2008-06-06 Burma News Summary
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ABC-Burma condemns foreign media reports
Rawstory-US military copters still ready to help Myanmar
Reliefweb-Burma aid still 'diverted by officials'
Financila Times-Concerns over UK aid allocation to Burma
VOA-UN Envoy Urges Burma to Explain Cyclone 'Prison Killings'
TIME-Burma: Than Shwe 'ordered troops to execute villagers'
FT-Burma arrests comedian critic of junta
Boston.com-Cruelty and silence in Burma
Irrawaddy-Cyclone Victims Migrating to Thailand
Irrawaddy-Rights Groups Report Post-Cyclone Abuses
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Burma condemns foreign media reports
2008-06-06-08 ABC radio Australia
More Burma Stories:
Burma comedian reportedly arrested
Burma junta turns back aid ships
Burma survivors still lacking assistance: Humanitarian groups
Burma's state-run media has strongly condemned foreign media reports of the devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis.
An article in the state daily, The New Light of Myanmar, accuses self-seekers of Faking video footage of the destruction and selling it to foreign media who have used it to harm Burma's image.
It says reports that survivors are living in dire conditions in the Irrawaddy Delta are exaggerated.
Some of the most shocking footage that has emerged from the storm-hit region has come from video shot by Burmese amateurs and circulated on DVDs.
Those who have seen it say the images are difficult to watch, with corpses rotting in fields and families huddled under makeshift shelters in the daily monsoon rains.
http://www.radioaus tralia.net. au/news/stories/ 200806/s2267984. htm?tab=latest
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US military copters still ready to help Myanmar
US military keeps helicopters ready to assist in Myanmar cyclone relief if junta changes mind
Staff
AP News
Rawstory.com, Jun 06, 2008 15:16 EST
The U.S. military said Friday it is keeping 22 helicopters on standby in case Myanmar's ruling junta reverses its rejection of such help for cyclone victims, saying the aircraft could ferry emergency supplies to most survivors within three days.
Myanmar's government, meanwhile, lashed out at its own citizens and foreign media for what it called distorted coverage of the aftermath of the devastating storm a month ago. It said the country's image had been tarnished by false claims that aid isn't getting to people.
U.N. officials and aid groups have criticized the regime for hindering aid work, which they say has kept enough food, water and shelter from reaching some 1 million desperate survivors.
The top U.N. humanitarian official, John Holmes, said in New York there are now "relatively few people" who have not received any sort of help, but he stressed that "this aid effort needs to be stepped up further."
"I think people are getting to all the main places, although it's not always as easy as it should be," Holmes said. "There's no evidence of starvation at the moment, although as I say many people are still in significant need of aid."
The new offer of U.S. military help came after four Navy ships loaded with helicopters and relief supplies sailed away Thursday from the coast of Myanmar, where they had been on station for three weeks in hope of getting permission to provide assistance.
Prospects that the offer would be accepted appeared slim, especially as Myanmar's military regime has begun exhibiting heightened sensitivity over foreign perceptions of the crisis.
The U.N. estimates a total of 2.4 million people were affected when Cyclone Nargis hit May 2-3, and warns that more than 1 million of those still need help, mostly in the hard-to-reach Irrawaddy delta.
"Of the 1 million or 1.5 million people in need of relief support, we think that between 450,000 to 750,000 are in emergency need," said Lt. Gen. John Goodman, commander of Marine Forces Pacific and head of the U.S. relief operation for Myanmar.
They could be reached "over the course of a three-day period" by American helicopters and landing craft, he said in telephone interview from a temporary U.S. staging area at Utapao, Thailand.
Goodman said the junta was "still considering" the offer, which would include allowing Myanmar officials aboard all U.S. helicopters to monitor their routes and to unload relief supplies.
The offer includes 10 helicopters aboard the USS Essex, an amphibious assault ship now steaming from Myanmar toward Thailand, and 12 more based at Utapao, said Lt. Col. Douglas Powell, a spokesman for what has been dubbed operation Caring Relief.
With only seven Myanmar government helicopters reportedly flying, relief supplies are mostly being transported along dirt roads and then by boat. International aid agencies say boats able to navigate the delta's canals are scarce and efforts to import vehicles have been hampered by government red tape.
Myanmar's military rulers have allowed Marine C-130 cargo planes to fly 116 missions to deliver more than 2.2 million pounds of aid to Yangon, the country's biggest city, Goodman said. But U.S. military units have been kept out of hard-to-reach areas in the devastated Irrawaddy delta.
The junta is particularly sensitive to letting in U.S. helicopters, which would highlight the American effort in a country where the people have been taught to see the U.S. as a hostile aggressor. Washington is a leading critic of the junta for its poor human rights record and failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government.
The military regime seems increasingly focused on its image.
Its public criticism of reporting on aid efforts came a day after authorities detained a popular comedian who had just returned from helping cyclone survivors and had said government aid was not reaching some victims.
Unconfirmed reports circulated Friday in Yangon that at least a dozen people involved in filming cyclone victims in the Irrawaddy delta have been arrested.
The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper, considered a mouthpiece for the junta, accused "self-seekers and unscrupulous elements" of working in collusion with foreigners to shoot videos with what its aid were made-up stories in storm-ravaged areas in the delta.
"Those foreign news agencies are issuing such groundless news stories with the intention of tarnishing the image of Myanmar and misleading the international community into believing that cyclone victims do not receive any assistance," the newspaper said.
Well-known comedian Maung Thura — whose stage name is Zarganar — was taken from his home in Yangon by police Wednesday night after going to the Irrawaddy delta to donate relief items to survivors, his family said.
A family member said Friday that they had heard nothing from Zarganar and the junta had given no reason for his detention.
"We stopped our cyclone relief activities yesterday, but we will have to resume our relief assistance tomorrow," the relative said.
Zarganar, 46, and his team had made video records of their relief activities and the comedian gave interviews critical of the government's relief effort to foreign media, including British Broadcasting Corp., whose news broadcasts are popular in Myanmar.
In an interview with the Thailand-based magazine Irrawaddy before his arrest, Zarganar said some areas in the delta had not been reached by the government or international aid groups. Zarganar said his group distributed food, blankets, mosquito nets and other aid.
Source: AP News
http://www.rawstory .com/news/ mochila/ US_ military_ copters_still_ ready_to_ _06062008. html
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Burma aid still 'diverted by officials'
Source: Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)
Relef Web-Date: 06 Jun 2008
BANGKOK—Burmese authorities are still preventing crucial relief supplies from getting to victims of Tropical Cyclone Nargis, which tore through the Irawaddy delta more than a month ago, according to healthcare workers and survivors on the ground, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports.
A nurse at a hospital in Day-da-yeh township, near the former capital Rangoon, said doctors, nurses and hospital staff were angry because officials had removed medicine from local and international donors.
‘They took away the medicines donated earlier, and that’s why the staff members are very upset,’ the nurse said. ‘These are medical staff members like nurses. Some even want to leave their jobs.’
International aid agencies and rights groups say many people in stricken areas still haven’t received any aid, and that the military regime continues to impose constraints on international rescue efforts.
U.S. Navy ships laden with relief supplies steamed away from Burma on June 5, their helicopters barred from delivering supplies by the ruling junta. The USS Essex group, which includes four ships, 22 helicopters and 5,000 U.S. military personnel, had waited off the Burmese coast for three weeks.
No clean water
The Day-da-yeh hospital nurse said large numbers of cyclone survivors still lacked access to clean water, and that diarrhea medicine was now in very short supply.
‘Now people are starting to have diarrhea,’ she told RFA's Burmese service. ‘Medicines arrive but not enough. Some medicines are not enough, like medicines for diarrhea that is likely to happen later.’
‘We don’t get enough oral medicines. We need medicines for stomach problems and diarrhea.’
She said an additional disease risk came from a lack of roofs and walls to protect people from mosquitoes, which are breeding rapidly in floodwaters, and that children especially were in danger of acquiring mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever.
‘Currently, there are large families with not enough blankets or mosquito nets. Mosquitoes are multiplying, so we’re concerned about that,’ she said.
Volunteer doctors, stolen timber
In some cyclone-hit areas, local Burmese donors and volunteer doctors are going to villages in remote areas close to the ocean shore to treat cyclone victims, residents said.
Residents of Tunte township, Rangoon Division, said local officials had sold a recent shipment of timber which was supposed to have been distributed free to people desperately needing to repair their houses.
‘At the government timber shop, there were 50 tons of timber for the cyclone victims in Tunte township,’ a woman resident of Tunte said. ‘U Maung Maung Ta, Tunte township chief...bought it from them for 70,000 kyat and sold it at a timber shop for 200,000.’
‘Victims went to U Aung Tha Zan, chairman of the township government, to get his signature so that they could get some timber to repair their houses destroyed by the cyclone. He said they hadn’t had a meeting yet and couldn’t give them timber for this reason...He yelled at people and sent them away,’ the woman said.
She also accused a ward-level official in Tunte of selling eight of the 30 bags of rice donated for cyclone victims.
A local man backed up her story. ‘The township government said they were going to distribute timber and zinc sheets only if one had the signature of the chairman of the township,’ he said.
‘However, when we went to the township government, they gave all kinds of excuses, and the chairman of the township didn’t give his signature and didn’t give us permission to buy the timber. But they were selling it to the authorities and merchants and brokers. The merchants and brokers then would sell it back at market rates in private shops,’ he said.
‘The cyclone victims have no zinc sheets or timber, so they put bamboo on their houses and use waterproof sheets for roofing. They can’t get any thatch either,’ he added.
Amnesty charges
A report by international human rights group Amnesty International released June 5 cited 40 accounts of Burmese government soldiers or local officials having confiscated, diverted, or otherwise misused aid intended for cyclone survivors.
Although the junta has granted greater access to the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta, ‘recent incidents of corruption and diversion of aid suggest a potentially serious threat to effective distribution of aid,’ the report said.
Most of the cases that were cited involved authorities confiscating aid from private donors or arresting them for refusing to hand the aid over. Amnesty also accused the authorities of forcing cyclone survivors to perform menial labor in exchange for food and stepped up a campaign to evict displaced citizens from aid shelters.
A major U.N. agency on Monday, however, caught junta officials trying to divert their aid after the officials insisted on accompanying the U.N. workers who were delivering it, Amnesty spokesman Benjamin Zawacki told a news conference in Bangkok. He declined to give additional details.
Local donors
Villagers from one small fishing village near the ocean said authorities hadn’t once visited their villages to provide aid since the storm hit on May 2-3, killing 78,000 people and leaving a further 56,000 missing.
‘It’s only the local donors who are coming and donating. We are so happy when they come to donate. We are willing to volunteer our labor and carry things, both old and young people,’ one resident said.
‘I’ve been carrying things since morning and haven’t gone to work. When people come to donate, we are so happy and grateful. We pray that they will become more and more prosperous and healthy.’
Self-help
Self-help programs are also springing up among the storm victims themselves.
One villager leading a movement to get clean water said that villagers were trying to recover the lakes for drinking water using water purifying substances given by local donors.
‘We get the medicine from the township,’ the village chief said. ‘Doctors come here, and sick people can go to them to be seen. It’s free. They don’t take money. Anyone can come.’
‘They’ve been coming here for two weeks already. They also came and put medicine in the lakes,’ he said. ‘Since flood water went into the two lakes on the other side, we had to drain them. We took out the mud and cleaned them. We changed the dirty water. We are working in groups, and each group has its own duty. We are all working on our own.’
Original reporting by Suu Mon and Aung Moe Myint for RFA’s Burmese service. Director: Nancy Shwe. Translated by Than Than Win. Written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.
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Concerns over UK aid allocation to Burma
By Andrew Jack
Financial Times-Published: June 6 2008 22:04 | Last updated: June 6 2008 22:04
The two British aid charities with the greatest direct presence in Burma appear likely to receive only a small portion of the £9m raised from the public in recent weeks to help the cyclone Nargis relief operations.
Merlin and Save the Children, which were among the very few international non-government organisations to have extensive operations in Burma before the cyclone hit, may receive only a tenth of the total donations distributed by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC).
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Burma arrests comedian critic of junta - Jun-06
In depth: Burma - Nov-15
Burma ‘needs food aid for a year’ - Jun-04
US hits at ‘neglect’ by Burmese junta - Jun-01
Cyclone-hit farmers in race against time - May-28
Analysis: Will foreign aid open doors for Burma? - May-29
Other groups, which do not have formal arrangements with the authorities and are only now sending in their own teams, are likely to receive larger sums in a distribution to be finalised in the next few days.
The split in funding raises questions over whether the British public’s donations will be spent in the swiftest and most effective way.
Decisions on the division among the DEC’s 13 member charities are linked to their spending in other disasters over the past three years. The committee pointed out that a number of its members worked indirectly via local partners.
In line with standard procedure, it said the split might be modified in three months if members had been unable to spend allocations, although organisations say aid is urgently needed over the next few weeks.
Burma’s military junta has sharply restricted foreign aid and access by expatriate staff, although it has begun to open its borders in recent days following a deal negotiated with the United Nations late last month.
However, a handful of international organisations long present in the country, which had won the respect of the regime, have proved able to provide rapid help and operate effectively with minimal interference from the authorities.
Merlin responded quickly because it had already been operating for three years in the Irrawaddy delta, the region hit worst by last month’s cyclone, following work linked to the 2004 tsunami catastrophe. It appears set to get only 3 per cent of the committee’s funding.
Save the Children’s office in Burma was the largest of all its international operations, and was able to shift staff quickly into the delta. It will receive about 7 per cent. Christian Aid, which said it would receive at least 8 per cent of donations, was not present directly, but said it had worked unofficially in Burma for 20 years through local NGOs.
Islamic Relief, which has never worked in Burma and has only just sent in specialists, said it expected to receive 4.1 per cent, although it might scale back demands after an assessment in the next few weeks.
Oxfam and Concern are considering waiving part of their usual proportion because they have less capacity in the country.
None of the charities would criticise the DEC system. Merlin said: “We will accept the DEC secretariat and member agency decisions on how any funds will be re-allocated.”
Brendan Gormley, DEC chief executive, said their formula – under which allocation not spent by one agency could be offered to others – had been “tested and improved over many appeals and many years”. There was confidence that it “gives us an equitable and appropriate mechanism”.
He added: “The alternative models would take longer, be more labour-intensive, costly and bureaucratic.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
http://www.ft. com/cms/s/ 0/1f277f76- 33e8-11dd- 869b-0000779fd2a c.html?nclick_ check=1
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UN Envoy Urges Burma to Explain Cyclone 'Prison Killings'
By VOA News
06 June 2008
A United Nations human rights envoy is urging Burma to investigate reports that soldiers killed a number of prison inmates during the cyclone that devastated much of the country last month.
Tomas Ojea Quintana, the U.N. Human Rights Council's new investigator for Burma, is calling on the military government Friday to respond to allegations that security troops shot and killed prisoners during the cyclone. He says Burmese authorities should conduct an open investigation to clarify the facts about the so-called "arbitrary killings."
A Thailand-based rights group says Burmese troops killed 36 prisoners and wounded many others last month in the town of Insein. The rights group says the soldiers opened fire after cyclone winds tore the roof off the prison and panicked the inmates.
Burmese officials deny there was any case where troops or security guards turned their weapons on prisoners.
Some information for this report provided by AP and Reuters.
http://www.voanews. com/english/ 2008-06-06- voa43.cfm? rss=asia
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Burma: Than Shwe 'ordered troops to execute villagers'
From The Times
June 7, 2008
General Than Shwe is referred to as the ’Great Father’
Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor
The leader of the Burmese junta, Than Shwe, personally ordered the murder of scores of unarmed villagers and Thai fishermen, according to a senior diplomat and military intelligence officer who defected to America.
Aung Lin Htut, formerly the deputy chief of mission at the Burmese Embassy in Washington, described to a radio station how 81 people, including women and children, were shot and buried on an isolated island after straying into a remote military zone in the southeast of the country in 1998.
After one general hesitated to kill the civilians, fearing that the commander who had given the order was drunk, he was informed that it came from “Aba Gyi” or “Great Father” – the term used to refer to Senior General Than Shwe, the head of the junta.
A few days later troops from the same military base captured a Thai fishing boat that had strayed close to Christie Island in the Mergui Archipelago. The 22 fishermen on board were also shot and buried on the island. “I was a witness to the two incidents in which a total of about 81 people were killed,” Mr Aung Lin Htut, formerly a major in military intelligence, told the Burmese language service of Voice of America. “All of them were unarmed civilians.” In 46 years of military rule in Burma, there have been numerous reports of grave human rights violations but few have been attested by so well placed a source as Mr Aung Lin Htut. They come at a time when General Than Shwe and his regime are coming under scrutiny, after their refusal to allow a full scale relief operation for the victims of Cyclone Nargis.
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The French Government has said that it comes close to being a “crime against humanity”, and last week Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, called it “criminal neglect”. If a tribunal like the ones established for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia is ever created for Burma, then Mr Aung Lin Htut will doubtless be called to give evidence.
He sought asylum in the US in 2005, along with six members of his family, after a purge against the country’s prime minister and intelligence chief of the time by General Than Shwe destroyed the careers of a generation of intelligence officers. Given the control of information in Burma, his account is impossible to verify. But it has credibility because it is the first time since his defection that Mr Aung Lin Htut has made any public comment on his former masters.
In May 1998 he was stationed on Zadetkyi island, a frontline base close to Burma’s maritime border with Thailand. The commander of the base was Colonel Zaw Min, who is now Minister for Electric Power and general secretary of the Union Solidarity and Development Association, the junta’s grassroots organisation.
A unit led by the colonel landed on Christie Island and found 59 people living there to gather wood and bamboo, in violation of Burmese law. The order came back from headquarters that they were to be “eliminated”.
Myint Swe, an air force general, said that he was a religious person, and that the matter should be handled delicately. He said that he was very concerned by the timing of the elimination order – just after lunch, a time when General Maung Aye, now the number two in the junta, was usually drunk.
When is enough finally enough!? What new crimes of the junta would justify intervention? Are they right now still within the bounds of being acceptably criminal? How many more lifes need to be destroyed? How many more children will never get a chance at a normal life? When will the world act???
Ron, Norway,
When is the international community going to have the guts to acknowledge that those in charge of Burma are either insane or in the grip of paranoid megalomania? Thousands of people have needlessly died. The ruling Junta is as guilty as Milosevic, and should all be tried for genocide.
Benjamin Griffiths, London,
http://www.timesonl ine.co.uk/ tol/news/ world/asia/ article4083370. ece
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Burma arrests comedian critic of junta
By Amy Kazmin in Bangkok
Published: June 6 2008 17:07 | Last updated: June 6 2008 17:07
In the weeks since cyclone Nargis battered the Irrawaddy delta, Burma’s most famous comedian, a dentist known by the stage name Zarganar, or “Tweezers”, spearheaded efforts by about 400 artists and intellectuals to collect and distribute food, mosquito nets, blankets and other supplies for destitute survivors.
Zarganar, known for his sharp jibes at Burma’s military rulers, also spoke publicly in stark terms about the inadequacy of the official cyclone relief effort, the physical difficulties and psychological trauma of the victims, and the appalling conditions in the delta.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
In depth: Burma - Nov-15
Burma ‘needs food aid for a year’ - Jun-04
US hits at ‘neglect’ by Burmese junta - Jun-01
Cyclone-hit farmers in race against time - May-28
Analysis: Will foreign aid open doors for Burma? - May-29
Suu Kyi detention extended - May-27
His was one of many spontaneous private initiatives by concerned Rangoon residents, including businesspeople, students, monks and journalists, that brought some help to displaced cyclone victims as United Nations agencies struggled against red tape to get international aid into the devastated region.
But Zarganar, a former political prisoner who was also imprisoned for three weeks during a Buddhist monk-led uprising last September, was taken into custody on Wednesday night by Burmese authorities, who insist that the relief phase of the emergency is over. The state-owned New Light of Myanmar newspaper lashed out this week at “unscrupulous” elements that it said were exaggerating problems in the delta.
Human rights groups say Zarganar’s detention and the effort to gloss over the extent of the disaster demonstrate the precedence Burma’s rulers are giving to political concerns at the expense of the welfare of the estimated 2.5m cyclone victims.
“By detaining him, it sends a message of real intimidation to people who the regime thinks could use the humanitarian disaster for political purposes,” said Benjamin Zawacki, a researcher with Amnesty International, the human rights advocacy organisation.
More than a month after the cyclone, more than 1m survivors have yet to receive any assistance as they try to rebuild their lives, the UN says. Even those in bigger towns and more accessible villages have received only “very basic assistance, which is inadequate and below minimum requirements” , according to the latest UN update on the disaster relief effort.
International aid organisations already working in Burma have had their local staff capacity stretched to the limit and are trying to expand rapidly, but other players, such as Oxfam, that are normally involved in large-scale disaster relief efforts globally are still struggling to secure clearance to work in the country in spite of the promise by Senior General Than Shwe, the powerful army chief, that they would have “unfettered access”.
“A disaster of this scale requires an enormous number of actors in the field,” said Guy Chase, deputy country director of Save the Children in Burma. “There is so much need. We are still reaching villages that have had almost nothing since the cyclone hit and that need food, water and shelter. There should be more people here with more stuff.”
Critics blame the insufficiency of the aid effort on the Burmese junta’s obsession with politics and security, which has underpinned virtually all its decisions since the crisis began.
“They have continually said that aid should not be politicised, but they have been politicising it since the get-go,” Mr Zawacki said. “The root cause of their response to the cyclone, which was obstruction, negligence, and a failure to deploy their own forces, is political.”
In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the regime deployed only a limited section of the armed forces to help, keeping its manpower instead for security elsewhere ahead of a controversial constitutional referendum held just a week after the disaster.
Amnesty says the regime has also been pushing cyclone survivors out of temporary shelters back towards their home villages as well as away from Buddhist monasteries, amid speculation that it does not want victims mingling too much with monks who were at the centre of anti-government demonstrations in September.
A 200-member team – led by the Association of South East Asian Nations and the UN – has begun a mission to assess the extent of the damage and the survivors’ needs.
Mental trauma worries add to cyclone relief concerns
International health workers say many of the survivors of cyclone Nargis in Burma are suffering from psychological trauma, adding to the difficulties they face in trying to rebuild their lives, write Amy Kazmin in Bangkok and Andrew Jack in Rangoon.
Kaz de Jong, a trauma specialist with the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières who has spent two weeks in the devastated Irrawaddy delta, said many survivors suffered sleeping problems, lacked energy and motivation, and were haunted by images of losing close family members.
“What I’ve seen is a lot of people who are very sad, very anxious and very afraid that the wind will blow away everything that’s left,” Mr de Jong told journalists in Bangkok. He said the charity had begun to train community volunteers to monitor the mental state of vulnerable elderly people and children and to advise on coping with stress and anxiety.
Mental health problems are one more concern for health workers treating large numbers of cyclone-related injuries, diarrhoea and respiratory infections among displaced people.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
http://www.ft. com/cms/s/ 0/2512b33a- 33e1-11dd- 869b-0000779fd2a c.html
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Cruelty and silence in Burma
Boston.com, June 6, 2008
MORE THAN a million victims of the May 2 cyclone in Burma are still without food, water, shelter, and medicine. Yet the ruling junta refused 15 requests to let the USS Essex and three support ships in the Bay of Bengal deliver aid to uprooted villagers. Finally, tragically, the four ships steamed away from Burma on Thursday, along with 22 helicopters and four amphibious landing craft that are ideally suited to bring relief supplies directly to stranded survivors. "Should the Burmese rulers have a change of heart and request our full assistance for their suffering people," Admiral Timothy Keating said, "we are prepared to help."
more stories like this
US Navy vessels leave Myanmar coast
US ships off Myanmar will leave the area
Myanmar junta praises U.N. aid
U.N., Myanmar put positive spin on cyclone aid
Burma's two catastrophes
Keating and his 5,000 sailors were eager to take on a mission of mercy, one that the American public would be sure to support and all of Asia would appreciate. What the admiral has learned - and what the rest of the world has witnessed in the past five weeks - is that the Burmese generals who deny life-saving succor to their people can have no change of heart. They are heartless.
This is the gist of a report this week from Amnesty International decrying the junta's forcible evictions of cyclone survivors from schools and monasteries where they had taken shelter. It is the basic message of a United Nations report lamenting "a serious lack of sufficient and sustained humanitarian assistance for the affected populations. "
The crucial lesson of these alarms is that today a million people in Burma are endangered not by the vagaries of nature but by the cruelty of a military dictatorship. In other words, the cause of all that unnecessary suffering is political. Nobody should know this better than the other nine countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Yet ASEAN officials speak blithely about issuing a report on relief and recovery - at a meeting more than two weeks from now. Enough dithering. ASEAN should use its influence to push the junta to stop letting Burma's people die.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston. com/bostonglobe/ editorial_ opinion/editoria ls/articles/ 2008/06/06/ cruelty_and_ silence_in_ burma/
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Cyclone Victims Migrating to Thailand
By SAW YAN NAING
Irrawaddy-Friday, June 6, 2008
“I came to Thailand because the situation back in the Irrawaddy delta was becoming critical,” said cyclone survivor Ma Win. “We had received no aid. My child was seriously sick and suffering from diarrhea. I was ill too; we only had boiled rice to eat for three days.”
As soon as he heard about the disaster, Ma Win’s husband left Thailand where he was working and headed home to Laputta to look for his wife and six-month-old son. They had survived the cyclone, but their house was destroyed. He immediately decided to take them back with him to Mae Sot on the Thai-Burmese border.
Cyclone survivors travel on a fishing boat from the cyclone devastated city of Bogalay, 125 km (78 miles) southwest of Rangoon in the Irrawaddy delta. (Photo: AP /Myanmar NGO Group)
They traveled for nearly two days by bus, truck and foot and had to pay soldiers 500 kyat (US $0.43) at each army checkpoint along the road to Mae Sot. They arrived on May 7. Ma Win and her baby are now receiving care and are regaining their strength.
Ma Win is among some 100 Burmese cyclone victims who have arrived recently in Mae Sot, which borders the Burmese town of Myawaddy.
Mahn Mahn, a team leader for the Backpack Health Worker Team, a medical relief group that has been assisting the new arrivals, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday: “The cyclone victims are arriving separately—nearly 100 people so far. Some are from the Irrawaddy delta and some are from Rangoon. If they didn’t lose their parents, they lost their sons or daughters.”
Among the cyclone victims who have arrived recently are orphans. Some are currently sheltering at the Mae La refugee camp, at Dr Cynthia’s Mae Tao clinic or in the Backpack office. Others are staying with relatives and friends in Mae Sot town, said sources.
“Some came here in the hope they would receive aid, said Mahn Mahn. “Most people have no plan. Some will stay here wherever they can. Others say they will look for jobs here in Mae Sot.”
The newcomers mostly came from disaster hard-hit regions such as Kungyangone and Hlaing Tharyar in Rangoon division and Laputta, Myaung Mya and Ngapudaw in the Irrawaddy delta, according to sources in Mae Sot.
Tin Shwe, who works at the Mae Tao clinic in Mae Sot, said that 49 new arrivals are now staying in the clinic and more refugees are expected.
Burmese social workers, such as Mar Mar Aye, are counseling the newcomers and providing some financial support.
Meanwhile, Thailand-based labor rights groups, Action Network for Migrants (Thailand) and the Mekong Migration Network, released a joint letter of appeal to the Thai government on June 4 saying requesting help for the cyclone victims while stressing: “The people of Burma will only migrate to Thailand if there is no other means of survival.”
Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Friday, Adisorn Kerdmongkol, from the Action Network for Migrants, said, “If the survivors and the farmers cannot cultivate their land, I think most of them will migrate to Thailand.”
The labor rights groups sent the joint letter of appeal to the Thai ministries of the interior, labor and social development and human security, calling for Thai authorities to allow Burmese migrants to return home to visit families who were affected by the cyclone, but then be allowed to return to Thailand.
The groups also urged the Thai government to ensure that the Burmese military authorities provide full protection to the cyclone victims in terms of shelter, food, medical care, reconstruction and restoration of livelihoods.
http://www.irrawadd y.org/highlight. php?art_id= 12548
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Rights Groups Report Post-Cyclone Abuses
By WAI MOE
Irrawaddy-Friday, June 6, 2008
Burmese and international human rights groups have accused Burma’s ruling junta of committing serious rights violations in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, heightening concerns that the regime’s refusal to allow an open and transparent international relief effort is endangering the safety of victims of the deadly storm.
In a statement released on Friday, the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma (AAPP) said that inmates of Rangoon’s Insein Prison were being forced to eat spoiled rice, even after the International Committee of the Red Cross replaced “moldy, foul and inedible rice” damaged by exposure to rain.
An aerial view of Rangoon’s Insein Prison. (Photo: Nic Dunlop)
AAPP said that a few days after prison authorities received the new rice, they reverted to using rice that had been stored in a warehouse when Cyclone Nargis ripped the roof off the building.
According to the group, the spoiled rice was causing intestinal problems such as diarrhea and dysentery, as well as other symptoms, including vomiting, dizziness, rashes and stomach swelling.
Meanwhile, leading international human rights advocacy group Amnesty International (AI) claimed on Thursday that the Burmese military junta has been misusing international aid and forcing cyclone victims out of emergency shelters.
In a report titled “Myanmar Briefing: Human rights concerns a month after Cyclone Nargis,” AI said that the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) began evicting homeless cyclone survivors from government and unofficial relief camps after it declared an end to the rescue and relief phase of its disaster response on May 20.
The report also details cases of local officials “obstructing or misusing aid.” Despite statements against such conduct by senior leaders, corruption continues to go unpunished, according to the report.
The group said that it had received over 40 reports or accounts of aid being confiscated by government officials, diverted or withheld instead of being handed to cyclone survivors.
AI’s Burma researcher, Benjamin Zawacki, told The Irrawaddy on Friday that the report aims to alert the donor community of ongoing human right abuses and “ideally, to ensure that they will stop.”
The main human rights concern after the cyclone was displacement in the affected areas, he said.
Zawacki also said that claims by the United Nations that its agencies had provided relief goods to one million survivors needed to be put into context.
“Even if it is correct that one million people have been reached, that simply means that they have received some formal assistance.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean that it has been comprehensive or sufficient. Some formal assistance—that could be a single bottle of water for a single person,” he said.
He also noted that more than 2.4 million were affected by the cyclone.
“So even if the UN’s one million figure is correct, that is still less than half of all the people who need to have assistance,” he said. “That is a really huge concern, as it shows that access to the Irrawady delta is still not what it should be.”
Zawacki described the arrest of Burmese comedian Maung Thura, also known as Zarganar, on Thursday as a “message of intimidation” directed at political activists.
“By detaining him, the SPDC is seeking to send the message that political dissidents and people who are politically active should not be involved,” the AI researcher said.
He added that by arresting Zarganar, the junta was contradicting an announcement it made on May 27, when it declared that individual donor were free to carry out relief work.
AI also published another Burma-related report on Thursday.
“Crimes against humanity in eastern Burma” deals with the Burmese army’s ongoing military offensive against ethnic Karen civilians.
The offensive, which began two years ago, has involved widespread and systematic violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, according to the report.
http://www.irrawadd y.org/article2. php?art_id= 12546
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Unless human rights safeguards are observed, tens of thousands of people [in Burma] remain at risk… Respect for human rights must be at the center of the relief effort.”
Amnesty International
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