+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
UN helicopters deliver aid to Myanmar delta
Cyclonic Orwellian Drama Still Plays Out in Ravaged Burma
Rights violations serious in Myanmar: U.N. investigator

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
UN helicopters deliver aid to Myanmar delta
AP
9 June 2008

United Nations helicopters fanned out across Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta Monday, a U.N. official said, ferrying critical supplies to villages struggling to survive since a devastating cyclone struck more than five weeks ago.

Four of five helicopters arrived over the weekend and started shuttling food and other emergency supplies on Monday to villages around the hardest-hit towns of Bogale and Labutta, said U.N. World Food Program spokesman Paul Risley. He said the helicopters reached four remote villages Monday morning.

"These are areas that clearly have not received regular supplies of food or other relief assistance," he said.

Helicopters are critical to reaching isolated areas and enabling aid workers to directly deliver heavy equipment like water purification systems that can supply clean water to villages cut off from basic necessities since the May 2 storm, he said.

Until now, the U.N. had only one helicopter operating in Myanmar that flew a total of six trips last week, Risley said. Supplies were mainly being delivered by boats that took several hours to navigate short distances in the delta's network of waterways.

Four more helicopters chartered by the U.N. food program, are expected to fly to Myanmar from neighboring Thailand this week. It will bring the U.N. agency's total number of helicopters in the country to 10, he said.

The relief effort still faces myriad problems, including a severe shortage of housing materials that could leave hundreds of thousands of survivors exposed to heavy rains as the monsoon season begins, the WFP and other aid agencies say.

"There's clearly a need for tarps and other roofing material, for anything that can help them rebuild their houses," Risley said. He said monsoon rains have left many delta villages knee-deep in mud.

The U.N. estimates a total of 2.4 million people were affected by Cyclone Nargis, and warns that more than 1 million of those still need help, mostly in the hard-to-reach Irrawaddy delta. The cyclone killed more than 78,000 people in the impoverished country.

U.N. officials and aid groups have criticized Myanmar's military regime for restricting access to the delta, saying it has prevented enough food, water and shelter from reaching desperate survivors.

Foreign relief workers still face hindrances in reaching cyclone victims, especially outside of Yangon, aid groups say.

Myanmar's ruling military junta has been criticized abroad for allegedly evicting cyclone survivors from refugee camps, supposedly without adequate provisions to survive elsewhere. The government has been sensitive to such criticism, issuing angry denials in state-run media that describe the accusations as lies meant to undermine the country's stability.

On Monday, all three state-run newspapers carried bold-faced slogans that urged the people of Myanmar to rally behind the government's side of the story and not trust what foreign news agencies are reporting.

Anti-government elements are feeding "the foreign news agencies stories about relief and rehabilitation that they have made up and shot on video," all three newspapers reported.

"Storm victims are hereby warned to remain vigilant with nationalistic spirit," the newspapers said.

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Cyclonic Orwellian Drama Still Plays Out in Ravaged Burma
Benedict Rogers / June 9th 2008
Cutting Edge Burma Desk
Photo: Delta Tears

Burma’s military regime has officially declared the relief phase over, a month after Cyclone Nargis hit the country. Displaced people sheltering in churches, monasteries, schools and other public buildings are being forcibly evicted, and ordered to return to their homes or to military-controlled camps. Yet the death toll is estimated to be at least 130,000, and continues to rise. Over 2.5 million people are homeless. Aid is still only trickling in, and while there are some reports that more international aid workers have been allowed into the country, the regime is continuing to obstruct, restrict and delay access for most aid workers.

Meanwhile, the military continues its policies of repression. The offensive against the Karen ethnic people in eastern Burma goes on. Since 1996, over 3,200 villages in eastern Burma have been destroyed by military offensives, and a million people displaced. On 27 May, 500 villagers in eastern Mon township, Karen State, were driven into the jungle. According to the Free Burma Rangers, a relief organisation working in the conflict zones, the Burma Army is still “attacking, burning villages and displacing people”, raping, looting, laying landmines and using people for forced labor.

Even in the cyclone-affected areas, Burma Army soldiers have killed survivors for no reason. On 25 May, in Laputta, two people were shot dead. The following day, a villager in Yaytwinchaung was killed.

On 23 May, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited the country and met Burma’s ruthless dictator, Senior General Than Shwe. At a press conference in the Hotel Sedona in Rangoon following the meeting, Ban Ki-moon sounded optimistic: “I am happy to report that we have made progress on all these issues. This morning, I had a good meeting with Senior General Than Shwe. He agreed to allow international aid workers into the affected areas, regardless of nationality. He has taken quite a flexible position.” But just two days later, Prime Minister Thein Sein announced that the regime would only “consider” allowing access to international aid workers, “if they wish to engage in rehabilitation and reconstruction work”. More than a week on, there are few signs of the regime fulfilling Than Shwe’s promise.

Four days after Ban Ki-moon’s meeting with Than Shwe, the regime announced it would extend, once again, the detention of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who has already spent over 12 years under house arrest. Her current period of house arrest began in 2003, following an assassination attempt against her at Depayin which resulted in the slaughter of over 100 of her supporters. She is held under the State Protection Act, which imposes a five year sentence. Her five years has expired, but on 27 May the regime extended her detention for yet another six months, breaking their own law. Instead at least 15 of Aung San Suu Kyi’s supporters were arrested as they attempted to march to her home.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s continued detention shows that the regime is unwilling to yield. Ban Ki-moon did not even mention her name, knowing the hostility with which Than Shwe regards her. The Secretary-General judged that mentioning her might jeopardise the possibility of improvements in humanitarian access. His judgment at the time was understandable – but he has been left empty-handed.

Meanwhile, bodies continue to float in the flood waters and hang in trees, uncollected. Snake-bite is a common cause of death, as people and snakes compete for shelter. There are reports that the military has forbidden the burial of bodies, leaving decomposing corpses to spread more disease. State media has been dismissive of the humanitarian needs. The New Light of Myanmar, the regime’s newspaper, declared that farmers could “go out with lamps at night and catch plump frogs,” and that people were self-sufficient and did not need “chocolate” from foreign countries. What they do need, however, is basic food, medicine and shelter – and they continue to be denied such things.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates has accused the junta of “criminal neglect.” Others, however, go further, charging the Generals with crimes against humanity. Britain’s Leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron has warned that if the situation does not change, the Generals should be brought before the International Criminal Court. The regime could be accused of negligence for failing to warn its people prior to storm, despite receiving 41 warnings from India. But its denial of aid and obstruction of aid workers cannot be put down to incompetence, but rather to a deliberate desire to hide the truth, and an extraordinarily inhumane attitude to its people.
One official told foreign aid workers: “What you, Westerners, don’t seem to understand is that people in the delta are used to having no water to drink and nothing to eat.”

In perhaps the most perplexing announcement, while ignoring the human catastrophe unfolding, the Orwellian regime declared the death toll of livestock. Cyclone Nargis, according to the junta, killed 665,271 ducks, 56,163 cows and 1,614,502 chickens.

Meanwhile, US, French and British navy ships remain stationed off the coast of Burma, loaded with aid, unable to reach the people. The question on the minds of the hungry and sick Burmese people is: will those ships force their way in if necessary, or will they – like so many times before – turn their backs on Burma and sail away?

Benedict Rogers is the author of A Land Without Evil: Stopping the Genocide of Burma's Karen People (Monarch, 2004), and has visited Burma and its borderlands more than 20 times. He also serves as Deputy Chairman of the UK Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Rights violations serious in Myanmar: U.N. investigator
Reuters
9 June 2008

The Myanmar military junta's arrest of a popular comedian campaigning for victims of cyclone Nargis is part of continuing serious human rights violations in the country, a United Nations investigator said on Monday.

Tomas Ojea Quintana also told a news briefing there were political prisoners in the country, despite the regime's insistence it imprisons law breakers.

"The latest information coming to me in the last few days builds up a picture of a serious situation of violations of human rights in Myanmar," said Ojea Quintana, an Argentine lawyer who has just taken up his U.N. post.

News reports from Yangon said the comedian, known by his stage name of Zarganar, was detained last Wednesday by police who seized his computer and banned film and recordings of the devastation caused by the cyclone.

Ojea Quintana, whose own parents were political prisoners under a military regime in Argentina, said he had asked the Myanmar authorities for clarification and for information on Zarganar's whereabouts, but had received no reply.

As special investigator for Myanmar, he reports to the U.N.'s 47-nation Human Rights Council at which he called last week for release of all political prisoners, starting with Nobel laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Myanmar's ambassador in Geneva denied his government arrested people for political reasons. He also rejected another assertion by the investigator that soldiers had shot prisoners on the night of the cyclone on May 2.

Ojea Quintana said on Monday he understood the prisoners, in a jail at Insein in the Irrawady delta where Nargis struck with full force, were trying to flee the partially destroyed facility to save their lives.

In his report, he asked the Myanmar authorities to investigate assertions by a Thailand-based activist group that 36 prisoners had died when police and troops moved in to quell what they said was a riot.

The investigator said he hoped to be able to establish an open dialogue with the government on Myanmar and to be given permission to visit the country to check information coming into his office. But so far no clearance had come from Yangon.

(Reporting by Robert Evans; Editing by Jonathan Lynn and Matthew Jones)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++