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Myanmar cyclone tourism sector reels after cyclone
FBR: Burma Army Attacking and Displacing over 1,000 Karen People
Myanmar denies evictions from cyclone relief camps
Myanmar tightens security but denies evicting cyclone victims
Red Cross: Myanmar dead may never be identified
Myanmar tourism sector reels after cyclone

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Myanmar cyclone tourism sector reels after cyclone
AP
7 June 2008

When a taxi carrying two Westerners pulled up this past week at the Shwe Sin hotel in Myanmar's cyclone-stricken Irrawaddy delta region, cheers rang out from local residents and workers.

The two were congratulated for being the first foreigners to set foot at the Chaung Tha beach resort since Cyclone Nargis slammed ashore last month, wiping entire villages off the map and killing an estimated 78,000 people.

The disaster, and the military government's "stay-away" attitude toward foreign aid workers and reporters, has scared off tourists, adding to the area's woes.

Residents of Chaung Tha — perched on the western side of the delta, more than 60 miles from the eye of the storm — say no one there was killed or injured and that the hotels were undamaged.

But the fishing village-turned-vacation spot is reeling from the economic fallout of the May 2-3 storm.

"Being in this sector now is like being dead," said Ko Tin Oo, assistant manager of the Shwe Sin hotel. "Now, only the pawn shops are doing good business."

Without a single foreign guest for more than a month, the 37-year-old father of one said he had to pawn some of his wife's jewelry to make ends meet.

He blamed Myanmar's military government as much as the cruel vagaries of nature.

Seeking to keep prying foreign eyes away from the disaster's aftermath, Myanmar's embassies have been vetting visa applications with a skeptical eye, making it difficult for would-be tourists to gain entry.

Military checkpoints around the main city, Yangon, have kept unauthorized foreigners from entering the delta since the storm.

"How can foreign people come to Myanmar, even if they're brave enough?" asked Ko Tin Oo.

Statistics on international arrivals for May were not yet available, but Oliver Martin of the Pacific Asia Travel Association, PATA, said a "substantial decrease" was expected.

Maarten Groeneveld of the Bangkok, Thailand, branch of Diethelm Travel Asia agency said new reservations for Myanmar have stopped and many existing bookings were canceled.

Any upswing would depend on "how quickly the current relief effort bears fruit and reinstates some sort of confidence internationally," Groeneveld said in an e-mail.

Though the military government has strived in recent years to promote the country as a vacation destination, Myanmar's underdeveloped infrastructure and dismal human rights record have made it a hard sell.

Its tourism sector is minuscule compared to that of neighboring countries. In 2007, Myanmar received 248,000 international travelers compared to nearly 14.5 million in Thailand, according to PATA, which represents some 1,000 travel agents, airlines and other enterprises.

Last year was on track to be a record one for Myanmar tourism until a bloody military crackdown on pro-democracy campaigners in September scared travelers away. The crackdown — in which at least 31 people were killed — also revived calls for a boycott of travel to Myanmar.

Supporters of a boycott contend tourist dollars fatten the generals' coffers. But opponents argue that tourism benefits Myanmar's poor and promotes democratic ideals by exposing citizens of this isolated and tightly controlled country to outside ideas.

"When people hear about Myanmar, it's about political repression and now the cyclone. When you have all this negative press, it doesn't matter how much the government promotes its lovely beaches," PATA's Martin said. "You won't see any bounce back in the short or maybe even in the medium term."

Meanwhile, those who depend on tourist dollars are feeling the pinch.

Yangon's budget hotels catering to backpackers are all but empty. With few takers for their T-shirts emblazoned with images of temples or monks, souvenir vendors at the Bogyoke Aung San market nap in the midday heat.

Tour guides at the city's most famous landmark, the golden-domed Shwedagon Pagoda, sit idly, waiting in vain for potential customers.

Since the storm, 33-year-old guide San San has spent his days chewing betel leaf in the temple's parking lot. He said that May, the start of the monsoon season, is generally a slow month but that he usually averages about three clients a day throughout the off season.

"There's been no one for many days," he said. "All I do is sit and wait."

High-end operators were also affected by the storm.

The luxury cruise ship Road to Mandalay, which normally plies the Irrawaddy River, was badly damaged in the storm, said Pippa Isbell, spokeswoman for the its operator, Orient-Express Hotels, Trains and Cruises. Existing reservations for a "few hundred" would-be passengers have been canceled through September.

"Whatever happens with the ship, we're committed to remaining in Myanmar," Pippa said.

But the future is less certain for staff at hotels on Chaung Tha beach, an off-the-beaten-path destination whose foreign visitors are mostly budget travelers.

Because it's inside the restricted Irrawaddy delta, special permission is now required to make the five-hour journey over the narrow, pothole-scarred roads. Sometimes the travel permits issued by the Ministry of Tourism are not special enough for the guards at four military checkpoints along the route from Yangon, and travelers are turned back.

With little prospect of filling his 41 empty seaside bungalows, Shwe Sin hotel's assistant manager Ko Tin Oo appealed to his sole foreign guests, an Australian and a French national, to encourage their friends and family to travel to Myanmar.

"Tell everyone you know that Myanmar people need foreign people," he said as he switched on the evening's entertainment, an amateur video of Cyclone Nargis featuring cyclone-toppled trees, crushed houses and bloated bodies floating in flood waters.

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FBR REPORT: Burma Army Attacking and Displacing over 1,000 Karen People
Karen State, Burma / 5 June 2008

Dear Friends,

The Burma Army has just attacked the village of Te Mu Der, Papun District, Northern Karen State. Burma. Over 1,000 people from this village and the surrounding villages fled. The rains have started and for the families in hiding it is miserable. Three villages were displaced; Te Mu Der, Tha Kaw To Baw, and Tha Da Der.

On 4 June between 7am - 8 am, Burma Army battalion IB 240 attacked, drove the people out of the village, burned rice barns, looted homes, badly damaged the church and destroyed farms in Te Mu Der village in Papun District. Te Mu Der is located at N18 25 05 E 097 17 15, just south of the Kyauk Kyi- Hsaw Hta road in north central Papun district. Villagers ran with what they could carry and the Burma Army looted what they left behind. The Burma Army fired mortars into the village and one round hit the church, damaging the roof. They then entered the village and at the church destroyed one piano, 2 amplifiers, two speakers and stole one guitar. They went through the village, looting and destroying property and fences. The troops burned down three rice barns with over 300 tins of paddy rice belonging to Saw Kyaw Soe 45 yrs, Saw Kwe Lay Moo, 43 yrs and Saw Gwey Hu, 55 yrs. The troops have now pulled back. Two FBR teams are in the area providing assistance. This new attack follows other attacks outlined in last weeks report from this northern area.

lease see: "Burma Army Attacks Villages in Eastern Burma as they Obstruct Relief to Cyclone Victims", at www.freeburmarangers.org.

We are now sending more medicine, plastic tarps to shelter the families in hiding, food support and blankets.

At this same time the Burma Army is also attacking Karenni villages three days walk north of Te Mu Der (the attacked Karen village described above).

On 4 June, Burma Army battalions LIB 429 and LIB 531, both under the command of Myo Win Hlaine entered Bwa Doh village. They captured a villager, Saw Ko Blu, 33 yrs old. They beat him until his head split open and shot at another villager who ran away. The Burma Army units then proceeded to Kwa Kee as another battalion, LIB 530 arrived at Kay Kaw village one and a half days walk northwest of Kwa Kee..

Thank you and God bless you,
Free Burma Rangers

The Free Burma Ranger’s (FBR) mission is to provide hope, help and love to internally displaced people inside Burma, regardless of ethnicity or religion. Using a network of indigenous field teams, FBR reports on human rights abuses, casualties and the humanitarian needs of people who are under the oppression of the Burma Army. FBR provides medical, spiritual and educational resources for IDP communities as they struggle to survive Burmese military attacks.
For more information, please visit www.freeburmarangers.org

© 2007 Free Burma Rangers | Contact FBR

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Myanmar denies evictions from cyclone relief camps
Reuters / 8 June 2008

Myanmar's military government denied on Sunday it was evicting victims of Cyclone Nargis from relief camps, saying it was working on a voluntary resettlement program more than a month after the disaster.

The New Light of Myanmar, the voice of the ruling generals, quoted Prime Minister Thein Sein as saying survivors of the May 2 storm would be given aid to return home or settle in new areas.

"If victims want to live in areas where relief camps are being opened, arrangements will be made to resettle them there," Thein Sein said during a tour of a relief camp on Saturday in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta.

"In addition, the government will provide for their basic needs to a certain degree for some time," he said, adding survivors would receive food rations and farming equipment.

More than a month after the storm, which left 134,000 people dead or missing and another 2.4 million destitute, many survivors have not yet been reached and Western nations and foreign aid groups say the relief effort is being hampered by the country's military rulers.

In its first assessment of the junta's response to the disaster, Amnesty International said last week the government was stepping up its eviction of victims from emergency shelters, but said it was unclear whether this was official policy.

"The government's actions place tens of thousands of already vulnerable survivors at increased risk of death, disease or starvation," the London-based rights group said.

Foreign media have also quoted survivors as saying they were forced to leave the camps with few supplies. The government has called the reports "groundless" and accused foreign media of "fabricating news" about Myanmar's cyclone response.

"Despite supplying the basic needs of the people, untrue news stories regarding the government's measures are being broadcast by some unscrupulous persons and organizations with negative views," Thein Sein, who is leading the junta's aid effort, said.

Aid agencies say dozens of delta villages have yet to receive any relief assistance, mostly in remote parts of the delta only accessible by boat or helicopter.

Plans to accelerate the delivery of aid received a boost on Saturday when five World Food Programme (WFP) helicopters arrived in the former capital Yangon, joining one already there.

Another four WFP helicopters are expected to fly to the former Burma next week under a plan approved by the regime more than two weeks ago. The generals have refused to allow in military helicopters from its neighbors and the United States.

The U.N. food agency estimates it will need to feed at least 750,000 people in devastated areas for some time to come.

A team of 200 international disaster and aid experts is currently assessing the extent of the cyclone destruction and gauge whether farmers would be able to plant crucial monsoon rice crops by the end of July.

(Reporting by Aung Hla Tun; Editing by Darren Schuettler)

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Myanmar tightens security but denies evicting cyclone victims
AFP / 8 June 2008

Myanmar has tightened security across the cyclone-ravaged Irrawaddy Delta but on Sunday denied evicting storm victims from emergency shelters and forcing them to return to ruined villages.

Soldiers armed with assault rifles staged frequent roadblocks along the main highways in the delta, and set up posts at every street leading into the town of Bogalay, according to an AFP reporter who slipped past the security.

Soldiers cleared the highways of storm victims from outlying villages who have been reduced to begging for handouts of food from passing cars.

The soldiers said they were worried for the safety of people on the roadside, but with entire villages washed away in the storm, many survivors have no shelter other than their makeshift tents along the road.

Cyclone Nargis left more than 133,000 people dead or missing when it pounded into Myanmar five weeks ago.

The United Nations estimates that 2.4 million people need emergency aid, but that one million have yet to receive any foreign assistance.

Local donors have tried to fill the gap, organising community-based relief missions to deliver supplies .

But soldiers at the roadblocks are conducting strict searches of every vehicle, checking the identification of all the passengers, and turning many people away.

The storm laid waste to broad swathes of the delta, Myanmar's most important rice-growing region, raising fears that farmers will not be able to sow new crops before the planting season ends in three weeks.

Amnesty International on Thursday accused Myanmar of forcing thousands of people from official shelters, giving them just six dollars and two small portions of rice to return to their ruined villages.

Other storm victims were forced out of schools so that classes could resume last week, Amnesty said.

The government mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar said the claims were "totally groundless," and insisted storm victims had been given relief supplies so they could voluntarily return home.

"A storm does not last for more than one or two days. Now, all has been over," it said.

"The authorities have allowed the victims to return home if they want to. Allowing them to return to their home places is not uprooting them or ignoring their difficulties," it said.

The paper also denounced foreign media and Western countries for spreading "rumours" about the extent of the cyclone damage.

"The government has been able to carry out the emergency relief operations," it said. "Moreover, it has been able to fulfil the urgent needs of the storm victims such as shelter, food and health care while restoring their livelihoods to a certain degree."

Myanmar promised the world at a donor conference in Yangon two weeks ago that it would allow foreign aid and experts into the delta. While more aid has been arriving, progress has been slow.

Five UN-chartered helicopters arrived Saturday in Myanmar's former capital Yangon to join the aid effort, after being held up for days in Bangkok.

The military has ruled this country, formerly known as Burma, for nearly a half century.

The reclusive generals are deeply suspicious of the outside world, and have flatly refused help from foreign militaries -- last week turning away warships laden with emergency supplies.

While the World Food Programme and groups such as the French charity Doctors Without Borders are visible in the delta, the needs are far greater than the still-small supplies making it in.

Health workers at one clinic in Bogalay say they have no medicines to offer, so traditional healers have begun trying to diagnose patients and offering herbal remedies instead.

One nurse has only a stethoscope to examine the 50-60 patients who come to her every day.

"We have not seen any major outbreaks of disease, but there are many people who come in every day," said one worker at the clinic.

"I have treated people with injuries from the cyclone," she said. "It's hard to follow up on how they are doing now, because many have gone back to their villages and it's a little bit impossible to check on them there."

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Red Cross: Myanmar dead may never be identified
AP / 8 June 2008

Tens of thousands of people killed in last month's cyclone may never be identified because their bodies have decomposed so badly and many ended up far from home, an aid organization said Sunday.

The task of burying an estimated 78,000 bodies has been overshadowed by efforts to assist Cyclone Nargis' 2.4 million survivors, many of whom are still without adequate food, water and shelter, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

As a result, bloated bodies still litter the hard-hit Irrawaddy delta more than five weeks after the storm, while other bodies have been dumped in canals or unmarked mass graves.

"Many now are in advanced stages of decay and the information we have been able to gather is that many of the bodies that were effected by the tidal surges were stripped of clothing and any identifying items," said Craig Strathern, a Red Cross spokesman in Myanmar.

The Red Cross has received reports that some bodies ended more than four miles from their place of origin, he said.

The organization last week began distributing kits to volunteers that include body bags, forms to list where a body is buried and any details identifying it, Strathern said. But he said he doubted there would be any large-scale effort to identify victims, mostly because Myanmar law allows families to declare someone dead after three weeks.

"We're certainly not aware of any initiatives that try to achieve positive identification of bodies," Strathern said. "I don't know what the reason would be. If there is not a demand from the families or legal imperative in the system, it's not going to achieve too much."

Survivors in the delta said they tried to identify bodies but were overwhelmed by the numbers of dead clogging rivers and washing up on beaches.

"Initially, the bodies were identified by relatives and we cremated them after holding religious rights," said Myint Thuang, a survivor from the delta town of Bogalay. "However, after more bodies washed up on the shore and with no one to identify them we buried them in mass graves."

Villagers sprinkled lime powder on the graves of 10 or more bodies and marked some with a wooden stick, he said.

The situation differs greatly from the tsunami that killed nearly 230,000 people in 2004. In worst-hit Banda Aceh, Indonesia, collecting and identifying bodies were top priorities, driven largely by Muslim tradition that calls for burying the dead within the first day. Corpses were dumped in mass graves as large as football fields, with aid workers, soldiers and volunteers working together to mark the graves and identity the dead.

With only six U.N. helicopters and seven from the Myanmar government, relief supplies for survivors 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.

The government has dismissed complaints that survivors are not being reached with aid and reports that they have been forced from camps and dumped near their devastated villages. It said survivors have a choice to remain in the camps or return home with government help.

"It is a storm of rumors designed to deal a devastating blow to our country," according to a commentary Saturday in the New Light of Myanmar.

"The rumors are invented and circulated by certain Western countries and internal and external ax-handlers," it said. "In other words, it is just a scheme conspired by a crafty tiger that is desperate to eat the flesh and the fox that is waiting for leftovers."

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Myanmar tourism sector reels after cyclone
AP / 7 June 2008

When a taxi carrying two Westerners pulled up this past week at the Shwe Sin hotel at the Chaung Tha beach resort in Myanmar's cyclone-stricken Irrawaddy delta region, cheers rang out from local residents and workers.

The two were congratulated for being the first foreigners to set foot in town since Cyclone Nargis slammed ashore last month, wiping entire villages off the map and killing an estimated 78,000 people.

The disaster, and the military government's "stay-away" attitude toward foreign aid workers and reporters, has scared off tourists, adding to the area's woes.

Residents of Chaung Tha, perched on the western side of the delta, more than 60 miles from the eye of the storm, say no one there was killed or injured and that the hotels were undamaged.

But the fishing village-turned-vacation spot is reeling from the economic fallout of the May 2-3 storm.

"Being in this sector now is like being dead," said Ko Tin Oo, assistant manager of the Shwe Sin hotel. "Now, only the pawn shops are doing good business."

Without a single foreign guest for more than a month, the 37-year-old father of one said he had to pawn some of his wife's jewelry to make ends meet.

He blamed Myanmar's military government as much as the cruel vagaries of nature.

Seeking to keep prying foreign eyes away from the disaster's aftermath, Myanmar's embassies have been vetting visa applications with a skeptical eye, making it difficult for would-be tourists to gain entry.

Military checkpoints around the main city, Yangon, have kept unauthorized foreigners from entering the delta since the storm.

"How can foreign people come to Myanmar, even if they're brave enough?" asked Ko Tin Oo.

Statistics on international arrivals for May were not yet available, but Oliver Martin of the Pacific Asia Travel Association, PATA, said a "substantial decrease" was expected.

Maarten Groeneveld of the Bangkok, Thailand, branch of Diethelm Travel Asia agency said new reservations for Myanmar have stopped and many existing bookings were canceled.

Any upswing would depend on "how quickly the current relief effort bears fruit and reinstates some sort of confidence internationally," Groeneveld said in an e-mail.

Though the military government has strived in recent years to promote the country as a vacation destination, Myanmar's underdeveloped infrastructure and dismal human rights record have made it a hard sell.

Its tourism sector is minuscule compared to that of neighboring countries. In 2007, Myanmar received 248,000 international travelers compared to nearly 14.5 million in Thailand, according to PATA, which represents some 1,000 travel agents, airlines and other enterprises.

Last year was on track to be a record one for Myanmar tourism until a bloody military crackdown on pro-democracy campaigners in September scared travelers away.

The crackdown — in which at least 31 people were killed — also revived calls for a boycott of travel to Myanmar.

Supporters of a boycott contend tourist dollars fatten the generals' coffers.

But opponents argue that tourism benefits Myanmar's poor and promotes democratic ideals by exposing citizens of this isolated and tightly controlled country to outside ideas.

"When people hear about Myanmar, it's about political repression and now the cyclone. When you have all this negative press, it doesn't matter how much the government promotes its lovely beaches," PATA's Martin said. "You won't see any bounce back in the short or maybe even in the medium term."

Meanwhile, those who depend on tourist dollars are feeling the pinch.

Yangon's budget hotels catering to backpackers are all but empty. With few takers for their T-shirts emblazoned with images of temples or monks, souvenir vendors at the Bogyoke Aung San market nap in the midday heat.

Tour guides at the city's most famous landmark, the golden-domed Shwedagon Pagoda, sit idly, waiting in vain for potential customers.

Since the storm, 33-year-old guide San San has spent his days chewing betel leaf in the temple's parking lot. He said that May, the start of the monsoon season, is generally a slow month but that he usually averages about three clients a day throughout the off season.

"There's been no one for many days," he said. "All I do is sit and wait."

High-end operators were also affected by the storm.

The luxury cruise ship Road to Mandalay, which normally plies the Irrawaddy River, was badly damaged in the storm, said Pippa Isbell, spokeswoman for the its operator, Orient-Express Hotels, Trains and Cruises. Existing reservations for a "few hundred" would-be passengers have been canceled through September.

"Whatever happens with the ship, we're committed to remaining in Myanmar," Pippa said.

But the future is less certain for staff at hotels on Chaung Tha beach, an off-the-beaten-path destination whose foreign visitors are mostly budget travelers.

Because it's inside the restricted Irrawaddy delta, special permission is now required to make the five-hour journey over the narrow, pothole-scarred roads. Sometimes the travel permits issued by the Ministry of Tourism are not special enough for the guards at four military checkpoints along the route from Yangon, and travelers are turned back.

With little prospect of filling his 41 empty seaside bungalows, Shwe Sin hotel's assistant manager Ko Tin Oo appealed to his sole foreign guests, an Australian and a French national, to encourage their friends and family to travel to Myanmar.

"Tell everyone you know that Myanmar people need foreign people," he said as he switched on the evening's entertainment, an amateur video of Cyclone Nargis featuring cyclone-toppled trees, crushed houses and bloated bodies floating in flood waters.

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