Myanmar cyclone toll rises to 138,000

Myanmar cyclone toll rises to 138,000
24 June, 2008

YANGON (Reuters) - More than 138,000 are dead or missing from the devastating cyclone that struck Myanmar last month, the government said on Tuesday, according to an Asian diplomat.

Deputy Foreign Minister Kyaw Thu informed a meeting of government and foreign aid workers the official death toll from the May 2 disaster had risen to 84,537 from a previous figure of 77,738, the diplomat told Reuters.

The number of missing fell to 53,836 from 55,917 announced by the government in its last casualty update on May 16.

Nearly two months after Cyclone Nargis left up to 2.4 million people destitute, a joint assessment team has recently completed its work and a new appeal for foreign aid is expected in July.

Myanmar evicts cyclone victims from schools; disallow US aid

Myanmar evicts cyclone victims from schools

Jun 04, 2008
AFP

HLAING THAYAR (Myanmar) - AFTER Cyclone Nargis destroyed their home, Ms Htay Win and her two daughters found shelter in the classrooms of a nearby school on the outskirts of Myanmar's former capital Yangon.

But late last week, authorities forced them to move back to the ruins of their home, and then said the two daughters should return on Monday for classes.

Her daughters, longing for some semblance of normalcy in the routine of a school day, begged her to let them go.

So she went to a money lender to borrow the US$5.50 (S$7.50) she needs for school fees. Ms Htay Win is supposed to pay him back at the end of the month, plus 20 per cent interest.

'I have no choice. I have to find a way to give my daughters an education,' she said.

'But I have nothing. I am a widow, and my house was destroyed by the storm. I already had to get a loan to build a bamboo tent where my house used to be,' the 42-year-old vegetable seller told AFP.

'We just got two tins of rice from the township authorities today. Apart from that, the authorities have not given anything to us.

'Some private donors came to donate things to storm victims, but the authorities stopped them,' she said.

Ms Htay Win's family were among 400 hungry and homeless storm victims forced to leave the No.2 Basic Education Middle School on Friday, according to a teacher here.

The lucky ones had a bit of tarpaulin to make a tent, but most had nothing, she said.

The authorities insisted that schools around Yangon open on schedule on Monday after a long holiday, despite the cyclone that left 133,600 dead or missing, with 2.4 million people in need of food, shelter and medicine.

Schools not ready
Schools in the hardest-hit regions of the Irrawaddy Delta have been given another month to open, but Unicef says 3,000 schools were wiped out by the cyclone. About 500,000 children have no classrooms at all.

At this middle school, flies now swarm through the three-storey building, with classrooms reeking of human waste. There has been no sanitation since the cyclone hit one month ago.

Teachers fear for their students' health, but their fear of defying the military authorities is even greater.

'My school isn't clean enough. I worry for the children's health. We need to spray disinfectant around the school. We hope the Doctors Without Borders or World Vision will help,' the teacher said.

Only about half of the school's 870 students showed up for class this week.

'Many parents can't afford to send their children to school, because they don't have enough money. I feel so sad for my pupils,' another teacher said.

'Many parents told me that they went to money-lenders for their school fees, even with the very high interest rates. I told the children they can come to school even if they don't have the right uniforms,' she said.

Some of the children have been sent to work instead.

No money for school
Ms San San Khaing, a 30-year-old fish seller, said she has sent her 14-year-old daughter to work in a factory after their home was destroyed in the storm.

'I can't afford to educate my eldest daughter any more. I am sending the younger one to school, by borrowing the money at 20 per cent interest. We are surviving on my eldest daughter's wages,' she said.

'I hope she will go back to school next year,' she said. 'But I'm lucky enough to send one daughter to school,' she added.

Cyclone victims around Hlaing Thayar, a crippling poor neighbourhood on Yangon's outskirts, said the military has stopped private donors from delivering supplies here, even though state media loudly proclaim everyday that anyone is free to make donations everywhere.

'The local authorities have given us seven potatoes. Three were already rotten. I have seven family members. What I am supposed to do with that?' said Ms Khin Cho, a 43-year-old mother living in a homemade tent.

'They always try to stop the private donors,' she said. 'What's the result? We get nothing.' -- AFP

---

U.S. ships abort Myanmar mission

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- U.S. Navy ships are leaving Myanmar after failing to get the junta's permission to unload aid to "ease the suffering of hundreds of thousands" of cyclone survivors, the top U.S. military commander in the Pacific said Tuesday.

U.S. ships steam in formation off the coast of Myanmar on May 23.

Word of the aborted mercy mission comes even as the United Nations warned that a month after the cyclone swept through Myanmar, more than 1 million people still don't have adequate food, water or shelter and junta policies are hindering relief efforts.

Adm. Timothy Keating ordered the vessels to leave the Myanmar area Thursday, after the U.S. made at least 15 attempts to convince Myanmar's leaders to allow ships, helicopters and landing craft to offload their aid.

Myanmar's state media has said that it feared a U.S. invasion aimed at seizing the country's oil deposits. But the junta has also forbidden use of military helicopters from friendly neighboring nations, which are vital in rushing supplies to isolated survivors.

Keating, in a news release from Honolulu, said the USS Essex and accompanying ships would return if Myanmar's leaders change their minds.

"I am both saddened and frustrated to know that we have been in a position to help ease the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people and help mitigate further loss of life, but have been unable to do so because of the unrelenting position of the Burma military junta," Keating said. Myanmar is also known as Burma.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday that Myanmar's obstruction of international efforts to help cyclone victims cost "tens of thousands of lives."

Humanitarian groups say they continue to face hurdles from Myanmar's military government in sending disaster experts and vital equipment into the country. As a result, only a trickle of aid is reaching the storm's estimated 2.4 million survivors, leaving many without even basic relief.

Aid groups are unable to provide 1.1 million survivors with sufficient food and clean water, while trying to prevent a second wave of deaths from malnutrition and disease, the U.N. said in its latest assessment report that circulated Tuesday.

Of the 1.3 million people who are getting help, most have been "reached with inconsistent levels of assistance," the U.N. said.

"There remains a serious lack of sufficient and sustained humanitarian assistance for the affected populations," the report said.

It also said the world body lacked "a clear understanding of the support being provided by the Government of Myanmar to its people."

It's shocking that cyclone victims still need basic relief after four weeks, said Sarah Ireland, regional director of the British aid organization Oxfam, which is trying to get permission to work in Myanmar.

"If we were in a normal response by week four, those affected should be working toward recovery," she said Monday. "They would be in a position perhaps to think about what they need to restart their lives. But we know people on the ground don't have food to eat."

Tidal surges as high as 12 feet reached some 25 miles inland, as the cyclone churned through the country for two days beginning May 2. The storm laid entire villages in the Irrawaddy delta to waste and left 78,000 people dead and another 56,000 missing, according to the government's count.But the relief has yet to match the scale of the disaster.

A big obstacle in providing relief has been reaching the delta. The U.N.'s World Food Program has chartered helicopters to deliver aid to the hard-hit area, said Paul Risley, a spokesman for the agency in Bangkok, after the government refused to allow military helicopters in.

Ordinarily, in large scale disasters -- such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and Pakistan's 2005 earthquake -- military helicopters are used to meet the massive immediate emergency requirements, he said.

But the WFP is facing a 64 percent shortfall of its $70 million appeal to fund the operation, and Risley warned that expenses are skyrocketing, due in large part to the reliance on the chartered choppers and other logistical hurdles. He indicated that with two months left in the appeal, the agency would likely meet the target.

Myanmar was only able to supply seven helicopters to the WFP, and the organization chartered 10 privately owned choppers and ship them to Bangkok. The Canadian and Australian governments ferried some of the helicopters, but the WFP spent "roughly $1 million" to bring three from Uganda, Risley said.

Only one helicopter has arrived in Myanmar so far, heading to the Irrawaddy delta on Monday. The other nine are in Thailand and "ready to fly," Risley said.

Thus far, most relief supplies have been transported along dirt roads and by boat. Vessels able to navigate the debris-filled canals are scarce and efforts to import trucks and other vehicles have been hampered by governmental red tape.

"For aid agencies it is very important that those affected receive a full complement of appropriate aid," said James East, a spokesman for World Vision, a private aid agency operating in Myanmar even before the disaster. "To say that a certain percentage of people have received aid means little because some survivors may have received a tarpaulin but no food and vice versa."

Stories have emerged of survivors going days without food or being forced to drink from dirty canals. The Associated Press has interviewed survivors in recent days who still have not received any government or international assistance and turned to the country's revered monks for help.

Human rights groups have also accused Myanmar's military rulers of kicking homeless cyclone survivors out of camps, schools and monasteries and sending them back to their devastated villages to help restore the country's agriculture sector.

"It's unconscionable for Burma's generals to force cyclone victims back to their devastated homes," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Claiming a 'return to normalcy' is no basis for returning people to greater misery and possible death."

Myanmar's xenophobic military regime left survivors to largely fend for themselves. It barred foreigners from the delta until last week.

The lack of foreign experts in the field has meant a chaotic and uneven aid effort, aid organizations said. Without them, it is nearly impossible to asses needs of survivors or set up systems that would now be in place in a normal disaster response, the groups said.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies waited until Monday for government approval to send six foreign experts into the field to help run its water treatment facilities. Until now, it has been able to provide only 5,000 people each day with clean water.

"It was much easier to get medical supplies, clean water, engineers and psychological consultants into the field in (Indonesia's Aceh province) within the first month," IFRC spokesman France Hurtubise said. "Human resources and expertise remain a challenge in Myanmar." Aceh was one of the hardest hit by the 2004 tsunami.

Sikh aid group in Malaysia bring food to 2,400 Nargis-hit people

Sikh aid group in Malaysia bring food to 2,400 Nargis-hit people
Malaysia Sun
Tuesday 3rd June, 2008
(ANI)

Yangon, June 3 : United Sikhs Myanmar Disaster Relief, an aid group based in Malaysia, has been distributing rations to the victims of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar through 70 local volunteers.

United Sikhs' project coordinator Harbinder Singh, and operations director Sunil Singh were in Myanmar for six days touring affected areas in the districts of Myaungmya and Labutta.

Star Online also quoted that foreigners are not allowed into the delta area.

A large shipment of dry foodstuff and water has been sent to Yangon to be distributed to displaced people in the Irrawaddy delta with the co-operation of local non-government organisations in Myanmar.

Malaysians donated the items following the United Sikhs' appeal of one bag of rice per family.

The United Sikhs organisation also set up a community kitchen and distributed prepared pulao (a cooked meal of rice, vegetables and lentils) daily to around 2,400 persons.

Sunday June 1, 2008 MYT 7:42:43 PM

Najib to Myanmar: Let Asean military help Nargis victims

By NELSON BENJAMIN

SINGAPORE: The Asean military should be allowed to play a greater role in relief efforts in Myanmar to avert a human tragedy of the highest proportion, said Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

He said while Asean countries respected the sovereignty of a particular nation, it was important for the group to play a bigger role as according to sources, the scale of tragedy unfolding in Myanmar could be bigger than the 2004 tsunami.

Najib reiterated that the military would be effective in terms of disaster relief, including dispatching helicopters and boats.

“We have proven our involvement is strictly of a humanitarian nature.

“We did not have any other agenda when sending our military into various disaster stricken areas in past,” he said, adding that Asean was willing to provide more assistance if permitted by the Myanmar Government.

Najib described the latest situation as an “acid test” for Asean on how member countries responded when one of its members had a real crisis or emergency.

“It is important for us to show the world that as an association, Asean has come a long way,” he said, adding that the grouping had never antagonised any government.

“No one is blaming Myanmar for the tragedy as this could have happened to any country, but Asean and the world now wants to know what you are going to do about it,” Najib added.

He said it was not just about getting aid to Yangon but also distributing aid to tiny communities that were cut off and starving.

“If you do not have good logistical support, the aid you are giving will only be lying in the warehouses,” he said at the Shangri-la Dialogue, a high level security forum, on Sunday.

The annual security summit of defence officials, now in its seventh year, saw the participation of 27 countries, including the United States, China and Myanmar.

In his speech, Najib stressed that traditional relief mechanisms involving government, and business and volunteer organisations had been found to be inefficient or ineffective when dealing with crises involving an entire nation.

He said challenges of this magnitude, like the disaster that hit Myanmar, required a more comprehensive and dynamic approach.

To address the problem, Najib suggested that the military be recognised as a critical component in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

He said the establishment of the Asean coordinating centre for humanitarian assistance on disaster management could also provide the leadership for regional response.

'Race against Time' to Plant Burma Rice Crop

'Race against Time' to Plant Burma Rice Crop

By REUTERS Thursday, May 29, 2008

With their rice paddies drenched in sea water and cattle gone, farmers in Burma's cyclonehit Irrawaddy delta are struggling against huge odds to plant a new crop to avoid long-term food shortages.

"We have only until June to plant the main rice crop," one farmer said in the village of Paw Kahyan Lay, 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Rangoon.

"Our fields are flooded with salt-water and we have no water buffalo to plough with," the 47-year-old said, standing with his daughter in the ruins of their home. The 12-foot (3.5-metre) sea surge from Cyclone Nargis on May flooded over a million acres of arable land in southwest Burma, state media said on Wednesday, and killed more than 280,000 cattle and water buffalo.

The ruling generals' main mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar, said there was an urgent need for tractors, power tillers, seed, fertilizer and fuel for the "timely cultivation in stormaffected areas".

Burma has appealed for US $243 million in aid to get rice farmers back on the land, and $20 million for new livestock.

The June planting, watered by the seasonal monsoon rains, produces the main rice crop in the delta, the "rice bowl of the Asia" in the days when Burma administered as part of the British empire.

A smaller summer harvest between December and March relies on irrigation and is not as critical as the June harvest, 80 percent of which is exported, mostly to Sri Lanka.

International aid groups and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that while farmers faced near-impossible odds to get the crop in, they might be able to manage just enough to get by.

"If they can grow one acre of rice, that will be enough to provide for domestic needs until the end of the year," said Brien Agland, who heads relief efforts for CARE in Burma.

The UN estimates that 2.4 million people were severely affected by the cyclone, which also left 134,000 dead or missing, and says it may have to feed 750,000 people for months.

In the next three weeks, aid agencies face the huge task of finding seeds for new crops, draining saltwater from paddies, buying salt-tolerant rice varieties and bringing in buffaloes to plough fields.

"We will find animals in Myanmar [Burma], but they then have to be tamed to plough fields and that isn't easy," Agland said.

They are also competing against shattered infrastructure and the stifling bureaucracy of a military that has been in power for 46 years.

The only lucky break will be if the torrential rains of the last two weeks have washed out much of the saltwater from fields, as happened after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

"We are racing against the clock," a FAO spokesman said. "But we hope that the ground at least may not be that bad. It has been raining hard and we hope much of the salt has been washed away."

Surreal - Inside Myanmar's capital

Surreal - Inside Myanmar's capital

Lorna tan

Jun 01, 2008
The Straits Times

Nyapyidaw - Even a calamity the size of Cyclone Nargis has not stopped construction in the newly built Myanmar capital of Naypyidaw.

The junta's rising Shangri-La of officialdom contrasts starkly with the misery in the rest of the country.

A small group of foreign journalists got a rare glimpse of the city recently after UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon met the junta's leader, General Than Shwe, in his palatial compound.

The journey began with a one-hour flight aboard a chartered government plane from Yangon, the former capital known as Rangoon. From the airport, it was a 40-minute drive on a Los Angeles-style eight-lane highway - the widest and smoothest road in the country - to Gen Than Shwe's opulent meeting room.

Virtually no cars or people were seen, aside from workers hand-sweeping the roadside.

Entering the city required passage through a fenced checkpoint along the highway. The capital has 24-hour electricity, a rarity in Myanmar.

Soldiers greeted the VIP motorcade with salutes as it moved along the main road, passing sprawling new golf courses and resorts with signs like 'The Thingaha - uber cool'. Few people were spotted anywhere.

Inside one resort, wellgroomed waiters served cool green melon drinks. At another stop, the group was offered a buffet of seafood, noodles and other local fare on elegant wooden tables. The five-star luxury hotels featured circular driveways, gleaming fountains, shady foyers and sunny pools.

The capital, segregated into military and civilian districts, is surrounded by hills believed to hold a hive of bunkers.

Inside the military area were a shopping mall, a high school built like a fortress and a stadium described by one local official as 'a training ground for parading'. International reporters are rarely allowed into the country, except to cover the annual military parade.

A sightseeing tour of half-built government buildings led through a massive construction site of unfinished Soviet-style facades. Workers lined up to wave at the passing UN diplomats and foreign press.

There was also little sign of life near some of the city's 1,200 new four-storey apartment complexes. The authorities, however, insist that nearly one million people now live in the city.

Few people are allowed phones inside their homes, and the city has no cellphone service - military officials use walkie-talkies to communicate.

Once at Gen Than Shwe's pillared compound, armed guards greeted the group of foreign visitors, leading them through a two-storey entrance hall that opened onto a 4.6m rock sculpture topped with a serene alpine mural.

Gen Than Shwe and the UN chief sat side by side on throne-like chairs with floral upholstery, separated by a bouquet of pink and white flowers and a silver tea set. Chandeliers and ceiling-high depictions of golden pagodas adorned the room.

The generals clearly imagine their city as a place of royal grandeur.

Enormous statues of ancient Burmese kings line the military parade grounds, and work is under way on a replica of Yangon's famed Shwedagon Pagoda, the country's holiest Buddhist shrine. Naypyidaw means 'abode of kings' in Burmese.

AP, AFP

In desperate times, Burmese turn to their monks

In desperate times, Burmese turn to their monks

International Herald Tribune

Friday, May 30, 2008

KUN WAN, Myanmar: It is a scene Myanmar's ruling generals are unlikely to see played out for themselves: As a convoy of trucks carrying relief supplies, led by Buddhist monks, passed through storm-devastated villages, hungry children and homeless mothers bowed in supplication and respect.

"When I see those people, I want to cry," said Sitagu Sayadaw, 71, one of Myanmar's most respected senior monks.

At his makeshift clinic in this village near Bogalay, an Irrawaddy Delta town 120 kilometers, or 75 miles, southwest of Yangon, hundreds of villagers left destitute by Cyclone Nargis arrive each day seeking the assistance they have not received from the junta or international aid workers.

They paddle for hours on the stormy river, or carry their sick parents on their backs through the mud and rain - all traveling from kilometers around to reach the one source of help they know they can always depend on: Buddhist monks.

The May 3 cyclone left more than 134,000 dead or missing and 2.4 million survivors grappling with hunger and homelessness. Recently, people who had taken shelter at monasteries or gathered on roadsides waiting for aid to arrive were being displaced again, this time by the junta, which wants them to stop being an embarrassment to the government and return to their villages "for reconstruction." UN officials said Friday that refugees were also being evicted from government-run camps.

But they have little left of their homes and find themselves almost as exposed to the elements there as their mud-coated water buffaloes. Meanwhile, outside aid is slow to arrive, with foreign aid agencies gaining only incremental access to the hard-hit Irrawaddy Delta and the government impounding cars of some private Burmese donors.

"In my entire life, I have never seen a hospital. I don't know where the government office is. I can't buy anything in the market because I lost everything to the cyclone," said Thi Dar. "So I came to the monk."

With tears welling in her eyes, the 45-year-old woman pressed her hands together in respect before the first monk she saw at Sitagu's clinic and told her story. The other eight members of her family were killed in the cyclone. She now felt suicidal but no longer had anyone to talk with. The other day, word reached her village that a monk had opened a clinic 10 kilometers upriver. So on Thursday, she got up early and caught the first boat going upstream.

Nay Lin, 36, a volunteer doctor at the Kun Wan clinic, one of the six emergency clinic shelters Sitagu has opened in the delta, said: "Our patients suffer from infected wounds, abdominal pains and vomiting. They also need counseling for mental trauma, anxiety and depression."

Since the cyclone, the Burmese have become even closer to the monks while their alienation from the junta grows. This bodes ill for the government, which brutally cracked down on thousands of monks when they took to the streets last September appealing to the generals to improve conditions for the people.

Village after storm-hit village, it is clear who has won people's hearts.

Some monks died with people in the storm. Now, others console the survivors while sharing their muddy squalor.

While the government has been criticized for obstructing the relief effort, the Buddhist monastery, the traditional center of moral authority in most villages here, proved to be the one institution people could rely on for help.

Monasteries in the delta - those still standing after the storm - were clogged with refugees. People went there with donations or as volunteers. Monasteries that served as religious centers, orphanages and homes for the elderly were now also shelters for the homeless.

"The monks' role is more important than ever," said Ar Sein Na, 46, a monk in the delta village of That Kyar. "In a time of immense suffering like this, people have nowhere to go except to monks."

Kyi Than, 38, said she had traveled 25 kilometers by boat to Sitagu's camp.

"Our village monk died during the storm. I felt so good today having my first chance to talk to a monk since the storm. Monks are like parents to us," she said. "The government wants us to shut up, but monks listen to us."

Faced with the country's deadliest natural disaster in recent memory, senior monks have organized their own relief campaigns.

Every day, their convoys head down delta roads. A leading figure in these efforts is Sitagu, whose name invariably draws words of reverence or a thumbs-up sign here.

"Meditation cannot remove this disaster. Material support is very important now," Sitagu said. "Now in our country, spiritual and material support are unbalanced."

Trucks of rice, beans, onions, clothes, tarpaulins and cooking utensils, donated from all over Myanmar, pulled into Sitagu's International Buddhist Missionary Center in Yangon from early morning on. Each day, shortly after dawn, a convoy of trucks or a barge on the Yangon River departs for the delta, loaded with relief supplies and volunteers.

Among villagers here, Sitagu appeared to command as much authority as the pope among Roman Catholics. As he sat on a wooden bench in his field headquarters, people lined up to pay their respects. Villagers came to present lists of their most urgent needs. Monks from outlying villages came asking for help to repair their temples. Rich families from towns knelt before him and donated bundles of cash.

However, like other senior monks here he must strike a careful balance. He has the moral duty to speak out on behalf of his suffering people but he must also protect his social programs and hospitals, which provide free medical care to the destitute in a country whose government views such private undertakings as a reproof.

But, speaking at his shelter as an afternoon monsoon rain drummed against the roof, Sitagu sounded frustrated with the government.

"In my country, I cannot see a real political leader. General Than Shwe's 'Burmese way to democracy?"' he said, referring to the junta's top leader. "What is it?"

He defended the monks' uprising last September, saying the government's failures to provide "material stability" for the people undermined the monks' ability to provide "spiritual stability."

Among monks interviewed in the delta and Yangon, there was no sign of imminent organized protests.

Still, a 40-year-old monk at Sitagu's camp said that "monks are very angry" about the government's recent move to evict refugees from monasteries, roadside huts and other temporary shelters, even while the state-run media are filled with stories of government relief efforts. "The government doesn't want to show the truth."

A young monk in the Chaukhtatgyi Paya monastery district in Yangon predicted trouble ahead. "You will see it again because everyone is angry and everyone is jobless," said the monk, who said he joined the September "saffron revolution" and had a large gash over his right eye from a soldier's beating to show for it.

A monk from Mon State in southern Myanmar, who was visiting the delta to assess the damage and arrange an aid shipment, said: "For the government, these people are no more than dead animals in the fields."

The simmering confrontation between the two pillars of Myanmar life today - the military and the Buddhist clergy - was evident at the village level after the cyclone.

Shortly after the storm, a monk in Myo Thit, a village 30 kilometers from Yangon, walked around with a loudspeaker inviting victims to his monastery and asking people to donate. The monk had to stop, villagers said, after a township leader affiliated with the government threatened to confiscate the loudspeaker.

The interdependence between monks and lay people is age-old. Monks receive alms - food, medicine, clothes, cash to buy books - from the laity. In return, they offer spiritual comfort. In villages without government schools, a monastic education is often the only one available for children.

"There is a relationship of reciprocity between monks and the lay people," said Desmond Chou, a Burmese-born scholar of comparative religion in New Delhi. "If a fire breaks out in a Myanmar village, it is usually the monks, not firefighters, who arrive first to rescue the people."

Myanmar lashes out at foreign aid, says survivors can eat frogs

Myanmar lashes out at foreign aid, says survivors can eat frogs

May 30, 2008
AFP

YANGON - MYANMAR'S ruling junta lashed out at foreign aid donors on Friday, saying cyclone victims did not need supplies of 'chocolate bars' and could instead survive by eating frogs and fish.

The New Light of Myanmar newspaper, a government mouthpiece, also warned that foreign relief workers could snoop inside homes, and condemned donors for linking aid money to full access to the hardest-hit regions in the Irrawaddy Delta.

The tirade came as the junta tightened its political grip on the country, extending democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest and announcing that its new constitution has been enacted.

The regime says the charter will pave the way for democratic elections in two years, but dissidents say it will only enshrine military rule.

Despite the harsh statements in official media, aid agencies say they have had some success in receiving visas and securing access to the delta, which suffered the brunt of the May 2 to 3 storm that left 133,000 dead or missing.

An assessment team from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) was set to arrive in Yangon on Friday for a nearly two-week mission to determine how best to help the 2.4 million survivors in desperate need of food, shelter and medicine.

After several days of praising the work of the United Nations and charities, the regime's official newspaper renewed its attacks on foreign aid and insisted Myanmar could survive without outside help.

'The government and the people are like parents and children,' the paper said. 'We, all the people, were pleased with the efforts of the government.'

The paper said that granting free access for aid workers in the delta means donors 'are to be given permission to inspect all the houses thoroughly at will'.

Myanmar needs US$11 billion (S$15 billion) to recover from the storm, but donors have pledged just US$150 million so far, it said.

'Myanmar people are capable enough of rising from such natural disasters even if they are not provided with international assistance,' the newspaper said.

'Myanmar people can easily get fish for dishes by just fishing in the fields and ditches,' the paper said.

'In the early monsoon, large edible frogs are abundant. The people (of the Irrawaddy delta) can survive with self-reliant efforts even if they are not given chocolate bars from (the) international community,' it added.

No aid agencies are known to have actually provided chocolate bars to victims of Cyclone Nargis, which struck the impoverished country four weeks ago.

The UN's World Food Programme gives rice, beans and special high-energy biscuits designed to provide nutrition to people without regular food supplies.

The United Nations estimates that about one million people in the delta are still without emergency aid.

The official newspaper also took a swipe at a world monetary organisation for refusing to give aid - apparently a reference to the World Bank, which has said no loans could be given because Myanmar has not been repaying its debts.

It also criticised countries for maintaining sanctions on the regime despite the cyclone devastation.

'Do such countries really have humanitarian spirit?' the paper said.

It was apparently referring to the US, which renewed sanctions on the regime two weeks after the storm, accusing the military junta of suppressing the pro-democracy movement.

The US has insisted the sanctions will not affect humanitarian aid, which US military planes have helped deliver into the country. -- AFP

Aid for Myanmar

This article "Better material than cash aid for Myanmar" while true to some extent with regards to the junta and their reluctance to accept outside help, the reasoning provided by the writer is slightly off-line. But first of all, let me say that when a country or someone is facing a crisis such as a cyclone or earthquake or any other disaster, the victims cannot be called "beggars". This is totally irresponsible and uncalled for. They may need help and you can help if you want (if you dan't want to help it is also fine) but they are not beggars! Junta is not the luckiest government, they are an irresponsible government. They do not want their victims to feel that foreigners can do a better job in aid than their own government. They want to be in power forever, like most governments, but in most unpopular ways. It is because of the compassion of the foreigners that they coax the junta to allow them to help the victims, despite knowing very well who the juntas are. Last but not least, there happen to have other means of helping the Myanmar victims, eg. Tzu Chi organisation, The Firefly Mission (http://www.fireflymission.org/) and the International Red Cross (see Aid groups prepare to test Myanmar access below) who provide aid by personally seeing to it that they get the help they need, money, food, drinking water, tools to rebuild their home, anything that money can buy. Their actions are noble and they are definitely helpful!! These groups of people are action-base, not analytical.


Better material than cash aid for Myanmar

(Malaysian Insider) MAY 26 — Money may not be the only thing in this world but it does make a lot of people happy, including the junta of Myanmar. But keeping the junta happy is not what I have in mind when I want to help the people of Myanmar.

We may have forgotten that Cyclone Nargis took tens of thousand of lives in the Irrawaddy Delta just weeks ago. With the season finale of American Idol, Akademi Fantasi and the loss of sovereignty over a rock or two to Singapore a few days ago, who can blame us? There are far more important things going on with our lives than anything that happens in the delta.

But if we actually cared a little about the victims of Nargis, we would remember that the junta placed restrictions on foreign aid. The junta even refused aid from relief groups, stating that they preferred government-to-government transactions.

The junta of Myanmar must be the luckiest government in the world because it can afford to become a chooser in a time when it really should be a beggar. Unbelievably, it took some coaxing by governments of other countries before the junta actually relented and allowed its own people to be helped. Even then, aid workers were barred from entering the country.

To think that other governments cared more about a person than the person's government really reflects badly on a government.

Aid eventually crept in but as the blankets, medicine, food and cash got into Myanmar, there were reports that the junta packaged the aid as if it were provided by the junta. But I suppose, if the aid gets to the victims, it does not matter. Black cat, white cat: whichever catches the mouse is a good cat.

There were also reports that some of the aid was redirected to the family members of those within the junta. The French had foreseen this by initially offering a small amount of aid and said they did not believe the junta had the trustworthiness to manage the aid. I share the skepticism of the French government.

In many cases, money transfer is a superior method of giving aid when compared to transfer in kind. Money transfer has the potential of improving the receivers' welfare much more than what material goods can ever do. This is especially so when the receivers know exactly what they need while donors are unfamiliar with the local environment.

Money, after all, is the most generally accepted medium of exchange. It is usually harder for a person to barter blanket for food because the double coincidence of wants has to occur first before that transaction can take place. This is true for many situations, including the one involving fuel subsidy in Malaysia. Money transferred to those the authority wishes to help is a better policy in enhancing welfare than material transfer.

Money or cash transfer, however, does suffer from a problem called moral hazard. In the case of Myanmar, the donors may want to help cyclone victims buy food, blanket and rebuild their livelihood. But with little ability to oversee how it is actually spent, the victims may use the money to buy cigarettes or something less useful in improving their welfare.

Money transfer may also not be as useful in Myanmar as in other places in peaceful times. Disasters, especially the major ones, tend to push prices up as distribution channels suffer damage, causing supply problems. Add to the increased demand, prices will rocket, hence reducing its purchasing power.

Prices shot up in Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and it surely is happening in the Irrawaddy. Some people derisively called it scalping but I call it economics. Regardless, donation in kind overcomes the problem of weaker purchasing power that money donation will suffer.

And, just as how the French had expressed their skepticism, the junta cannot be trusted with money.

Now, there are caring Malaysian organisations out there that seek to alleviate the suffering of those in Myanmar by sending money over directly. Noble but their actions could prove unhelpful.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams is a young participant of the local labour market.

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Homeless Burmese lining up to receive candy and medicine from an overseas donator at a monastery serving as a temporary shelter for cyclone victims on the outskirts of Yangon, Myanmar, Monday. The International Red Cross said at least 1.5 million people, many of them hungry and ailing, remained homeless in the rain-swept Irrawaddy delta. (The Associated Press)

Aid groups prepare to test Myanmar access

The Associated Press
May 26, 2008

YANGON, Myanmar: International aid agencies prepared Monday to test the Myanmar junta's promises to allow their workers greater access to the estimated 2.4 million people affected by Cyclone Nargis.

Myanmar's leaders have virtually barred foreign relief workers and international agencies from the delta since the storm struck May 3. But the UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, said Friday that the junta chief, Senior General Than Shwe, had agreed that international aid workers would be able "to freely reach the needy people."

Aid organizations immediately began planning to send foreign teams into the Irrawaddy Delta and to resubmit visa applications for staffers who had previously been rejected.

Official estimates put the death toll at about 78,000, with another 56,000 missing, though international aid agencies say the toll could be much higher, especially if aid continues to be blocked.

"Now, if we can get these experts out, we can start putting in place the water purification machines, warehousing and the other things that we need, and this operation can quickly scale up," Richard Horsey, a spokesman for the UN humanitarian operation, said in Bangkok. "By quickly scale up, I mean that in the coming days we can start to reach all of those that need to be reached."

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it had started negotiations with the government on allowing three teams with a total of six aid workers into the delta.

"We're hoping to get those teams in the field to start providing fresh water to the people," said France Hurtubise, the group's spokeswoman.

The UN has estimated about 42 percent of the 2.4 million people affected by the storm had received some kind of emergency assistance. But only 23 percent of the two million people living in the 15 worst-affected townships had been reached. The International Red Cross said Monday that at least 1.5 million people, many of them hungry and ailing, remained homeless in the delta.

Ban's mission to knock down Myanmar's barriers yielded some results Sunday, when 51 donor nations meeting in Yangon offered more than $100 million to help the country recover from the cyclone. But the donors warned the ruling generals that the aid is contingent on access to the hardest-hit areas.

Myanmar's leaders and potential donors continued to take a guarded tone Monday. The Myanmar prime minister, Lieutenant General Thein Sein, said that only civilian vessels could take part in the aid operation and that they would have to go through Yangon.

That seemed to nullify plans for U.S., British and French warships that have been waiting for more than a week off Myanmar's coast to join in the relief operation. The French government said it planned to unload 1,000 tons of humanitarian supplies aboard its vessel in Thailand and turn it over to the United Nations for transfer to Myanmar.

Myanmar has estimated economic damage from the storm at about $11 billion. Ban has said that the relief operation would last at least six months.

Children in the sole item of international aid - a tent donated by Russia - in the remote Irrawaddy Delta village of That Kyar (or "Friday"). (International Herald Tribune)

Burmese villagers had little, and lost it all

International Herald Tribune

Monday, May 26, 2008

THAT KYAR VILLAGE, Myanmar: Sitting dejectedly in a hut surrounded by the debris and stench that are the aftermath of the powerful cyclone that struck here three weeks ago, Then Khin, 70, reflected on the grim task of rebuilding what is left of her family and their home.

Since Cyclone Nargis devastated the area May 3, this isolated village in the Irrawaddy Delta has been all but ignored by the junta. As of this past weekend, it had yet to be reached by international relief workers.

Then Khin lost 15 family members when Nargis swept through. For those in the family who survived, life is a litany of woes and the recovery has only just begun.

A 29-year-old grandson of Then Khin has gone insane, wandering day and night through the fields looking for his wife and son, both of them swept away by the furious floodwaters that came with the cyclone.

Her eldest granddaughter, Thit Khine, 31, who lost her husband and both her children, remains haunted by the memory of her 2-year-old daughter, Thwe Tar, who was clinging to her mother's neck when the storm snatched her away.

Still another grandchild of Then Khin, a 14-year-old girl named Myint Myint Kyi, lost her ability to speak for two days after losing all of her immediate family: both her parents and her 7-year-old twin brothers. When she finally came to, she was a different girl, no longer interested in school.

"I am sad," the girl said, with tears streaming down her cheeks, while her grandmother wiped away her own tears. "Come next month, I was supposed to take my twin brothers to school with me."

For people like Then Khin's family, for those who live in the isolated, outlying hamlets of the delta, putting their lives back together after Nargis has been a sad affair - and a struggle that international aid workers have largely been unable to help ease. The Myanmar government, critics say, is distrustful of outsiders and does not want the villagers to meet foreigners. Meanwhile, the ruling junta is unable or unwilling to provide adequate help on its own.

"I don't expect anything from the government. I never have and I don't now," Then Khin said. "I heard on the radio about foreign help on its way, but I haven't seen any in the past 20 days. It's the same as before, nothing changed."

The only government help Then Khin has received was a small packet of rice, which she won by the luck of the draw. The village authorities came only once, with some rice, blankets and other relief from the central government. The supplies were distributed by lottery because there was so little. The rice packet was not enough for even one meal for the 20 surviving family members who now crowd her hut.

The village of That Kyar lies near the mouth of the delta's Pyapon River, downstream from Pyapon, a major delta trading town about 100 kilometers, or 60 miles, southwest of the principal city of Yangon.

A motorboat that left Pyapon carrying several visitors to That Kyar reached the village after more than two hours on the river, navigating around capsized ships and broken jetties.

Upon reaching a point in the river where the sea air finally smelled of salt and where gulls could be seen, the boat moved into a tributary and chugged upstream for another 40 minutes. Once a picturesque hamlet lined with coconut trees, That Kyar is now little more than a heap of rotting debris.

Unlike the cyclone victims who live near roads and receive help from private donors bringing supplies from the bigger cities, villages like That Kyar have been left to fend for themselves.

Three weeks after the cyclone came and went, the United Nations said that aid had reached less than one-fourth of the two million survivors in the hardest hit areas of the delta.

In what many observers hope will be a breakthrough, Myanmar's generals finally told the United Nations last week that they would allow workers of all nationalities to go into the devastated areas to assess the damage. So far, virtually all foreign aid workers have been banned from the delta.

And it remained unclear how much access relief workers and aid agencies will have to those areas.

Many people there did not even know that Saturday was the day they were supposed to vote on a new Constitution, a document designed to prolong the junta's grip on power.

In That Kyar, a village of 300 families, a thin blue tent donated by the Russian government was the only obvious sign of foreign help. Amid the debris, the Myanmar government had put up a freshly painted sign telling the villagers to vote last weekend.

"Government and international assistance hasn't reached this village, not yet," said a Myanmar volunteer who began shipping plastic roofing sheets and food by ferry to That Kyar and four neighboring villages early last week.

Young Burmese like him, who navigate the delta tributaries to bring aid to the outlying hamlets, appeared to be providing the only substantive help reaching people here.

But across those tributaries, bloated human bodies are still a common sight.

"After the cyclone, so many bodies floated by that we had to push them away from our shore," said Tin Swe, 69, a neighbor of Then Khin.

Tin Swe's family had lost no one to the cyclone; a son paralyzed by a childhood illness survived by hanging onto a tree. But looking over a pile of contaminated seed rice rotting in the sun, Tin Swe wondered how he was going to regenerate his damaged field and replace the paddle-boat, two water buffaloes and seeds he had lost, especially since prices for everything have soared since the storm.

"This year's harvest is gone," he said.

Despite the growing despondency of their own people in the delta and the continued international outrage over their callousness, Myanmar's military rulers appear to count on one thing to prolong their hold on power: People in the Irrawaddy Delta will eventually go back to lives of poverty and political disenfranchisement.

Amid the despair, life was trying to return to something like normalcy. Along the tributaries, for example, men were busy putting up bamboo frames for new huts.

When a boat docked at one jetty, villagers rushed out to help the visitors ashore. Elderly men invited them for tea, while women tried to sell them eggs.

As the evening sun dipped behind the coconut trees of the village of Naut Pyan Toe, Htat Ei Linn, 16, and her friends were out on the jetty, bathing. They scooped water from the river and poured it over their hair. They gargled with the same dark-brown water in which so many of their friends and neighbors had perished.

"I am still looking for the bodies of my grandmother and 8-year-old brother," Htat Ei Linn said, matter of factly, as she brushed her hair.

For Then Khin, the grandmother who had lost 15 of her family members, the struggle remains overwhelming. Before the storm she had ducks, chickens, pigs and goats - 200 in all - and all of them are gone.

Two of her five buffaloes survived the storm, but both are sick and soon may die.

For most delta villagers, recovering the bodies of lost relatives in the stormy and sweltering weather had at first been an urgent task. Urgent, but largely futile. So far, Then Khin said, she has found only two.

In the Burmese belief system, the spirits of the dead stay around their bodies for seven days. During this period, the bereaved family must pray to Buddha and make donations to monasteries and the needy on behalf of the dead, the better to ensure better fates in their next lives.

But with most of the bodies missing, that time-honored ritual cannot be performed.

Another of Then Khin's granddaughters, Cho Mar, who is 19, said that at night, some villagers hear the voices of unblessed ghosts in the forest and fields. The voices are singing strange songs.

Cho Mar survived the storm by hanging on to the top of a tree for a day, and she could only watch as neighbors were swept away by the walls of water brought by the cyclone.

She lost both parents and her 8-year-old brother.

"We were hopeless before, we are hopeless now," she said. "This river, this delta, is our world. We will live and die in the same place where my parents lived and died."

UNICEF Myanmar Appeal

http://www.unicef.org/malaysia/media_8229.html

UNICEF Myanmar Appeal - Please support

UNICEF needs US$ 25.57 million urgently for its "Myanmar Children's Cyclone Appeal".

Funds will be used to help meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of children and women who lived through the cyclone and floods, but who now need help to survive.

We appeal for your support to help us meet their needs. Please donate.

a) Crossed Cheque
Please issue a crossed cheque payable to "United Nations Children's Fund". At the back of the cheque, please write "UNICEF Myanmar Appeal" as well as your name, full address and contact number.

Please send your donation to the UNICEF Malaysia office.

b) Bank Transfer
You can also organise a bank transfer to our account in Malaysia.

• Payee Name: United Nations Children's Fund
• Name of Bank: Malayan Banking Berhad
• Account No: 514329427587
• Bank Address: Ground Floor, Block C, Kompleks Pejabat Damansara, Damansara Heights, 50490 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
• Currency: Malaysian Ringgit

Should you make us a bank transfer, please send an email to our Operations Officer (yhcheah@unicef.org) to inform us of your donation. This will ensure that your contribution is set aside specifically for the UNICEF Myanmar Appeal.

c) Online Donation
If you wish to make a donation via credit card, please visit UNICEF's global website. Please note that the donation will be in US dollars.

If you wish to speak to someone before making your donation, please call us at (+6.03) 2095 9154 (Monday – Friday, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm local time).

Cyclone In Myanmar In Pictures.

The photos are graphic. View them with your own discretion.
For those who do not know the extent of suffering Myanmar is facing...
It is disheartening to have a corrupt, dictatorial government ruling your country!

Of China and Myanmar....

China mourns earthquake victims

May 19, 2008
Reuters

BEICHUAN (China) - CHINA began three days of national mourning on Monday for more than 30,000 victims of an earthquake that struck a week ago.

Public entertainment will be suspended, flags kept at half-mast and a three-minute silence observed to mark exactly a week since the quake, the government said.

The national flag in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing flew at half mast after a ceremony at dawn. The Olympic torch relay, currently on its domestic leg ahead of the Aug 8 opening in Beijing, will likewise be suspended for three days.

'I have come today with a heavy heart,' said Mr Liu Xianzeng, watching the ceremony in Tiananmen Square. 'I feel for the victims of the earthquake and soldiers who are helping there.'

Around the country air raid sirens and car, train and ship horns will sound to 'wail in grief' at 2.28pm, the time the quake hit a week ago, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges and the futures exchanges in Shanghai, Zhengzhou and Dalian will also halt trading for three minutes from 2.28pm.

Presenters on state television wore black, and state-run newspapers ran black mastheads and no colour pictures.

In south-western Sichuan province's Beichuan, hard hit by the earthquake, relatives continued to travel back into the disaster zone to look for family members and see the damage for themselves.

'It's a good idea but maybe it's a bit early,' said Mr Zhou Wanli of the national state of mourning, sitting in the back of a truck heading into Beichuan.

'All we can care about for the time being is finding our relatives. We don't want to memorialise them if we don't even know if they're alive or dead,' he said.

Aftershock
On the eve of the official mourning period, a fresh tremor in south-western China killed three people, injured 1,000 and sent thousands fleeing their homes into the streets.

The tremor, one of the strongest aftershocks since the May 12 earthquake, hit Jiangyou city in Sichuan, Xinhua said.

It was 5.7 in magnitude and brought down a large number of houses, damaged 377km of roads and six bridges, rescue authorities said late on Sunday.

The official death toll stands at nearly 32,500 from the original quake of 7.9 magnitude that rattled Sichuan province.

Some 220,000 people are reported injured and a further 9,500 are thought to be still buried under the rubble in Sichuan. Most are feared dead.

Officials have tried to keep people from the area because of aftershocks and a build-up of water in blocked rivers.

Xinhua said the most dangerous mass of water was only about 3km upstream from Beichuan town where rescue workers saved a man on Sunday from under the remains of a hospital.

China says it expects the final death toll to exceed 50,000. About 4.8 million people have lost their homes.

Late on Sunday, a woman was also pulled out of the rubble in Yingxiu after a 56-hour rescue operation during which her legs were amputated, Xinhua reported. A man was earlier found alive in a collapsed office building in Maoxian county, it said.

Offers of help have flooded in and rescue teams with sniffer dogs and specialised equipment from Japan, Russia, Taiwan, South Korea, the United States and Singapore are assisting. Donations from home and abroad have topped 6 billion yuan (S$1.2 billion).

Statistics from past earthquakes show some victims have survived up to nearly a fortnight under rubble.

'I don't think they are going to find anymore people alive now, but they have to keep trying otherwise the ordinary people would never accept them giving up,' said Mr Zheng Xiaokang, as he prepared to go into Beichuan.

Children facing death by starvation: Aid agency

Tion Kwa

May 19, 2008
The Straits Times

YANGON - THOUSANDS of children who survived Myanmar's cyclone will starve to death in two to three weeks unless food is rushed to them, an aid agency warned yesterday.

The warning by Save The Children came as the international community stepped up efforts to get Myanmar to approve an all-out relief effort.

United Nations' chief Ban Ki-moon will leave New York tomorrow to visit Myanmar to discuss the delivery of international aid, a spokesman said yesterday.

Save The Children's head of operations in Britain, Ms Jasmine Whitbread, said: 'We are extremely worried that many children in the affected areas are now suffering from severe acute malnourishment, the most serious level of hunger.'

Humanitarian aid agency Action Against Hunger has described the situation in the Bogale region where it was working as 'extremely alarming'.

'All day long, people are looking for food and for a way of cooking the food they find,' the group said.

'The survivors have mainly been feeding themselves with wild fruits and vegetables and mouldy rice, which they are trying to dry.'

Meanwhile, Senior Gen Than Shwe, 75, yesterday made his first visit to the cyclone-hit area on the outskirts of Yangon.

It is not known if he visited the Irrawaddy delta region which was hardest hit by the May 3 cyclone, which left 133,000 people dead and missing.

His visit was on the same day that the UN's top disaster official John Holmes arrived on a three-day visit to urge the regime to accept a massive relief effort.

Mr Holmes will meet senior government leaders, visit the delta and hold meetings with aid groups.

And in Thailand, Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama said South-east Asian foreign ministers will consider sending Asean secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan to Myanmar.

The proposal will be discussed at a special meeting of Asean foreign ministers in Singapore today, he said.

The Myanmar junta has continued to insist it can handle most of the relief work by itself, and state media has been full of photos of smiling citizens receiving handouts from generals.

The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper yesterday carried more than two dozen stories praising its own relief efforts. But not everyone is convinced.

Britain's Asia Minister, Mr Mark Malloch-Brown, said a framework was being set up for a UN- and Asian-led system that could solve the impasse and make it easier to channel in aid.

'I think we're potentially at a turning point but, like all turning points in (Myanmar), the corner will have a few 'S' bends in it,' he said.

He added that the Asian/ UN-led process had already begun, with Asian nations considered friendly by Myanmar sending aid teams in, and an Asean assessment team on the ground. The team will report to the foreign ministers meeting in Singapore today.

Other countries would make their contributions through this channel, Mr Malloch-Brown added.

ASSOCIATED PRESS, REUTERS, AGENCE-FRANCE PRESSE

Myanmar's cyclone

Myanmar's cyclone

The regime is satisfied

May 15th 2008 | JAKARTA AND YANGON
From The Economist print edition

The junta lets a bit more aid in—but less than cyclone victims need

AFP

Still too little help for Myanmar's victims

STARVING, homeless and vulnerable to infectious disease, the inhabitants of Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta must feel that things could hardly get worse. Almost a fortnight after cyclone Nargis struck, killing perhaps 130,000, the country's ruling military junta had not yet let in more than a trickle of humanitarian aid and was still barring most of the foreign aid workers and equipment needed to distribute it. Supplies were being delivered—or not delivered—at the whim of the army officer in charge of each district.

But unfortunately for the 2.5m or so survivors, things could indeed get worse. By midweek, heavy rains were hampering the meagre aid operations in the delta. And the outside world's attention and compassion was being diverted to the earthquake in China. A Russian rescue team quit Myanmar to offer its services in China, where they were welcomed.

Friends of the Burmese regime—China itself, India, Bangladesh and Thailand—were belatedly allowed to send a limited number of aid workers. Its arch-foe, America, was allowed to land military cargo planes in Yangon, the main city, this week. But the World Food Programme, the largest emergency-relief supplier, was managing to deliver less than one-fifth of the 375 tonnes of food a day that it reckons is needed on the ground.

The regime's leader, General Than Shwe, rebuffed repeated attempts by the United Nations' secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, to speak to him by telephone. Admiral Timothy Keating, the head of America's Pacific Command, and Thailand's prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, both visited Yangon to try to persuade the regime to let in a big international rescue mission like the one assembled after the 2004 tsunami. Neither succeeded.

Myanmar's state news media made a big fuss about the dribbles of aid the regime did provide—and even some that it did not: the army was caught sticking labels with the names of top generals on aid that had been provided by Thailand. The UN said it was worried about aid supplies being diverted by the regime, though it had no hard evidence of this. Demonstrating its priorities, the generals sent enough armed troops to man checkpoints to keep foreigners out of the delta. Some Burmese drove out in their cars from Yangon to try to offer whatever help they could to their compatriots.

On May 10th the junta went ahead, in areas unaffected by the disaster, with a sham referendum on a new constitution designed to entrench its rule. It hailed a triumphant turnout, though its widespread intimidation of voters, to make them vote “yes” and stop them from urging a “no” vote, will render the result—93% in favour—widely disbelieved. Even more absurdly, it is still talking of holding a vote on May 24th in the cyclone-hit areas.

Diplomats with access to the junta say it appears to be split between hardliners, led by General Than Shwe, who believe that the presence of foreigners will threaten their grip on power, and relative moderates—the most senior of whom is the junta's number three, Thura Shwe Mann—who recognise the gravity of the crisis and the need for international help.

European Union countries, meeting in Brussels, talked of getting aid to Myanmar by whatever means necessary. But they stopped short of backing an idea floated by France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, of invoking a UN principle of the “responsibility to protect”, which evolved in the 1990s and was adopted by the UN in 2005. This says that national sovereignty may be overridden in extreme circumstances. Britain and Germany were said to support the idea but any proposal would probably be blocked by China at the UN Security Council. Oxfam, a British aid charity, expressed doubts over suggestions this week that aid could be parachuted into the delta without the regime's permission: its spokeswoman argued that in the past such air-drops proved hugely costly and often failed to reach the most vulnerable.

Mr Samak's efforts notwithstanding, the response from Myanmar's neighbours in the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has so far been feeble. ASEAN admitted Myanmar in 1997, telling the West that sanctions against the regime were not working and that “constructive engagement” would achieve more. To judge from the cyclone, it has not.

ASEAN is planning to discuss Myanmar's emergency on May 19th and is promising to form a “coalition of mercy” to aid the country. But whatever, if anything, it decides, will be too little and too late.

The region's leaders, like the Chinese, are afraid that any intervention would set a precedent for outside meddling in their own affairs. Some are also loth to risk their considerable business interests in Myanmar. The $200m that the UN has appealed for, to finance aid to Myanmar, is a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign-exchange reserves the ASEAN members have stacked up. If ASEAN's leaders had quickly and publicly pledged substantial aid, even if it had not immediately been accepted, it might have shamed the regime into moving a bit further than it has. One of the many aid workers stuck in Bangkok this week, pleading with the Burmese embassy to grant him a visa, argued that by leaving so many people to die unattended, the regime was committing a crime against humanity. If so, that makes the country's self-interested neighbours accessories after the fact.

Myanmar – reporting from base

Myanmar – reporting from base

WE CANT WAIT!!

Friday, 17 May 2008 – Some 1,000 people including women and children got their first taste of a proper meal 15 days after the cyclone hit Myanmar. United Sikhs with the support of individuals on ground in Yangon was able to mobilize a kitchen to cook and serve food and drinks to the people displaced by the Cyclone Nargis. Today, as word got around, more and more affected people are coming to the aid offered by the United Sikhs. The team is working round the clock, preparing and serving food and drinks to them.

Currently efforts to gather relief goods to be sent to Myanmar are being carried out throughout Malaysia. The effort organized by United Sikhs (Malaysia) Society is supported by the Sathya Sai Counsil of Malaysia and the Buddhist Maha Vihara Malaysia.

The Mission Control Center in Wadda Gurudwara Kampung Pandan is open daily from 7 am to 12 midnight after which vir Sukhwant of the control center stays at the control center to greet late comers and man the 24 hour hotline. The control center is managed by a team of dedicated volunteers who have taken time off their busy schedule. All processes are carefully documented and all finances carefully accounted for.

The severe shortage of supplies and clean water is a major threat to the existing survivors. Outbreak of malaria and other water and air bound disease have started without much can be done to stop or prevent it from spreading. The main factor is contaminated water and the lack of clean drinking water from the start of the cyclone.

There is still not enough of everything – food, drinks, medical supplies, etc. and the death toll is escalating. The lack of doctors and trained medical assistance is also a major setback. United Sikhs (Malaysia) Society expects to within the week, send out our first shipment of food and other supplies together with United Sikhs volunteers from Kuala Lumpur who will be stationed in Yangon to prepare and distribute food cooked at the Sikh Temple

Till date the relief mission has gathered approximately 200 tonnes of foods supplies and over RM100,000 in cash. For those of you who have yet to contribute please send your contribution to the collection centers at the Sikh Temples near you and klang valley residents can send their contribution to the Sathya Sai Center and the Mission Control Center at Wadda Gurudwara Kampung Pandan. Should there be any assistance or information you require please call our 24 hour hotline number at +60 12 215 5966 or email us at utdsikhs@gmail.com.This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

What can you send over:

1. Rice

2. Potatoes / Oil / Sugar

3. Bottles water

4. Biscuits / Canned beans

5. Instant Noodles

6. Baby milk powder

7. Sanitary napkins / undergarments (new)

8. Medicines (pain relief, antibiotic, antiseptics, bandages, plasters, eye drops, oral rehydration salts, intravenous drips, cough syrups and antihistamine)

9. Water purification tablets

With the grace of god, more and more people are coming together to help the relief mission. This displays the compassion for another suffering human and the hope that somehow this nightmare will end soon.