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Myanmar bloggers help build 'Budget Huts' in delta
New ASEAN emerging from response to Myanmar cyclone: Surin
Volunteers help Myanmar cyclone victims still without foreign aid
Burmese Endure in Spite of Junta, Aid Workers Say
Myanmar blasts spread of disaster rumors
UN: Urgent need to help Myanmar farmers
Scientists fighting disease with climate forecasts
Unseen Burma: An aid worker's story
The US Must Do More for Burma

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Myanmar bloggers help build 'Budget Huts' in delta
AP
Tue Jun 17, 7:33 PM ET

Bloggers may find their messages blocked by Myanmar's military regime, but that hasn't stopped Nyi Lynn Seck from raising tens of thousands of dollars for cyclone survivors through his website.

Now, the 29-year-old IT specialist and his friends are getting their hands dirty and putting the donations to work by helping to build "Budget Huts" in the Irrawaddy delta, a region still reeling from the May 2-3 killer storm.

Days after Cyclone Nargis hit, the Yangon resident traveled to the delta to document the survivors' stories. He posted their accounts and his photographs on his Web journal.

"I have been blogging for quite a long time and many overseas Myanmar citizens read it. They wanted me to go to the delta and help out," he said.

Nyi Lynn Seck quit his job as a manager at a software solutions company to lead six volunteers, including four other bloggers, on a mission to aid villages around Labutta. They have been here since May 9.

He is just one example of a grass-roots movement that has emerged in Myanmar. Many of those doing private relief work are highly critical of the government effort that followed the storm.

Private efforts have filled a lot of gaps in the relief effort, especially in the early weeks after the storm, when the junta turned back most foreign relief workers. After pleas from the U.N., the junta agreed to international aid, but it still limits foreigners' activities.

Nyi Lynn Seck said most of the $30,000 received by the group came from Myanmar expatriates in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia but money also was sent from as far away as Europe.

Myanmar's military government, which strictly controls all media including the Internet, blocks most blogging sites. However, they are sometimes accessible by using a server that masks the site's true origin.

Bloggers played a major role in ensuring the free flow of information during anti-government protests in Myanmar last fall and the violent crackdown that followed. At least one blogger, Nay Phone Latt, remains in prison.

Nyi Lynn Seck's blog has in the past included personal observations, advice for would-be bloggers and news items. It has not been seen as anti-government.

Nyi Lynn Seck said he became an aid worker because he felt the junta's response to the storm — which killed 78,000 people and left 56,000 more missing — was inefficient.

"The government doesn't rely much on a system or technology and they don't know what to do. They work only on paper, so the help was really delayed," he said.

Nyi Lynn Seck picked up his black leather laptop bag and pulled out a stack of slides he shows to would-be donors. He also has two models of wood-and-blue plastic shelters, dubbed "Budget Huts."

The group, which calls itself "Handy Myanmar Youths" because it wants to lend a hand to survivors, has put up 88 huts in delta villages.

Such volunteerism is not always welcomed by the junta. A popular comedian was taken from his Yangon home by police this month after going to the delta to help survivors.

Many Myanmar volunteers and the local staff of foreign aid agencies pack their vehicles with food, water and other supplies when heading into the delta; several have reported being harassed by police or having their vehicles impounded.

Nyi Lynn Seck said the government approved his group's project after they detailed their plans to authorities in Labutta and declared that no foreigners were directly involved.

The group makes five- to six-hour boat rides to coastal villages to deliver materials and tools to build the huts and then supervision of the construction, which is done mostly by the survivors.

Due to tides, the volunteers are unable to return to Labutta on the same day, so they usually spend at least one night sleeping on the bare ground without shelter from mosquitoes. Several have fallen ill.

The blogger said the group's most pressing concerns were about sustaining the project despite the high price of materials and transportation.

"Now the biggest problem is that we're having trouble finding wood in Labutta, and the wood is also getting very expensive," Nyi Lynn Seck said.

"As long as there are funds and donors, hopefully we can keep this up for another two to three months here," he said. "But I'm not so sure about the future."

On the Net:
Nyi Lynn Seck's Myanmar-language blog: http://nyilynnseck.blogspot.com/

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New ASEAN emerging from response to Myanmar cyclone: Surin
AFP
Wed Jun 18, 2:18 AM ET

ASEAN, often criticised for not dealing firmly with member Myanmar, was "baptised" by its response to the cyclone in the junta-led nation and was ready for new responsibilities, the bloc's chief said Wednesday.

Cyclone Nargis pounded the southwest Irrawaddy Delta and the main city of Yangon in early May, leaving more than 133,000 people dead or missing. Inciting international outrage, Myanmar's isolated military regime largely barred foreign aid workers from the delta.

But relief workers slowly moved into the region in late May after the junta began to ease restrictions on access, and asked fellow ASEAN nations to coordinate the international relief effort.

"We have been able to open the humanitarian space," Surin Pitsuwan told a forum in Singapore of the efforts by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

"I think that's the success of ASEAN. I think that's the resiliency of ASEAN. I think that's a new ASEAN ready to take on the responsibility placed on it, expected of it."

Nearly 300 ASEAN assessment team volunteers were now in the delta, working "with full support, collaboration from the government of Myanmar," said Surin, a former Thai foreign minister.

"It just so happened that we are being baptised by the Cyclone Nargis. That is the test of our new ASEAN," Surin said.

ASEAN said in early June that its emergency assessment team had begun to deploy in the delta to start a long-awaited assessment of those affected by the storm.

It said then that its advance teams would compile a first-hand "progress report" for an ASEAN Roundtable meeting in Yangon on June 24.

The 10-member ASEAN has often been criticised for failing to act firmly with Myanmar, a member that has frequently embarrassed its neighbours with its refusal to shift towards democracy.

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Volunteers help Myanmar cyclone victims still without foreign aid
AFP
by Moe Moe YuTue Jun 17, 10:20 PM ET

Cyclone Nargis almost destroyed the remote village of Kyon Ka Nan, but residents are now rebuilding their homes and their food stocks, aided by a resilient group of Myanmar volunteers.

In this village of 300 homes, only six houses were left after the cyclone hit nearly seven weeks ago. Residents say 114 people died, many of their bodies washed into the freshwater ponds once used for drinking water.

Residents in Kyon Ka Nan say they have yet to receive any international aid, and official assistance has been meagre.

But they are slowly piecing together their shattered lives with the help of a resourceful network of local volunteers, who have delivered enormous amounts of aid despite their meagre resources and restrictions imposed by the military regime.

The latest shipment filled a cargo ship and a small boat, carrying 22 tonnes of rice, 100,000 tins of fish, and a team of doctors.

As the boat docked, men from the village helped unload 500 bags of rice, each weighing 100 kilos (225 pounds), and carried them to the Buddhist temple, which has become the focal point of the relief effort.

Many of the surviving villagers are living with the monks, as they rebuild their homes with bamboo and whatever they can salvage from the wreckage.

Villages like this one in the Irrawaddy delta bore the brunt of the cyclone's power, with more than 133,000 dead and 2.4 million in need of humanitarian aid.

Myanmar's regime has limited the scope of the international aid operation, and the UN says one million people have yet to receive any foreign assistance.

Even local volunteers -- often of modest means themselves -- struggle to skirt military roadblocks, and two prominent leaders of the aid movement have been arrested.

Despite the obstacles, Lae Lae, a 39-year-old helping to deliver the aid to Kyon Ka Nan, said they have reached more than 40 villages in this area southwest of Yangon.

"The donations came from several different sources -- monks, private companies or our friends working overseas," she said.

"They donated money through us and we have tried to reach villages where not much aid has arrived."

This is the group's fourth visit to Kyon Ka Nan. The volunteers hope to leave them with a month's supply of food, so the villagers can focus on reviving their rice fields.

The volunteers have organised themselves by specialty.

Five young volunteer doctors set up a temporary clinic at the monastery to treat people with injuries from the storm, as well as minor illnesses and in some cases trauma among people who watched their loved ones die.

A second group headed to the freshwater ponds that were once used for drinking, but were filled with debris and rotting corpses.

The bodies have already been cremated and the wreckage cleared, but residents are too afraid to drink from the ponds and have relied on rainwater instead.

The volunteers assure them they will take samples back to the main city of Yangon for testing, to see if the water is safe. But they will likely need to find a pump to empty the ponds and let the monsoon rains refill them.

A third group begins distributing the food, including rice, fish, cooking oil, beans and onions. The villager's leader had already made a roster of the families, and called out each family to receive their share.

"Ever since Nargis, we have lived on food donated from local groups. Otherwise we wouldn't have survived," said Win, one of the women lining up for food.

In the six weeks since the storm, Win says the only official aid she has received was 13 cups of rice and a few potatoes, plus a tarpaulin sheet from the local Red Cross Association.

Like most families in the delta, Win and her husband make their living by fishing and working as tenant farmers in the rice paddies.

She said the villagers already know how to supplement their diets with fish and wild vegetables, but she said their own supplies of rice were washed away.

"We mainly need rice. Fish and vegetables can be found easily," Win said.

The volunteers say they hope that if the village's most basic needs are cared for, the residents will be able to focus on farming

"We think that if they have enough food, then they can get back to work," said one of the volunteers. "So we are thinking about donating farming and fishing equipment next time."

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Burmese Endure in Spite of Junta, Aid Workers Say
Rapport, for The New York Times

Kyi Kyi Aye, 51, pumped water late last month from one of the few remaining wells in her town near Yangon, Myanmar, after a cyclone devastated the country.

By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: June 18, 2008

YANGON, Myanmar — More than six weeks have passed since Cyclone Nargis swept through the Irrawaddy Delta in southern Myanmar, leaving a trail of flattened villages and broken lives and arousing international sympathy that turned to anguish as the military government obstructed foreign aid.

Now doctors and aid workers returning from remote areas of the delta are offering a less pessimistic picture of the human cost of the delay in reaching survivors.

They say they have seen no signs of starvation or widespread outbreaks of disease. While it is estimated that the cyclone may have killed 130,000 people, the number of lives lost specifically because of the junta’s slow response to the disaster appears to have been smaller than expected.

Relief workers here continue to criticize the government’s secretive posture and obsession with security, its restrictions on foreign aid experts and the weeks of dawdling that left bloated bodies befouling waterways and survivors marooned with little food. But the specific character of the cyclone, the hardiness of villagers and aid from private citizens helped prevent further death and sickness, aid workers say.

Most of the people killed by the cyclone, which struck on May 2-3, drowned. But those who survived were not likely to need urgent medical attention, doctors say.

“We saw very, very few serious injuries,” said Frank Smithuis, manager of the substantial mission of Doctors Without Borders in Myanmar. “You were dead or you were in O.K. shape.”

The cyclone swept away bamboo huts throughout the delta; in the hardest-hit villages, it left almost no trace of habitation. Some survivors carried away by floods found themselves many miles from home when the waters receded.

But those who survived were not likely to be injured in the aftermath by falling rocks or collapsing buildings, as often happens during natural disasters, like the earthquake in China.

That appears to be the primary reason villagers were able to stay alive for weeks without aid. As they waited, the survivors, most of whom were fishermen and farmers, lived off of coconuts, rotten rice and fish.

“The Burmese people are used to getting nothing,” said Shari Villarosa, the highest-ranking United States diplomat in Myanmar, formerly Burma. “I’m not getting the sense that there have been a lot of deaths as a result of the delay.”

The United States has accused the military government of “criminal neglect” in its handling of the disaster caused by the cyclone. Privately, many aid workers have, too. The junta, widely disliked among Myanmar’s citizens, did not have the means to lead a sustained relief campaign, they say.

But relief workers say the debate over access for foreigners and the refusal of the government to allow in military helicopters and ships from the United States, France and Britain overshadowed a substantial relief operation carried out mainly by Burmese citizens and monks.

They organized convoys of trucks filled with drinking water, clothing, food and construction materials that poured into the delta.

“It’s been overwhelmingly impressive what local organizations, medical groups and some businessmen have done,” said Ruth Bradley Jones, second secretary in the British Embassy in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. “They are the true heroes of the relief effort.”
Aid workers emphasize that of the estimated 2.4 million Burmese strongly affected by the storm, thousands remain vulnerable to sickness and many are still without adequate food, shelter and supplies.

But their ailments are — for now — minor. Medical logs from Doctors Without Borders show that of the 30,000 people the group’s workers treated in the six weeks after the cyclone, most had flesh wounds, diarrhea or respiratory infections. The latter two afflictions are common in rural Southeast Asia even in normal times. Diarrhea can be especially dangerous for infants and young children, but doctors say that, while they have treated thousands of cases, the illness has not reached critical levels.

“I can’t say it was an outbreak,” said May Myad Win, a general practitioner who works for Doctors Without Borders and spent 25 days in the delta treating an average of 25 patients a day. “It was not as severe as we feared.”

The number of people in need of serious medical aid was judged to be low enough that officials at a British medical group canceled plans to bring in a team of surgeons in the days after the storm, said Paula Sansom, the manager of the emergency response team for the group, Merlin.

For several weeks after the disaster, the government prevented all but a small number of foreigners from entering the delta. Now a more comprehensive picture of the damage is being assembled by a team of 250 officials led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The officials plan to release their findings next week.

The number of people killed in the storm may never be known. The government has not updated its toll since May 16, when it said 77,738 people were killed and 55,917 were missing.

In a country that has not had a full census in decades, it is not even certain how many people had been living in the area before the storm. Itinerants who worked in the salt marshes and shrimp farms were probably not counted among the dead, aid workers say.

But it is clear that in many villages, women and children died in disproportionate numbers, said Osamu Kunii, chief of the health and nutrition section of Unicef in Myanmar.

“Only people who could endure the tidal surge and high winds could survive,” Mr. Kunii said. In one village of 700, all children under the age of 7 died, he said.

With only minimal food supplies in villages, aid workers say, delta residents will require aid until at least the end of the year. The United Nations, after weeks of haggling with Myanmar’s government for permission to provide assistance, is now using 10 helicopters to deliver supplies to hard-to-reach places and alerting relief experts at the earliest sign of disease outbreaks.

Still, the military government continues to make it difficult for aid agencies to operate.

Last week, the government issued a directive that accused foreign aid agencies and the United Nations of having “deviated from the normal procedures.” The government imposed an extra layer of approvals for travel into the delta, effectively requiring that all foreigners be accompanied by government officials.

“They’re changing the goal posts,” said Chris Kaye, the director of operations in Myanmar for the United Nations World Food Program. “We have a whole set of new procedures.”

Myanmar’s government says it issued 815 visas for foreign aid workers and medical personnel in the month after the cyclone. But some aid workers were never allowed in, including the disaster response team from the United States Agency for International Development.

Local news media reported over the weekend that the government planned to build 500 cyclone shelters in the delta. These structures are used in neighboring Bangladesh, which has a relatively widespread early warning system.

When Cyclone Sidr struck Bangladesh in November, the winds reached an intensity similar to the 155-mile-an-hour gusts that blew through the Irrawaddy Delta last month.

Tellingly, the number of people killed by Cyclone Sidr — about 3,500 — was a small fraction of those killed in last month’s cyclone here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/world/asia/18myanmar.html

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Myanmar blasts spread of disaster rumors
AP
Wed Jun 18, 7:22 AM ET

Myanmar's military government is warning that "destructive elements" are seeking to create panic by spreading rumors that more natural disasters will hit the country after last month's deadly cyclone.

A commentary published Wednesday in the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper said the unnamed group of rumor mongers is made up of people unhappy with the achievement of the country under the military's leadership.

It said some of the rumors predict floods, earthquakes and other calamities, and reported that some well-known astrologers are actually making upbeat predictions for the nation's future.

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UN: Urgent need to help Myanmar farmers
AP
1 hour, 37 minutes ago

A United Nations agency warned Wednesday of the need to help Myanmar's cyclone-stricken farmers plant rice for the next growing season but said the situation was better than originally feared.

Some 52,000 farmers in Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta will be unable to grow a 2008 rainy season rice crop unless they are supplied with farming equipment and seed within the next two months, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said.

Failure to do so will pose social and economic problems, but cause just a 2 percent shortfall in projected national rice production, FAO consultant Albert Lieberg said at a news conference in Bangkok, Thailand.

More attention is being turned toward recovery and rebuilding after initial emergency relief efforts to help the survivors of Cyclone Nargis, which Myanmar's ruling junta says killed more than 78,000 people and left another 56,000 people missing.

The FAO's deputy regional representative, Hiroyuki Konuma, said that without external support, the worst-off farmers and fishermen in the Irrawaddy delta "will suffer from hunger and poverty for a long time and they will remain dependent on external aid for long time."

"Time is not on our side," he said, urging adoption of FAO-drafted emergency assistance and rehabilitation programs together budgeted at $83 million. "We have to take action. We cannot delay."

Lieberg said that without immediate aid almost 450,000 acres of farmland will go uncultivated and more than half a million tons of rice will not be harvested.

The projected shortfall would be about 2 percent of the country's annual production, he said, much less than had previously been feared. The greater delta area is generally estimated to produce more than 60 percent of the country's rice.

Lieberg led a three-week FAO assessment mission in Myanmar that targeted the worst-hit areas of the 11 most severely affected townships. About 70 percent of land in the 11 townships was submerged in flood water, he said.

"We have seen areas where it is very difficult to get physically and where few have been," said Lieberg.

He told reporters that that fears over flooding and salinity problems — sea water contaminating the soil — had been exaggerated.

"The real dimension of the issue is much smaller than thought in the beginning," he said.

Most flooding beyond the normal for the area's rice paddies had receded within 12 hours of the initial storm surge, said Lieberg.

Salt water from the surging sea was diluted because the soil was already wet when the storm struck, and heavy rains in the cyclone's aftermath were cleansing.

Lieberg also said that his team estimated that about 30,000 people involved in fishing activities had died as a result of the cyclone. The group has been generally overlooked because of concern over farm production.

Though supplies of food and shelter remain short in many affected areas, there apparently been no "second wave" of deaths due to disease,malnutrition and exposure after the original casualties caused by the storm.

The U.N. World Health Organization in a report issued at the beginning of June cited an assessment by the U.N. Children's Fund — UNICEF — of conditions in hard-to-reach areas outside of the town of Bogalay, one of the areas worst affected by the storm.

It quoted the assessment as saying "there were no post-cyclone deaths in any of the villages assessed," as well as no signs of acute malnutrition. It also said suitable sources were found for clean water.

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Scientists fighting disease with climate forecasts
AP
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer 25 minutes ago

A cyclone wrecks coastal Myanmar, spawning outbreaks of malaria, cholera and dengue fever. Flooding inundates Iowa, raising an array of public health concerns.

With climate change comes new threats to life, and scientists hope to be able to better predict them as they forecast the weather.

"Everything is connected in our earth system," Conrad C. Lautenbacher, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said at a panel on "Changing Climate: Changing Health Patterns."

The key is bringing all types of data together — health, weather, human behavior, disasters and others — "it's science without borders," Lautenbacher said.

He said 73 countries and more than 50 international organizations are currently participating in the Global Earth Observation System of Systems and more are expected to join.

"It's a full court press" to observe what's going on on the Earth, he said. When it comes to health and disasters "we can't afford to be wrong a lot of the time. We have got to get ahead of it."

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, noted that "we have these very modern technologies that are very good at sensing atmosphere and earth surfaces, and you can put them in computers and model some of these weather events ... and we're pretty good at it right now.

"But imagine for a moment, that not only that we measure that stuff, that we then actively and aggressively do something about it to mitigate the effects to people, to the environment, to planets, to plants."

Take a disease like cholera, Lautenbacher said, noting that research has shown that outbreaks in India vary with the temperature of the Bay of Bengal. Satellites cam measure that temperature.

In addition, climate researchers are now doing forecasts of the Pacific Ocean phenomenon known as El Nino, which affects temperatures in the bay, so that might also be used to forecast cholera.

Barbara Hatcher, secretary-general of the World Federation of Public Health Associations, likened the research to the work of Dr. John Snow, the 19th century English physician who first tracked down a source of cholera in London, using a map of victims' homes and where they got their water.

Lautenbacher noted that changes in vegetation and moisture can help forecast outbreaks of malaria, showing a vegetation map of Africa based on satellite data.

But it isn't just weather data that must be worked into the system, he added, researchers must also use information on population changes, transportation, migration, epidemiology and social and behavioral factors.

Robert W. Corell of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment said he had been asked to investigate an outbreak of anaphylactic shock in Alaska.

He traced it to stings from a type of bee that hibernates in wet soil, which had never lived there before but had moved north as the climate became milder and wetter.

In another case, he said, diarrhea-causing giardia has appeared in parts or northern Norway, where moderating climate has allowed beavers — which can spread the germ — to move into territory once exclusive to reindeer.

Dr. Bryan McNally of Emory University School of Medicine, suggested requiring hospitals, as part of being accredited, to set up plans to work with local weather and warning forecasters.

Traditionally hospitals have sought to ride out storms, but that didn't work out well when hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans.

Having a relationship with a warning forecaster would allow a hospital to prepare for arrival of floods, hurricanes, tornadoes or whatever the local hazard is, he explained.

They could work out plans in advance if they needed to evacuate, and hospitals nearby would have plans to take in the patients as well as to deal with the newly injured.

Predicting the arrival of flooding should be more than just protecting property, it could include warnings about the spread of disease such as schistosomiasis, also known as snail fever, said Joshua P. Rosenthal of the National Institutes of Health. Such warnings should also include the spread of things like fuel and toxic pollutants, he said.

Factors to be considered should include land use patterns, urbanization, agriculture, poverty, economic infrastructure and wastewater treatment facilities.

"It's important ... that we build climate into these other types of long-term analyses rather than trying to separate it out," he said.

"What we do know is it's probably going to hit the most vulnerable populations the hardest: The poor, children, the elderly, those in low- and middle-income countries with weak infrastructure, degraded ecological environments, poor health-delivery systems," he said.

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Unseen Burma: An aid worker's story
BBC News
By Dr Chris van Tulleken
Aid worker, Merlin

I couldn't believe it.

The havoc wreaked by Nargis is still in evidence, but repairs are under way

Chris's report is on Newsnight on Wednesday, 18 June, 2008 at 10.30pm on BBC TWO

More than half the villagers had died during the cyclone

A huge aid effort is needed to avert disease and hunger over the coming months

Finally we were on our way. I looked out the helicopter window and reflected on the last three weeks working in Rangoon.

Three weeks of helping to co-ordinate Merlin's emergency response, while our medical teams in the Irrawaddy Delta worked round the clock in the heart of the devastation.

Three weeks of being told my permit to join our teams on the ground would arrive "tomorrow" - always "tomorrow".

Now we were not only being allowed into the delta, we were being helped by the government to run a pilot needs assessment of the entire region.

'Don't come here'

I was struck at how little devastation there seemed to be below me; palm-thatched roofs on houses; trees still standing.

In Laputta, one of the largest towns in the delta, co-operative government officials hired us a boat and local guides.

We steamed south on the large antique fishing boat to the coast of Pinsalu island, where our assessment would be based.

Pinsalu translates roughly as "don't come here" and going on satellite maps and the rumour mill, it seemed indeed to be one of the worst-affected areas in the delta.

Tidal surge

I asked our guides about what had happened in Laputta and the surrounding towns during Nargis.

I was again struck by how little destruction there seemed to be.
One fisherman told me that in a small village to the south, four out of 500 people had been killed.

I started to wonder if reports in our own press had been hugely exaggerated.

But as the boat journeyed past villages standing barely above the level of the river, the destruction became more obvious.

Many of the roofs were now replaced with incongruous bright orange tarpaulins.

Eventually, as the river widened and we approached the Bay of Bengal where Cyclone Nargis started, I saw that scattered palms and mangroves on the banks had been stripped of their leaves and decorated to their tops with river flotsam.

This was evidence that the tidal surge here had been 2-3m (7-10ft) high and the winds over 150mph (240kph).

Death of a village

As night fell, we arrived at Pinsalu, a village bearing the same name as the island, but 3km from the coast.

I could see a dog across a small stream rummaging near a dead buffalo.

It was impossible not to think what other corpses might be concealed.

Pinsalu had been utterly destroyed.

Only the naked wooden frame of the monastery and the brick shell of the hospital were left standing.

In place of the village of 4,000 was now a tented government and a camp of 500 people run by an aid organisation.

More than half the villagers had died during the cyclone.

Bodies

We spent the night in Pinsalu sleeping on the deck of our boat with rain, insects and images of the day preventing any real sleep.

I wondered what we would find on the coast.

At first light we started to walk along the desolate beach facing the open sea toward the village of Aung Hlaing.

I walked away from our small group, to where the tide had deposited bodies at the top of the beach.

They lay on their backs, mouths open, their skin bleached by the sun and seawater. Most of them were recognisably women and children; they had been less able than the men to swim or cling to something solid when the water surged over their heads.

Rebuilding lives

We waded through chest-deep mud and water and finally entered what remained of the village.

Before Nargis, 580 people had lived here.

Over 400 had died.

Men - fishermen, monks and rice farmers - gathered round to answer questions on what they needed now.

I was only able to count three women of reproductive age out of the 100 or so people who had returned to the village.

Doctors are generally good at asking difficult questions and hearing difficult answers.
But asking a group of 40 men how their wives and children died a month ago left me feeling helpless.

Details of their stories brought life to the rumours and speculations of Rangoon.

A nine-year-old girl showed me the tree she had hidden up during the storm.

A man showed me scars on his back - from when he had been lashed by torrential rain.

I had only a snapshot of one part of the delta but what will stay with me more than images or stories of death is the hope and sense of purpose of the people of Aung Hlaing.

They were already rebuilding their lives and homes and the government was helping them in partnership with international non-governmental organisations like Merlin.

While this has so far allowed people to return, and avoided deaths from epidemic disease or malnutrition, a massive and ongoing international effort is still required to prevent a second catastrophe.

Watch Chris's report from Burma on Newsnight on Wednesday, 18 June, 2008 at 10.30pm on BBC TWO.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7461284.stm

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The US Must Do More for Burma
Jared Genser : The Huffington Post
Posted June 18, 2008 | 10:33 AM (EST)

WASHINGTON -- Six weeks after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, more than one million people severely affected by the storm have yet to receive any food, water, or shelter, and the so-called "second wave" of dying from disease, thirst, and hunger has begun in earnest. In the aftermath of the cyclone, some 134,000 Burmese are now dead or missing -- over 40 percent of who are believed to be children. And the United Nations has reported that more than one million affected victims have yet to receive any humanitarian relief.

The junta refuses to allow the use of any foreign military helicopters to deliver aid, even from such countries as Thailand and Singapore. Meanwhile, British, French, and American ships just offshore have been turned away with food, water, and personnel capable of helping hundreds of thousands. Almost four weeks after junta leader Than Shwe promised UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon that he would immediately allow in "all aid workers," to the affected areas, the junta has granted only 200 visas to UN workers and is imposing a new round of bureaucratic restrictions on foreign aid organisations to obtain access.

This is no surprise to long-time observers of Burma. Over the years the junta has made countless promises to the UN, labeled "breakthroughs" contemporaneously by diplomats, that the junta later breaks. For example, under immense pressure after last fall's Saffron Revolution, Burma committed to engage in meaningful negotiations with democracy-leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party and its allies won more than 80 percent of the vote in the country's 1990 democratic parliamentary elections. Once the world's attention had waned, the talks failed, both because the regime has no desire to engage in talks and it felt no pressure to make real concessions.

While the UN secretary general, the Burmese regime, and allies of the junta have urged that the question of humanitarian aid not be "politicized," the regime itself is taking every advantage of the cyclone to make permanent its grip on power to the exclusion of helping its own people. As is often the case, distraction and delay in discussing the fundamental issues in Burma only serve the interests of the regime.

The extension of Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest is the most high-profile example of this phenomenon. Notwithstanding the UN's four prior findings that her detention is illegal and that Burmese law itself does not permit house arrest beyond five years, the junta decided to give her a sixth year in prison. Sadly, tomorrow marks her 63rd birthday and she has spent more than 12 of the last 18 years in isolation under house arrest.

In the days following the cyclone, the junta also saw no need to delay its sham constitutional referendum. Postponing the vote only in the two areas hit hardest by the storm, the results obviated the need for those in the cyclone-ravaged regions to also cast ballots. Nevertheless, the junta rescheduled the vote in those other areas. The junta has now made the extraordinary claim that 98.1 percent of the population had turned out to vote, with 92.48 percent endorsing the junta's proposal. According to the state-run New Light of Myanmar, this suspicious outcome has "washed away" the 1990 election result.

It is deeply regrettable that both Ban Ki-moon and ASEAN chief Surin Pitsuwan declined to raise the fraudulent election result or Suu Kyi's expiring house arrest in their meetings with the junta, both of which occurred after Cyclone Nargis hit the country. In so doing, they sent a clear signal to the junta that as long as they held their own people hostage, it could press ahead with their campaign to consolidate power and be assured the United Nations and ASEAN would relax any pressure for political reform. Their fundamental error was to focus exclusively on the suffering of the Burmese victims of Cyclone Nargis and to fail to recognize the political situation is equally unconscionable.

There is no doubt the United States continues to have a crucial role to play in keeping pressure on the Burmese junta, but time is running out for President George W. Bush to follow up his strong initial response. First, he should urge Ban Ki-moon to return to Burma on an urgent basis to insist Than Shwe provide the access Ban was promised. Second, to keep the pressure on the regime, Bush should work with the United Kingdom and France to request that Ban come back and brief the Security Council about the results of the discussions. And finally, Bush should press ASEAN leaders personally to make clear to Burma that while it is eager to assist, this help will not include shielding Burma from further intervention should it persist in its callous disregard of its own people's welfare. While there are no easy solutions to the current crisis let alone the long-term challenges in Burma, now is the time for action.

Jared Genser is President of Freedom Now, attorney for Burmese democracy-leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jared-genser/the-us-must-do-more-for-b_b_107775.html

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