Burmese Tragedy

[Gaybutton]

According to an article in the PATTAYA DAILY NEWS, the Thai Prime Minister is saying the reason why the Burmese junta is intentionally keeping out and slowing down foreign assistance for the cyclone victims is because they went ahead with the national voting despite the cyclone and they don't want the world to see the vote rigging that is occurring.

 

Also, according to the article, those who wish to make donations can do so at the Sattahip Temple, where they are asking for light bulbs, galvanized iron sheets, canvas, dried foodstuffs, rice, and drinking water. The items will be delivered to Burma via the Thai Navy. The Thai Navy assures the public that the items will reach the people in need.

 

The full article can be seen at:

 

http://www.pattayadailynews.com/shownews.p...NEWS=0000005975

[billyhouston]

The world reaction to this is shameful and none more so than that of Douglas Alexander MP, UK's Secretary of State for International Development. To start by saying that nothing should be done to offend the 'Burmese' government is just plain stupid and will have Than Shwe and his thugs laughing all the way to China. The only thing this odious lot understand is being negotiated with from a position of strength.... not weakness.

 

The West must insist that aid goes in preferably with, but if necessary without, the cooperation of the Burmese military. Getting around the delta is difficult at the best of times and will need helicopters that the Burmese do not have; nor do they have a heavy lift facility. Their only concern is hanging onto power and they could not care less of a few hundred thousand people die as a result.

 

The people of Myanmar deserve much better.

[dapitt]

The people of Myanmar deserve much better.

Amen! 'Humanity' deserves so much better!

 

[Gaybutton]

The following appears in the BANGKOK POST:

_____

 

Patience Has Its Limits

 

Rangoon - World frustration with Burma is beginning to boil over, with accusations of negligence and crimes against humanity. As the toll of dead and missing reached 134,000 the regime cynically kept away a French navy ship laden with aid, while proudly showing diplomats a model state relief camp for a few survivors.

 

US President George W Bush extended sanctions on Burma, while British Prime Minister Gordon Brown denounced the junta's "inhuman" treatment of around two million survivors battling to stay alive two weeks after the storm hit.

 

With the toll of dead and missing now 134,000, the pressure appeared to mark a shift in tactics in the face of the junta's reluctance to allow a full-scale emergency effort, despite fears more people could die of hunger or disease.

 

 

"We have an intolerable situation created by a natural disaster," said Brown, whose country was the colonial power in Burma.

 

"It is being made into a man-made catastrophe by the negligence, the neglect and the inhuman treatment of the Burmese people by a regime that is failing to act and to allow the international community to do what it wants to do."

 

Wary of any foreign influence that could weaken its 46 years of iron rule in Burma, the junta has insisted on managing the operation itself and kept most international disaster experts away.

 

But aid groups say the government cannot possibly handle the tragedy by itself, with hundreds of tonnes of supplies and high-tech equipment piling up in warehouses, bottle-necked by logistics and other problems.

 

After announcing Friday that the toll from the tragedy had nearly doubled -- to 77,738 dead and 55,917 missing -- state television did not issue new figures on Saturday night.

 

Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu wrote to Brown, Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, calling on the UN Security Council to authorise aid drops over the objections of the generals.

 

He said the regime had "effectively declared war on its own population and is committing crimes against humanity."

 

Jean-Maurice Ripert, France's UN ambassador, told a meeting of all members of the United Nations that the situation was turning "slowly from a situation of not helping people in danger to a real risk of crimes against humanity."

 

Bush announced that sanctions on the junta would be extended for a year because of its "large-scale repression of the democratic opposition." The statement stressed it would not affect US humanitarian cyclone aid.

 

Faced with the mounting criticism, the junta flew some diplomats and aid workers Saturday into the heart of the disaster zone - which has been all but sealed off to the outside world.

 

"What they showed us looked very good," said Chris Kaye, Burma director for the UN's World Food Programme. "But they are not showing us the whole picture."

 

One diplomat said: "It was like a steam-roller had gone through the entire delta region."

 

The junta has blocked journalists from getting to the southern Irrawaddy Delta, the rice-growing region hardest hit when Cyclone Nargis hit on May 2-3, bringing powerful winds and massive waves that wiped whole villages away.

 

But those who have got through have returned with tales of unspeakable misery, including from some survivors who said they had received very little assistance from the government.

 

Survivors have also reported that the military was pushing them out of temporary shelter in monasteries, whose revered Buddhist monks helped lead massive anti-government protests last year that were eventually put down.

 

Navy ships from France and the United States are positioned off the Burmese coast stocked with emergency supplies, but have not been able to enter.

 

The regime is said to fear a possible invasion by the United States, which has criticised the military regime for keeping democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest -- and for its slow moves toward elections promised by 2010.

 

The government said this week that 99 percent of eligible voters had cast their ballots last Saturday in a referendum it said approved a new constitution which would bar her from office.

 

Her party rejected the result and said the vote should never have been held amid the cyclone tragedy. The regime has scheduled round two of the vote, in the disaster areas, on May 24.

 

(Agencies)

____________________

 

And this, from THE NATION:

_____

 

Gordon Brown Hints at Aid Drops

 

By By Jo Revill and Gaby Hinsliff in London and a special

Correspondent in Burma

OBSERVER NEWS SERVICE

 

As millions face starvation and fears of cholera grow, Britain's Prime Minister rules nothing out

 

Gordon Brown has raised the prospect of Britain carrying out unauthorized emergency aid drops into Burma as a last resort if its government continues to exclude foreign help.

 

Amid evidence that cholera is already taking hold in parts of the stricken country and UN warnings that a 'second catastrophe' of disease and starvation could be worse than the initial cyclone, the British Prime Minister made clear that he would rule nothing out.

 

Brown used an address to Church of Scotland leaders yesterday (17MAY) to accuse the Burmese junta of being an 'unnatural dictatorship' that cares more about its survival than its own people's.

 

Privately diplomats see aid drops as a desperate last resort. One Whitehall source said there were 'huge problems' with such tactics. Experience shows that barely a fifth of aid dropped in such a way reaches the people who most need it, much of it rotting where it falls.

 

The option will remain on the table in the hope of increasing pressure on the Burmese military government. It emerged last night that France is in talks about a possible delivery of aid. The French government said its Mistral navy helicopter carrier was in waters south of the storm-ravaged Irrawaddy delta, with supplies to feed 100,000 people over 15 days and shelter at least 60,000 people.

 

Yet in this devastated land there remains little evidence of any government help. This weekend hundreds of people were lining the roads which run south of Rangoon, peering expectantly into passing cars and begging for help.

 

'We walked a long way to get here - our men are home trying to rebuild the house,' an exhausted-looking woman said, sitting among the debris of former homes. 'In the past five days we have received just a little rice and some condensed milk from the government. We wait here all day, hoping someone may bring some help.'

 

All across the delta, carrying their few salvaged possessions in bundles, the new homeless travel by foot and by boat, navigating around the bodies that still clog the waterways of the Irrawaday, unclaimed and left to rot.

 

The regime has sought to seal off the delta, setting up a grid of police and military checkpoints and turning back foreigners, including those seeking to help. The military leaders are determined to prevent the outside world from knowing the scale of the tragedy - or to discover that because of its own neglect this has become a man-made disaster, where starvation is now facing more than two million affected by the cyclone.

 

Disease is also a growing possibility and doctors believe that cholera could take hold if the water supplies become very badly contaminated. Some doctors in Rangoon have already begun to try to treat children for it in case it does take hold.

 

In an area near Kungyangon, south of Rangoon, where uncollected bodies are washed up in a paddy field, the stench of putrid flesh assaults the senses. One witness told The Observer they had received only a few bags of rice. 'Forty dead here,' he said. 'Most of them children.'