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Plague of rats devastates Burma villages
Unseen Burma
Shan and other ethnic nationalities of Myanmar refugees celebrate a World Refugee Day (June 20, 2008) in Malaysia
Frustrated Burmese Organize Aid Forays
Burmese saved by survival instincts
Lost Hope: Once Glittering, Yangon Is Now a Ramshackle City of Fear

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Plague of rats devastates Burma villages
By Nick Meo
Last updated: 3:10 PM BST 21/06/2008

After the fury of Cyclone Nargis, a new disaster looms in Burma: packs of rats that swarm through the hills once every 50 years have consumed everything in their path, reducing thousands of poor farmers to the verge of starvation.

The rat plague strikes twice a century, when the bamboo forests flower

Villagers believe the bamboo seeds are a rodent aphrodisiac

Burma's latest human disaster is unfolding almost unseen by the outside world in the jungle-covered mountains of Chin State, far to the north of the Irrawaddy Delta where 134,000 people died last month.

The plague of rats happens twice a century when bamboo forests produce flowers and seeds, then wither and die for five years in a phenomenom locally known as mautam or bamboo death.
Villagers believe the bamboo seeds are a kind of aphrodisiac for the rodents, whose numbers explode until all the seeds have been eaten. Then they turn on villagers' rice stocks, stripping ripening corn and paddy in the fields and even digging up seeds at night after farmers plant them.

The regime's generals will permit no food aid or humanitarian workers into affected areas of the strategically important region in a repeat of their callous refusal last month to permit emergency aid sitting in foreign ships off Burma's coast to be distributed to cyclone survivors.

Exiled Chin leaders say that villagers who are too weak to flee over the border with India have already begun to die. They fear that thousands more now face a lingering death in the deep bamboo forests where most of the state's million-strong population of Christian tribal people live far from roads or towns.

The Chin, one of Burma's many minority ethnic groups, are under the brutal rule of occupying soldiers from the Burma Army who terrorise civilians and sporadically fight Chin guerrillas. The soldiers have made the food shortage worse by stealing rice and forcing villagers to work as conscripted labourers. Cheery Zahau, 27, from the Women's League of Chinland, met William Hague and Gordon Brown in London this week to ask for British help.

She said: "The reports that are trickling out to India are heartbreaking. They tell of dehydrated children dying of diarrhoea and the poorest and weakest being left behind as stronger villagers start to escape over the border to where there is food. We don't really know what is happening deep inside Chin State where there are no telephones or roads. We fear that thousands will die if no help is made available."

Villagers roast rats they catch on sticks, but that food source rapidly disappears when the rodents have eaten everything in the village and move on.

In Mizoram State in India and the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, similar rat plagues in the last few months have also stripped fields bare after the flowering of the Melocanna Baccifera bamboo. Unlike Burma those governments have put work and food programmes in place to aid villagers.

Benny Manser, 24, a photographer from Aylesbury, slipped across the international border from Mizoram State last month to visit affected villages.

He said: "We saw stick-thin children and old women who hardly had the strength left to dig up roots to eat. Villagers were telling of vast packs of rats, thousands strong, which would turn up overnight out of the bamboo thickets and eat everything in sight."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/burmamyanmar/2169388/Myanmar-cyclone-Plague-of-rats-devastates-Burma-villages.html

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UNSEEN BURMA
BBC Newsnight : 18 June 2008
Video reports here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/7461284.stm

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.

The journalist

Newsnight Journalist Simon Ostrovsky went undercover in Burma to find out how those worst-affected by Cyclone Nargis were coping.

After a gruelling trip hidden first in the back of a truck and then a boat he finally arrives in the Irrawaddy Delta.

What he finds there is shocking - but also surprising, with the people from the Delta receiving help from unexpected sources.

Video reports here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/7461284.stm

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Shan and other ethnic nationalities of Myanmar refugees celebrate a World Refugee Day (June 20, 2008) in Malaysia

http://www.shaninform.org/News/2008/june_08/refugeeday_01.php

Statement on World Refugee Day 2008- by Shan Refugee Organization, Malaysia
World Refugee Day

20 June 2008, Malaysia

Excellencies, Ladies & Gentlemen,

Thank you very much indeed for the honour of addressing you on this auspicious day. In the year AD 2000, United Nations marked June 20, as "World Refugee Day" and since then we have had celebrations all corners of the world to commemorate the occasion.

As one of the refugees from the Shan States, who have sought a haven in Malaysian, I would like to present "The Truth behind the Causes of Why People Flee Burma" to all countries all over the world.

The state of human rights abuse are, as you all know well, appalling and are on the rise relentlessly accumulating with no signs of slowing down.

Races indigenous races in Burma include; Karen, Karenni (Kayah), Mon, Shan (Thaiyai) who have been forced by the military dictators to migrate from their native villages to totally different places designated by the junta. These various races are being forced under the threat of weapons and torture. Women are molested and raped as you will see per "License to Rape: The Burmese Military Regime's Sexual Violence in the on going War in the Shan State" presented by the Shan Women's Action Network (SWAN) and the Shan Human rights Foundation, in 2001-2002.

For the past twenty years the influx of refugees from Burma to Thailand has amounted to hundreds of thousands. These people are kept in nine refugee camps in four provinces in Thailand. Unfortunately, none if these places include any Shan, who are also victims of torture and other atrocities by the Burmese soldiers.

For example: SHRF reported in 2002 that after March 1990 the Burmese military regime began the forced migration in the middle of the Shan States which effected no less than eight to fifteen thousand people. Just as many people fled to escape death and torture to Thailand. There were 47 percent of the refugees who were in the age range between seventeen and forty-seven years. These included whole families who had fled and were not merely ordinary people in economic plight looking for jobs.

Since 1990 the Burmese military junta forced villagers from 1,400 villages from over an area of 7,000 square miles in the Middle Shan States. This included three hundred thousand Shans who were forced to work in different projects for the Burmese army. Just as many people escaped to the hills and jungles and Thailand. Unfortunately, they have not been recognized as refugees and at last becomes as illegal immigrants and workers.

According to statistics in 2002- 2004, in the border area in Chaiprakarn, Fang and Mae Ai Districts in Chiang Mai province, Thailand the inflow was no less than ten thousand people. In some months the rate was higher than one thousand people who originated from Laikha, Muang Nai, Muang Kueng, Nam Tsang, Kun Hing, Muang Poo Luang, etc. which are towns where the Burmese have robbed them of their possessions.

Please read to article "License to Rape" and you will see how the Burmese soldiers torture and rape the Shan women in addition to their strategy of Four Ways of Destroying: which means cutting off supplies, destroying any means of investment and human resources, and destroying any means of communication. This is applied in their policies against all races since 1975. In this process they have destroyed rice fields, agricultural plantations and vegetable gardens, execution of suspects, caning, raping, forced labour such as porters for their weapons and armoury, building their camps and barracks. Due to these atrocities, the villagers have fled to Thailand and Malaysia, but as I mentioned earlier, these people are not given the refugee status and are subject to arrests by the immigration, or police when they work an illegal workers in Thailand as well as in Malaysia.

I would like to appeal to you delegates from all over to know that we, as displaced persons have been subjected to hardship in Burma already and would like to start a new life, but we still face another round of torture as stateless persons looking for shelter with no one to turn to and nobody listening to us. All we ask for is to live a simple life in our search for a livelihood which includes only four points: Trying to survive, to be administered and protected and hope that one may be given a chance to start a new life.

I hope that this short speech of mine will find the ears and hearts of people in the many nations of the United Nations and look forward that one day we will receive some help and be saved and be allowed to live an ordinary life as human beings, as you people do. I hope that this is not asking too much.

Thank you.

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Frustrated Burmese Organize Aid Forays
Ad Hoc Groups Formed In Cyclone's Aftermath, But Causes May Widen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 21, 2008; A01

RANGOON -- Seven weeks after huge swaths of Burma were savaged by a cyclone and tidal wave, a new and remarkable citizen movement is delivering emergency supplies to survivors neglected by the military government's haphazard relief effort.

The scores of ad hoc Burmese groups, many of them based here in the country's largest city, are not overtly political. But they are reviving a kind of social activism that has been largely repressed by successive military rulers here.

Defying roadblocks and bureaucratic obstruction, volunteers have reached devastated villages in many parts of the Irrawaddy Delta, dropping off food, drinking water and other essentials and bringing back photos that contradict claims in the state media that life is returning to normal.

Some members of the groups say they hope to keep working together when the cyclone damage is finally repaired and turn toward other activities that carry shades of political activism in this tightly controlled state.

With residents' frustration over the official relief effort mounting, pledges of support and donations to the National League for Democracy, the main opposition group in Burma, also called Myanmar, have doubled since the cyclone, according to a student leader of the league.

The storm, which came ashore on the night of May 2-3, killed an estimated 134,000 people and created severe hardship for 2.4 million more. The country's deeply xenophobic junta turned aside many offers of foreign help, agreeing to let in substantial numbers of international aid workers only after U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon flew to the country May 22 with a personal appeal.

By then, however, homegrown groups were already mobilized, working to offset the tragic shortcomings of the government operation.

Down a street lined with gold and ruby merchants, where dealers charm clients over tiny tables set with tea and chess, employees in the back room of a gem shop one recent morning were swapping evidence: photos of rotten government food handouts.

A week earlier, people in the shops said, more than a dozen local jewelers had loaded 100 bags of rice, 20 bags of beans, tarpaulins and blankets onto a truck donated by a supplier and set off at midnight for the storm-ravaged town of Labutta.

They returned with photos of homeless villagers lining up for tins of food at a makeshift camp, a tear-stained boy who, they said, had lost his entire family to the storm's fierce tidal surge, and rotten rice -- yellow, fist-size chunks of it, piled like rocks in bags donated by the government-affiliated Myanmar Red Cross.

"When I saw what they were being fed, I was shaking I was so angry," said a shop assistant, 26, narrating each photo as she passed it to a customer.

The informal organizations are often based on occupation. Artists, doctors, students and the gem dealers have formed separate groups. In other cases, the groups are made up of friends coming together to help.

A 27-year-old lawyer trainee said he and five friends were furious when they tried to distribute supplies around the ruined town of Bogalay about a week after the cyclone but were turned away by local authorities who told them they needed a permit.

"They say they are giving these things to the people, but we know they aren't," he said, pointing at a photo in the state daily newspaper, the Mirror, that showed a relief camp with neat rows of tents and tables laden with food. "We know not to believe them."

In the weeks immediately after the cyclone, a doctor recounted, he closed his private medical clinic for twice-weekly trips to the delta with others. There, they noticed local officials shooing away desperate children, many of them orphaned or suffering storm-related trauma.

So the doctors, four of whom are pediatricians, tried to entertain the children to keep their minds occupied. They held a sanitation workshop after noticing that there were no visible efforts to instruct people in basic hygiene.

"The Ministry of Health is trying, but they're not effective, not organized," the physician said.

Like many other residents, the doctor can't afford to take many more days off work, but he still meets with the group every week. He said he hopes to translate the momentum of its cyclone relief work into other efforts, operating under cover of medicine.

"I'm not political; I'm a community-based activist," the doctor said, when asked how his group could keep working and turn from cyclone relief to other activities, such as organizing debates on health care.

"Now we're seeing the time of civil society. Now thousands of small groups are helping any way they can," said a magazine editor, who pooled funds with other journalists and artists in the hope of purchasing 1,000 shortwave radios so delta survivors could receive uncensored foreign news broadcasts. In the end, the group could afford only 50 but managed to distribute them in villages.

The back page of the Mirror and the New Light of Myanmar daily tells readers that "everybody may make donations freely . . . to any person or any area." But nearly a dozen people interviewed offered firsthand or secondhand tales of confiscation or obstruction by local authorities.

A surgeon said he and his group of medical and psychology students were prevented from handing out food at a monastery near the town of Dedaye to about 1,000 refugees who had been sheltering inside. A general there wanted to be seen to hand out the food first, the surgeon said.

A lawyer said he had set out on a relief trip to the delta town of Kyunpangong with five friends, but every box of goods they brought was opened and searched in front of them.

"If I had the chance, I'd occupy the whole delta and put up a sign to the authorities that reads 'Don't come here,' " said a Rangoon monk who is active in medical work. "So many people are waiting to get aid from the government, but they're having to rely instead on private donors."

In five relief expeditions to the delta or ravaged areas around Rangoon, he said, he saw military troops and police patrolling roads or monitoring checkpoints but not once helping survivors.

Since the cyclone, three people have been arrested on charges of taking photographs of the cyclone-ravaged areas and sending them to foreign news sites, and one person for marching to the offices of the U.N. Development Program to complain about government neglect, according to a lawyer monitoring their cases.

Though some private groups are keeping up their relief efforts, others are running out of steam -- and money.

Under monsoon skies one recent afternoon, porters loaded a boat berthed in Rangoon with rattan baskets of cloth, children's pajamas and bags of rice. It was sailing to the delta under the auspices of a prominent Buddhist abbot. On its previous trip, the owners had offered the boat for free. This time, said a monk directing the loading, the owner was charging.

Nearby, in a single-room apartment, 16 current and former university students crowded around a surgeon who was writing notes on a blackboard in preparation for another crack-of-dawn trip to the delta.

Later the surgeon remarked: "I think the government made a huge mistake. If they were seen to care, people would have forgiven them for the past 20 years."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/20/AR2008062003171.html

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Burmese saved by survival instincts
21 June 2008 8:38 PM
Scotland On Sunday
SPECIAL REPORT FROM RANGOON

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

While it is estimated that the cyclone may have killed 130,000 people, the number of lives lost subsequently is much lower than at first feared, in part because of the resilience of villagers used to coping with a brutal junta.

Reports from Burma, obtained despite heavy media restrictions which don't allow this journalist to give their name, find relief workers continuing to criticise the government's secretive posture. They say the main problems include an obsession with security, restrictions on foreign aid experts, and weeks of dawdling that has left bloated bodies befouling waterways and survivors marooned with little food. But the specific character of the cyclone, the hardiness of villagers and aid efforts by private citizens have helped prevent further death and sickness, according to aid workers.

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 have said.

"We saw very, very few serious injuries," said Frank Smithuis, manager of the mission of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Burma. "You were dead or you were in OK 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 recent 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 US diplomat in 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.

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 US, France and Britain overshadowed a substantial relief operation carried out mainly by Burmese citizens and monks. They organised convoys of trucks filled with drinking water, clothing, food and construction materials that poured into the delta.

"It's been overwhelmingly impressive what local organisations, medical groups and some businessmen have done," said Ruth Bradley Jones, second secretary in the British Embassy in Rangoon, Burma's largest city. "They are the true heroes of the relief effort."

Aid workers emphasise that of the estimated 2.4 million Burmese seriously 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 MSF show that of the 30,000 people the group's workers treated in the six weeks after the cyclone, most had flesh wounds, diarrhoea or respiratory infections.

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 this 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. Itinerant people 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 Burma.

"Only people who could endure the tidal surge and high winds could survive," Kunii said. In one village of 700, all children under the age of seven 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 Burma'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. Earlier this month, 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.

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Burmese-saved-by-survival-instincts.4210686.jp

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Lost Hope: Once Glittering, Yangon Is Now a Ramshackle City of Fear
Despair and Neglect in Myanmar's Old Capital;
Locals See Spies on Every Corner
By A WALL STREET JOURNAL STAFF REPORTER
June 21, 2008;

YANGON, Myanmar -- Fifty years ago, this city was one of the bright spots of Asia, a glittering, proud capital of a newly independent nation rich with natural resources.

A World War II era bus on the streets of Yangon. Reuters

But what I saw during a recent visit was a city in shambles -- a melancholy outpost of crumbling colonial architecture, economic neglect and deepening paranoia. These problems predate Cyclone Nargis, which shook the city and villages to the south in early May, and no doubt will continue long after the disaster recedes from glare.

Once-grand ministries and British-era mansions sit abandoned or neglected, with collapsing roofs, peeling paint and smashed windows. Unemployed youths loiter about, smoking cheap cigarettes. Hawkers scratch out a living on the street selling tobacco, knickknacks and wan produce. Jury-rigged vehicles prowl the streets; one I saw was little more than an engine and fan belt attached to a wooden platform on wheels.

Soldiers are everywhere. They walk aimlessly, looking for something to do, or gather in foyers, or ride by in military vehicles. On more than one occasion, local residents warned that some people in plainclothes were "military intelligence." In the absence of more reliable information, it was impossible to know if the locals were correct, or delusional.

Getty Images Women walked to a market in a middle class township of Yangon on May 29.

Wandering on foot in the center of town, I stopped at one of the more impressive colonial structures, a four-story red-brick office with stone lions reclining along the roofline. It looked to be abandoned. Most of the windows were cracked and open to the hot, humid air.

"There's no maintenance at all," said a man in street clothes who was acting as a guard for the building, a former High Court. Although some staff still use it, he said, others moved away after 2005 when Myanmar relocated its capital to Naypyitaw, a remote town about 180 miles to the north.

I was warned by my tour guide that the man might be "military intelligence."

Later, I walked past another British landmark with ornate latticework. The tour guide said it was once a railway office. Now, the latticework is falling off and vines grow from cracks in the facade.

"What do they use the building for now?" I asked.

"Storage," my guide said.

"What do they store there?"

"Nothing."

I pulled out a video camera to take a shot. But I was told not to film the building, because it is a government office, and therefore "sensitive."

Most of the cars on the road date to the 1980s or early 1990s, and many appear to have been painted by hand. Locals say the government blocks most imports of private vehicles, so people are forced to keep dilapidated cars on the potholed roads long after their prime. According to a recent story in the Myanmar Times, the hottest cars in Yangon right now are the 1986/87 Nissan "Sunny Super Saloon" and the 1988 Toyota Corolla SE Limited.

I hired a newer, mid-1990s Hyundai, with fading black upholstery and power windows that didn't work. "You can keep a car in good condition for 30 years," said my driver cheerfully. With so few vehicles to go around, he said, used cars actually gain value over time in Myanmar, instead of depreciating as they do in most other countries. Owning a car "is the best investment there is," he said.

Cyclone Nargis has added to the woebegone air of Yangon. Although the city was spared some of the worst destruction that occurred in areas closer to the coast, felled trees nevertheless litter the place. Diplomats joked that at least now it's possible to see the city's historic buildings more clearly, since so many trees were uprooted or destroyed.

Crews of soldiers were busy clearing the debris, but many seemed more interested in hanging out than working. One group of a dozen or so uniformed young men sat glumly along the trunk of a giant dead tree, smoking cigarettes while one soldier gave another a haircut.

Hard-Hit Economy

The cyclone made a marginal economy even weaker. At the Scott Market, a warren of tin-roofed storefronts popular with tourists, vendor after vendor said business was lousy, and had slowed even more since the storm. One young woman proffering bright blue, red and green longyis, or Myanmar-style sarongs, said she hadn't sold anything all day.

Only about 200,000 of Myanmar's 48 million people have working mobile phones. Residents say the government controls the issuance of SIM cards and prices them beyond most budgets. Although there are 100 or so Internet cafes in Yangon -- typically located in dark, narrow storefronts -- they rely on agonizingly slow connections and require generators to offset constant power outages.

International aid workers continue to operate in Yangon, though not as many as would normally be present in the aftermath of a natural disaster because the government has refused to grant many visas. Most of the aid workers hang out at the Traders Hotel, a bunkerlike building more than 20 stories high where many nongovernmental organizations from the West also now maintain offices.

During the day, the foreigners gather in the lobby; at night, they retire to the bar, which looks a bit like an airport lounge, with too much light, a dart board, and a menu that includes fish and chips, nachos and chicken burgers.

Aid workers said they were saddened by the low standard of living, the restrictions imposed by the government, and their own lack of access to cyclone areas. Several were convinced the hotel's rooms, and the main lobby area, were bugged by the ever-present "military intelligence."

At times, the notion of an all-powerful military with spies on every corner seemed almost laughable. One afternoon I drove past the Shwedagon Pagoda, a majestic golden stupa that is one of the most famous sites in Myanmar. On my left, two soldiers in uniform sputtered by in a ramshackle red Toyota sedan that looked like it had been built in the early 1980s. As they passed, I noticed two teddy bears in the rear windshield.

Whether spies are everywhere or not, it doesn't matter; local residents believe they are being watched, and that is all that counts. The government continues to arrest citizens who are openly critical of the regime, and it sends messages to residents through state media. The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper, for example, had an article warning that "unscrupulous elements" were spreading misinformation about the government's response to Cyclone Nargis.

Censorship boards decide what's shown in movie theaters, locals say. Two films were advertised along Yangon's main thoroughfare: "Aliens vs. Predator 2 -- Requiem" and "Fight Club," an Indian import bearing the same name as a Brad Pitt film.

Sanctions from the West have taken their toll, too. Among other things, they prevent U.S. banks from doing business in Myanmar. As a result, it's very difficult to use a U.S. credit card. The city functions primarily on cash; residents must carry fat wads of local currency, known as kyat. Or, they can use U.S. dollars -- but not just any greenbacks. All bills must be new and free of marks, tears or other blemishes; otherwise, they won't be accepted.

While browsing at a streetside bookseller one day, I picked out a laminated hardback titled "The New Burma," published by the Economic and Social Board of the Government of the Union of Burma in 1954. Written after Burma gained independence from Britain, but before the military came into power, it outlined bold goals for economic development, including a futuristic new engineering college and huge investments in electrical power, ports, railways and health care. A cartoon showed tractors replacing elephants for hauling lumber.

The book proudly suggested that Yangon -- or Rangoon as it then was known -- would someday have as many telephones per person as Tokyo. No one would compare Yangon to Tokyo now.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121397015528891857.html

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