Ruled by fear for decades, few in Myanmar dare question junta’s ineptness in delivering aid
AP
Posted: 2008-05-10 09:46:10
LABUTTA, Myanmar (AP) - Apart from the sound of children crying, the town of Labutta is strangely silent.

Traumatized by the ordeal of surviving Cyclone Nargis, few people have anything to say. But it is also fear bred by 46 years of repression by military regimes that keeps them quiet.

Although overwhelmed by the worst disaster in Myanmar’s recent history, the junta has turned down foreign help and insists on using its ragtag infrastructure and poorly equipped military to conduct a grossly mismanaged relief operation for some 2 million people in distress.

And no one dares to protest. Even aid agencies are cautious.

“There are certainly parameters around whatever we do. It is very sensitive politically, but within those parameters we are getting through,” said Tim Costelloe of World Vision in Yangon, one of the few foreign aid workers allowed in.

Aid workers said critical supplies were reaching Labutta, a town of 20,000 people whose population more than doubled with 30,000 refugees streaming in from dozens of surrounding villages devastated in the May 3 cyclone.

But efforts to rush food and medicine from Labutta to lower-lying parts of the delta that were hardest hit have been slowed by the military’s intense micromanaging.

“The government wants total control of the situation although they can’t provide much and they have no experience in relief efforts,” said a leading aid worker for an international aid organization. “We have to report to them every step of the way, every decision we make.”

“Their eyes are everywhere, monitoring what we do, who we talk to, what we bring in and how much,” the aid worker said in a soft voice, constantly looking around nervously as his assistant turned off all the lights except one dim lamp.

He agreed to the interview at night after being assured he wouldn’t be named or identified in any way.

“Sorry, sorry. We don’t want them to see you here. They don’t trust us, as it is,” he told a foreign reporter in Labutta.

The town, about 200 meters (600 feet) inland, is littered with flattened thatch-roofed homes and fallen trees. But it fared better than most neighboring villages, with several structures withstanding the cyclone’s 190-kilometer (120-mile) per hour winds and the tidal surge it whipped up.

But its ramshackle survival presents a picture of misery.

Schools, large houses and monasteries have become temporary shelters. Hundreds of survivors crowded the floor of a monastery’s open-air hall lit by dim kerosene lamps and candles. Only a few houses, mostly those belonging to people connected with officials, have generators.

Other than the sound of hungry children wailing, the town was silent and grim.

People quietly ate whatever food was available while others tried to sleep. Most people were sitting up because there was no space to lie down.

Few survivors wanted to speak to an outsider, as military trucks drove constantly through the town. Most cowered in corners.

On the outskirts of Labutta, 12 people were crammed into one tent pitched on a rice field. They were the only survivors from the village of Pain Na Kon and had fruitlessly searched Labutta for family members.

“We are family now. We are from the same place. We are together,” said U Nyo, one of the survivors, his eyes red from tears and fatigue. “We need food. There isn’t enough space in the town so we decided to stay here.”

What lies beyond Labutta is the worst of the devastation, an area that remains difficult to access.

Fishing boats along the coast have helped ferry survivors to safety but can’t make enough rounds a day to rescue everyone and the trip is a stomach-wrenching journey, said Maung U, a 36-year-old driver of a rescue boat.

“Each trip takes five or six hours through a narrow waterway littered with dead bodies,” he said. “Every few meters, you see another dead body, human or animal.”

He said every family has at least two or three missing or dead, and many people had to leave the bodies of their family members in the water or in the fields.

Diesel supplies are running low and rescuers fear that time is running out to help the people stranded in remote delta villages.

“Some have been living on coconuts,” he said. “But even those are running out.”

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URGENT
AP
Posted: 2008-05-10 10:48:09
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Witnesses say a proposed military-backed constitution in Myanmar appears to have won overwhelming approval in a referendum in which there was visible intimidation of voters.

The witnesses and local officials who watched the counting of ballots say the vote appeared to be 80 percent to 90 percent in favor of the draft charter. The ruling junta’s critics consider the proposed constitution unfair and undemocratic.

Witnesses say they saw cases of intimidation of voters at various polling stations around the country, including orders to affix fingerprints to ballot papers.

The results of the referendum are unlikely to be announced until after late voting on May 24 in areas badly hit by recent Cyclone Nargis.

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ICRC sends 1st aid flight for Myanmar cyclone victims, official says
By ELIANE ENGELER,
AP
Posted: 2008-05-10 12:38:30
GENEVA (AP) - The international Red Cross has sent its first flight to Myanmar to provide aid for thousands of prisoners affected by the cyclone, and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has begun sending trucks with supplies into the country from neighboring Thailand, officials said Saturday.

The International Committee of the Red Cross plane with 35 metric tons (39 U.S. tons) of relief goods left Geneva on Friday evening, said spokesman Marcal Izard.

The cargo contains pumps, generators, water tanks and other water treatment equipment, as well as basic health care for about 10,000 people and surgery material.

Izard told The Associated Press that the relief goods are “destined in first place to cater for those in labor camps and prisons.”

He said Myanmar’s government asked the neutral organization to help. The ICRC has been facilitating family visits to prisoners in the country over the past two years.

Izard said he was unable to say how many prisoners and forced laborers have been affected by the May 3 cyclone that left more than 60,000 people dead or missing, and entire villages submerged in the Irrawaddy delta.

The ICRC visits political prisoners and prisoners of war throughout the world, but stopped visiting Myanmar’s estimated 1,100 political prisoners in December 2005 after the government insisted that ICRC representatives be accompanied by members of government-affiliated organizations.

The organization now has six foreign and 90 local staff in the country, Izard said. “We’re hoping to get more people in,” he added.

He said the agency planned to distribute the aid in coordination with the Myanmar Red Cross, which is the leading relief agency in Myanmar.

The ICRC has said it also will explore how it can help reunite families separated by the storm and help identify the dead.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said two trucks carrying more than 20 U.S. tons (18 metric tons) of tents and plastic sheets for some 10,000 cyclone victims, crossed into the country from northwestern Thailand on Saturday. It was the relief agency’s first land convoy to enter Myanmar since the cyclone.

“This convoy marks a positive step in an aid effort so far marked by challenges and constraints,” said Raymond Hall, UNHCR’s representative in Thailand. “We hope it opens up a possible corridor to allow more international aid to reach the cyclone victims.”

An estimated 1 million of Myanmar’s 51 million people have been made homeless by the storm.

UNHCR started airlifting 100 metric tons (110 U.S. tons)of shelter supplies from its warehouse in Dubai on Saturday, it said.

Aid efforts have been slowed by the military junta’s reluctance to let international aid workers accompany the shipments.

A total of 23 international agencies were providing aid to people in the devastated areas, said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Byrs said another U.N. flight with 30 metric tons (33 tons) of plastic sheets, water and sanitation items and mosquito nets got clearance to take off from Brindisi, Italy, later on Saturday.

But a large number of organizations were awaiting government clearance for more aid shipments, staff and transport.

“It’s a race against the clock,” Byrs said. “If the humanitarian aid does not get into the country on a larger scale, there’s the risk of a second catastrophe,” she said, with people dying from hunger and diseases.

Health experts have warned there is a great risk of diarrhea and cholera spreading because of the lack of clean drinking water and sanitation.

International aid organizations have said the death toll could climb to more than 100,000 as humanitarian conditions worsen.

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1st U.N. land convoy arrives in Myanmar to assist cyclone victims+
AP
Posted: 2008-05-10 10:38:01
BANGKOK, May 10 (Kyodo) - The United Nations on Saturday sent its first land convoy of emergency aid into cyclone-hit Myanmar, crossing over from neighboring Thailand to bring tents and plastic sheets to some 10,000 people made homeless by the disaster.

“This convoy marks a positive step in an aid effort so far marked by challenges and constraints,” Raymond Hall, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees representative in Thailand, was quoted as saying in a UNHCR statement.

“We hope it opens up a possible corridor to allow more international aid to reach the cyclone victims,” he said.

The UNHCR’s two-truck convoy carrying 4,600 plastic sheets and some 200 tents crossed hitch-free into the Myanmar town of Myawadi from the Thai town of Mae Sot in the early afternoon after a brief exchange of papers at the Friendship Bridge border.

It was received on the other side by UNHCR staff members who will follow the convoy on the two-day drive to Yangon. There, the supplies will be handed over to Myanmar officials to be distributed under UNHCR monitoring.

The refugee agency said it is focusing on emergency shelter as part of joint U.N. efforts to help victims of the last weekend’s cyclone that devastated parts of southwestern Myanmar and the main city Yangon.

More than 1 million people are estimated to have lost their homes and as many as 100,000 are feared dead.

The UNHCR is seeking $6 million in donations to provide 250,000 cyclone victims with shelter as part of the $187 million U.N. flash appeal for Myanmar launched Friday,

International criticism has been mounting over the junta’s response to the cyclone disaster, with top U.N. officials warning of worsening misery for survivors and the spread of diseases unless the junta eases restrictions slowing the delivery of international aid.