing more than 20 people in Angu village, while dozens of villagers have since fallen ill with coughs, colds and diarrhoea as vital aid fails to reach the survivors.

Nearly all the 700 villagers of Angu, a farming and fishing community, are in a state of shock, many of them just staring blankly into nothing or lying motionless in makeshift tents which they share with farm animals and pets.

Khin Hle sits motionless under the shade of her once-happy two-storey home, which was reduced to a shell of broken wooden frames when Cyclone Nargis hit one month ago.

She is eagerly anticipating when the next rains might come so she can have clean water for her three young grandchildren to drink, while around her fellow villagers succumb to sickness, and occasionally to death.

For food, the children are sharing three packets of dried sunflower seeds, their only meal until their father returns from across the swollen Mhaw Win river which he has been criss-crossing using a rickety boat in search of elusive aid for nearly three weeks now.

"We have no money. We have no food, no water, no shelter. Just a portion of this house that will also soon fall down," 61-year-old Khin told AFP.

"I have not heard the children laugh" in weeks, she said, looking at the thick mud that coats much of Angu, one of many small hamlets and villages on the network of river channels that snake out of the Irrawaddy Delta.

The ruling junta has said more than 133,000 people died or went missing in the cyclone. Aid agencies say 2.4 million people are in need of food, medicine and shelter, and many live in tents or along the roadside.

The United Nations estimates that about 60 percent of them still have no foreign aid, and despite some easing of restrictions, the junta is under fire for its continued hampering of the flow of supplies to the worst-hit delta region.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned at the weekend that unless the military regime changed its approach, more people would die.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders has said that people are increasingly at risk of respiratory diseases as the monsoon rains arrive.

Khin said the villagers tried to cross the river for the nearest port town to seek official help, with little luck.

Despite boasts from the junta that it has been systematically sending aid to desperate survivors "no one has come to help us," Khin said, the cracked and calloused skin on her bare feet caked in drying mud.

"My son has been looking for food for a long time. The government has told us to wait. But people are sick," she said.

Nearby, farmer Hla Tang, 55, gathered scrap wood for a night fire. His cancer-stricken wife died at the height of Nargis, and her remains were washed away by the floodwaters.

His five children have been feverish and he has no access to any medication.

"We have been left out on our own," he said, as a small group gathered around him to help salvage what they can from the village's only rice mill.

Khin said villagers who made it to refugee camps were later told to return under threat of being arrested.

Provisions given by private donors shortly after the cyclone struck are already gone. Only Khin's packets of sunflower seeds remain.

The government, through its newspaper the New Light of Myanmar, has said that volunteers may make "donations freely" to any person or any area, and insisted international relief supplies are arriving, including tonnes of tents, medicines, food and blankets.

Few of these items, however, have made it to villages, where survivors still live among rotting human remains and animal carcasses.

"This is inhumane. Why are our people being made to live this?" said Thin, a Myanmar volunteer providing aid to the stricken.

"The Irrawaddy has for generations been the lifeblood of this country and villages there have provided us with food, why are the survivors now being made to suffer?"

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Second wave economic crisis in Myanmar
By Larry Jagan
Asia Times Online

BANGKOK - While Myanmar counts the cost of the Cyclone Nargis disaster and international aid agencies struggle to get relief supplies to an estimated 2.4 million homeless and desperate victims, time is running out for the country's rice farmers to plant new crops and help the country stave off famine.

If seeds are not sewn within the next 30 days in the worst-hit Irrawaddy Delta - Myanmar's rice bowl - rice production will be dangerously reduced, United Nations food and agriculture specialists warn. Meanwhile, analysts specializing in Myanmar's economy say that other food sectors have also been decimated, raising the risk of food shortages at a time the ruling military junta for political purposes continues to obstruct aid shipments and distribution.

Myanmar's economy was already one of Asia's worst performers, due to decades of economic mismanagement by successive military-run governments. After the cyclone disaster, the risk is rising of a full-blown economic collapse, some contend. "The damage to the economy is serious indeed, both in the short and longer term," said Sean Turnell, a specialist on Myanmar's economy at Macquarie University in Australia. "Rice and agriculture is only part of the picture," he said.

Agricultural experts warn that the cyclone disaster could soon shift the country from being a net rice exporter to importer, which will put new pressures on the country's already strained balance of payments. One week after the cyclone hit and the extent of the devastation was not yet known, Myanmar continued to export rice. Because of the damage "food stores have been lost, seeds have been destroyed, and other assets needed have all been swept away", said Diderik de Vleeschauwer, a spokesman for the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

"Farmers have until the end of June to replant their seedlings, otherwise food production will be sorely reduced," he said. "In the lower [Irrawaddy] Delta, they just do not have the capital to replace the seeds, livestock and tools needed to start replanting rice in the next few months."

The usual planting season starts now in the Irrawaddy Delta, which usually produces as much as two-thirds of Myanmar's annual rice crop. About a quarter of the rice paddy in this area is still flooded with salty sea water carried inland by the cyclone and is littered with decaying animal carcasses and human corpses, which experts say will have to be cleared before planting can begin.

Meanwhile, irrigation channels need to be repaired, paddy walls restored and water pumps replaced to restore what was already an extremely low level of production efficiency, say food and agriculture experts. More than half of the delta's livestock, much of which was used for plowing, reportedly perished in the storm or has since starved.

"This is going to prove a very high opportunity cost for the government in the coming months, particularly given the present and likely future international demand and high prices for rice," said Turnell.

As relief efforts focus primarily on saving human lives, so far little if any agricultural rehabilitation has taken place. "They've got to put their houses back together first," said Paul Risely, a regional spokesman for the UN-affiliated World Food Program (WFP). "Even then the farmers will need to be supported with food supplies until their crops are harvested." The WFP expects to have food-for-work programs in place in the delta area for at least the next six months.

Even if a limited amount of rice is planted this year, the quality and yield is likely to be severely reduced, experts say. "We can certainly count on very meager crops for an indefinite future. The next two harvests will be greatly affected," said Turnell. "Before the cyclone this area was performing way below potential, mainly because of the regime's willful neglect and terrible policies towards agriculture."

Forced rehabilitation

Now there is a risk the military regime aggravates the humanitarian and economic crisis by forcing farmers prematurely back onto their land. UN officials warned the government on Friday that the forced resettlement of thousands of victims could launch a second wave of deaths, through disease outbreaks and deprivation in areas that lack proper drinking water and food supplies.

Myanmar-based aid workers and relief volunteers who had worked in the delta areas in recent weeks doubt that many rice farmers will be able to plant their monsoon crops on time - despite the government's forced resettlement policies.

"They are more concerned about surviving and getting food for their families than returning to their farms," said a Thai volunteer, who has just spent a week in the worst-affected areas of the delta. "Everywhere outside the towns, the fields and waterways were full of rotting animal carcasses and bloated bodies."

Other food sectors have similarly been affected, including the crucial fishing industry, which was largely based in the delta area. More than half of the fishing industry has been wiped out by the cyclone, according to a government official in the Agriculture Ministry. More than 20,000 fishermen are reportedly dead and another 6,000 are missing in the delta, he estimated.

Most of the country's fishing fleet has been destroyed or is missing, according to local government officials. There were an estimated 26,000 small- and 2,000 medium-sized fishing vessels that operated off-shore before the cyclone hit, according to official statistics. Meanwhile thousands of fish ponds, which helped supplement farmers' food and incomes, have also been rendered useless by the salt water.

Many of the shrimp and prawn farms near Yangon and in the Irrawaddy Delta have been destroyed or badly damaged by the cyclone, a businessman involved in the export of prawns to Thailand said on condition of anonymity. "The cyclone is likely to have reduced this to a fraction of last year's output and will severely dent the country's export trade," said the Burmese fisheries exporter.

Marine fisheries in the area produce more than half of the country's fish supply, while coastal aquaculture, including shrimp, crab and grouper farms, accounts for nearly 20% of production. Both of these sectors generated significant export earnings in recent years and represented one of the few viable growth industries in the country.

The Myanmar government on May 25 requested US$11.7 billion from international donors for purposes of reconstruction and rehabilitation. So far, it's not clear the international community is willing to foot that huge bill. The junta's request included an estimated $243 million to restore the rice industry and an additional $25 million to replace livestock production. The rehabilitation bill for the fishing industry, if fully restored, will be much higher, experts say.

All told, the economic impact of the cyclone disaster could prove to be even more devastating than the loss of lives, officially estimated now at around 133,000, though some estimate that figure much higher. The cyclone will compound the country's already deep economic woes and put further pressure on government coffers.

"Imports of basic commodities and foodstuffs, all at very high international prices, will certainly increase and exports will fall dramatically, especially from the fisheries sector, putting increased pressure on the country's foreign exchange reserves," said Turnell.

While energy exports, including to Thailand, India and China, are expected to be unaffected by the cyclone disaster, the revenues they previously provided for government coffers will in future be swallowed up by the cost of rehabilitation-related imports, he said. Expensive imports will inevitably add inflationary pressures to a dire humanitarian crisis, raising the economic risk of more human suffering in the months ahead.

Larry Jagan previously covered Myanmar politics for the British Broadcasting Corp. He is currently a freelance journalist based in Bangkok.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JF03Ae01.html

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Audio
U.N. Chief Urges Myanmar to Allow Cyclone Aid : NPR at NPR - Thu, May 22, 2008
Need for Clean, Fresh Water Urgent in Myanmar at NPR - Fri, May 16, 2008
Photographer Feels Weight of His Myanmar Images at NPR - Fri, May 16, 2008
» More Audio

Video
Burma 'camp closures' condemned BBC via Yahoo! News - Sun, Jun 01, 2008
Cyclone exposes Myanmar generals' isolation AFP via Yahoo! News - Fri, May 30, 2008
Mental scars run deep in cyclone survivors AFP via Yahoo! News - Wed, May 28, 2008

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