Burma's cries for help stifled by paranoid military regime

Published on Saturday 10 May 2008 20:05

AS HUNDREDS of thousands of refugees waited for emergency relief yesterday and for their leaders to act, the Burmese junta went ahead with a national referendum aimed at keeping its members in power.

The Burmese generals were visible all right. State television showed them handing out boxes of the small amount of aid allowed in from neighbouring Thailand. Unwittingly, it also showed that the Burmese leadership had plastered their own names over the true origins of the food aid to fool their own people into believing that the emergency relief supplies had come from them.

A week after around 100,000 Burmese were feared killed by Cyclone Nargis, which swept through the heavily populated Irrawaddy Delta and on up to the capital Rangoon, aid was only just starting to trickle in.

Western aid experts said the border had been opened for one overland convoy, but the junta was still blocking the delivery of the bulk of desperately needed medical and food supplies.

Yesterday, it blocked two more plane-loads of aid, ignoring global pleas to allow foreign experts to help the country's two million cyclone victims. Instead, it pressed ahead with a referendum on a new constitution, which will perpetuate its authority.

The junta refused to alter its schedule, despite the disaster, while the United Nations launched a 96m appeal for aid.

Christian Aid warned that supplies within the country would soon run out. It is distributing water purification tablets, blankets and medicines to 100,000 people from supplies sourced within Burma.

Ray Hasan, Christian Aid's Burma expert, said: "We're being told that there are outbreaks of disease already. There is no time to lose."

The UN World Food Programme, which suspended flights on Friday after Burmese non-cooperation, said it was in talks with the government after a further two plane-loads of high-energy biscuits, shelter materials and communications and office equipment were held by the authorities yesterday.

WFP regional director Tony Banbury pleaded with the junta to free the confiscated shipment, saying: "Please, this food is going to people who need it very much. You and I, we have the same interests: those victims – those million or more people – who need this assistance are not part of a political dialogue."

Burmese citizens are angry and bewildered by their government's behaviour. A man living on the outskirts of Rangoon said: "Help from the government only came after three days. People are dying, but the government is still denying international help.

"All the people are really angry about that. This was a good time for the government to collaborate with the people. Instead, they are acting in a way so the people will hate them."

There were also warnings the area would be struck by further bad weather this week. The UN forecast heavy rains and high winds just as the floodwater was beginning to clear.

Reports of diarrhoea and skin problems have already surfaced, and health officials fear waterborne illnesses will emerge because of a lack of clean water, along with highly contagious diseases such as measles. Children face some of the greatest risks.

Early yesterday, a convoy from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, crossed into Burma from Thailand with 22 tonnes of tents and other supplies. The government has also agreed to let a US cargo plane bring in supplies tomorrow, but it continues to refuse visas to foreign aid workers. UNHCR spokeswoman Vivian Tan, who travelled with the convoy, said: "Little aid is getting in. It's urgently needed. The whole process should be moving faster, but this is a positive step."

The junta has said it will not allow in foreign disaster experts, who have experience of dealing with a natural disaster of this magnitude – the worst the world has seen in terms of human lives since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and 2005 earthquake in the mountains of northern Pakistan.

Tim Costelloe, of the aid group World Vision, said: "Dealing with this is beyond the capacity of any government." Even the US, the world's richest nation, struggled to respond to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, Costelloe said. Burma, one of the poorest countries in the world, can barely cope on its own.

"At every level the scale of human suffering is quite horrifying," he said. "Dead bodies are not being disposed of. Many people don't have shelter."

Reports of mass burnings of bodies started to emerge. One Burmese citizen, Aung, in Rangoon, told the BBC: "Yesterday I attended a funeral service held at the Yayway cremation site. In the past, bodies were cremated by gas fire one by one, but now they pile up the corpses, pour gasoline over them and burn them at one time."

'They are gone. They are gone'

OHN Tay gave birth to her baby daughter during the cyclone. Her husband is missing but she and her children are safe, crammed into a Buddhist monastery with 150 other survivors, half of them children.

"My baby stays with me here. I try to keep her from getting wet, but it's hard at night when there is no room to move around and when it rains," she said, pointing at the roof, half of it torn away by the storm. The limited area that is protected means some of the refugees must sleep sitting up.

Ohn Tay told how she was in the family's hut when the cyclone struck. "The water rose higher and higher. My husband wasn't there, so I carried my son," she said, hugging the eight-year-old boy. She ran to safety and hours later her daughter was born.

When the winds receded, she returned to find her house completely flattened, like most of her neighbours' homes, and the family's rice field flooded.

Ohn Tay lives in Kaw Hmu, a town about 60 miles south-west of the former capital and biggest city, Rangoon. She was lucky: there are no confirmed deaths yet, though some of her neighbours are missing. But people know that in towns not far away, hundreds of people perished. Children were the most vulnerable when the storm struck the Irrawaddy Delta, known as "Asia's rice bowl" in British colonial times.

"They are gone. They are gone," said U Thein, who lost her eight-year-old son and three-month-old daughter when the cyclone hit her village near the town of Labutta. Besides the cawing of crows and the gentle weeping of the destitute, the only sound was the hammering of nails as villagers tried to rebuild their homes.

Survivors have been mostly fending for themselves after Cyclone Nargis whipped up a massive wall of sea water that hurtled through the low-lying area on 3 May. Bloated corpses bobbing in canals or spreadeagled on riverbanks now litter the delta. Farmer Tei Lin said he had seen hundreds of bodies in the past week. "It's so difficult. Many of them are badly decomposed," he said. He was looking for his missing wife and three daughters. No soldiers or government agencies have turned up to help. "There are no NGOs here. No UN. Only me," he said.

The official death toll stands at 23,000, with 42,000 missing. Experts fear the final toll will top 100,000. And at least 1.5 million people out of a population of 53 million need food and shelter.

The disaster is the worst in the country's history. The slow, uncoordinated response of the ruling military junta has angered and exasperated aid agencies that want to help the survivors.

There were also warnings the area would be struck by bad weather this week. The UN has forecast heavy rains and high winds just as the floodwater was beginning to clear. To add to the difficulties, Western aid experts in Bangkok had an enforced four-day wait to get into Burma to help cyclone victims because the embassy in the Thai capital took a local holiday on Friday.

"This is a four-day wait which just should not happen," said Paul Risley, spokesman for the UN World Food Programme.

"This is too long to wait for people whose lives are at such a precarious balance."

The Burmese foreign ministry says the country will accept foreign aid, but not foreign aid workers. It said in a statement that Burma "is giving priority to receiving relief aid and distributing them to the storm-hit regions with its own resources".

The government's apparent indifference to the suffering of its people and its reluctance to allow foreign aid into the country comes from the reclusive, xenophobic generals who rule the country. The junta fears internal uprisings, a US invasion, globalisation and its capacity to dilute traditional Burmese culture.

Sean Turnell, a Burma expert at Australia's Macquarie University, said: "If they can't handle the situation and they let Westerners come in with helicopters, this will demonstrate to their own people the shortcomings of the military.

"They are more concerned with control and maintaining an omniscience in front of their people than saving lives."

The junta's mistrust of the West also stems from more than a century of British colonial rule that ended in 1948.

A parliamentary democracy survived until the ruthless dictator General Ne Win seized power in a 1962 coup.

During his 26-year rule, Ne Win's regime curtailed human rights and political opposition and closed off the country to outsiders, earning the country the nickname, "Asia's hermit".

For the most part, tourists were not allowed in until the 1970s, when visitors were given strict, seven-day visas. These days, tourists get one-month visas but journalists are welcome only during carefully scripted occasions.

The Burmese authorities also stand accused of failing to warn the people about the impending cyclone. India's meteorological agency, which monitors cyclones in the Indian Ocean, says it warned the Burmese authorities 48 hours before the storm struck. The agency says it told Burma where the storm would hit land and how severe it was expected to be.

State media did give some warnings of a storm, but people in Burma say the severity of the cyclone was unclear and no instructions were given as to what action they should take.

Officials from the UN's disaster reduction agency in Geneva say it is clear many people did not have time to seek refuge in secure buildings. They say the scale of the devastation suggests there was not a proper early warning system.

Burma's military government is likely to face many more questions about how prepared the country was for such a storm and how many lives could have been saved if a tried and tested early warning system was in place.

But such questions are for the future. The immediate problem for people like Ohn Tay is how to provide food and shelter for her children and how to protect them from disease.

UN urged to defy the junta

THE United Nations Security Council is under pressure to allow humanitarian air drops into Burma without the permission of the military junta.

France argues air drops could be allowed under a UN 'responsibility to protect' mandate and it wants to raise the crisis in Burma at the council.

The United States is backing the move. However, the UK's UN envoy, John Sawers, who chairs the UN security council, said the resolution applies to acts of genocide and war crimes rather to natural disasters. And International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander has warned it would be "incendiary" to air-drop aid into Burma without permission.

China, Burma's closest diplomatic ally, is blocking the move, as is Russia.

But the scale of the crisis in Burma is so enormous that pressure is growing for the UK Government to back French and US moves to get the UN to authorise aid shipments to Burma.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: "I think the time is now drawing very close to taking the most drastic step of all, which is dropping aid directly into Burma, irrespective of the wishes of the Burmese regime."

Shadow International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell added that it was "deeply regrettable" that the Burmese government had consistently run down and undermined the UN mission in Burma.

"It is a scandal that after five full days following the disaster only a trickle of aid is getting in from the outside world," he said.

The Burma Campaign UK insists that UN resolution 1674, passed in 2006, states that the security council can intervene in circumstances similar to that in Burma.

"Every day of delay is costing lives," said Mark Farmaner, the campaign's director. "If the regime won't give permission for aid, the international community must deliver it anyway. We can't stand by and let thousands more die."

Members of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) said they "could do more" without opposition from the military junta. Tim Costello, chief executive of World Vision Australia, said suspicion of foreign aid workers was hampering their work. He warned of an epidemic of "apocalyptic proportions" if aid does not get through. But he urged donors to continue giving, saying the charities were making a difference.

On Friday the UN World Food Programme announced it had halted aid after initial deliveries were seized by the Burmese regime. The consignment included 38 tonnes of high-energy biscuits and relief equipment.

The DEC appeal by British aid agencies and charities has raised 4m in two days – 400,000 from Scotland.

In Scotland, External Affairs Minister Linda Fabiani promised that the Holyrood Government would consider all requests for help from the people of Burma. Speaking after a meeting on Friday with the Scottish heads of the DEC, Fabiani said: "Scots have a strong humanitarian ethos and I am sure many people across the country will support this appeal."

Sciaf, the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, the official aid agency of the Catholic Church in Scotland, has launched an appeal alongside the DEC's. It has sent 10,000 to a partner organisation on the ground to provide rice and temporary shelters and pledged a further 50,000 for water, medicines and food.

One of the Church's representatives in Burma said: "Our country is in a state of mourning. The magnitude of devastation overwhelms a poor country like ours."

WHAT THEY SAID

Stephen Fry, comedian and author, in an appeal for the Disasters Emergency Committee: "The impact of Cyclone Nargis in Burma is a picture of misery and devastation. The current supply cannot even begin to meet the growing need."

Neil Kinnock, former Labour leader: "It is a tragic absurdity that the huge state apparatus has not been used quickly or properly in trying to bring relief to the people of Burma."

Sir Menzies Campbell, former Liberal Democrat leader: "Any effort to impose humanitarian aid might well be the subject of resistance, which would have the effect of damaging yet more of the people of that blighted country."

Michael Heseltine, former Conservative deputy prime minister: "Who is going to be at the receiving end of the air drops? It could be the Burmese army. It could be the very people least affected by the tragedy."

Laura Bush, US First Lady: "The response to the cyclone is the most recent failure of the regime to meet its people's basic needs."

Ways to help

• Google match donations to UNICEF and Direct Relief International, up to $1m. Contributions will provide water, medical assistance and emergency response aid.

• Edinburgh-based Mercy Corps is working on flying out a team to the area to deliver aid. Donations accepted.

• International Rescue Committee has emergency team members on the ground. Donations via www.theirc.org

• Disasters Emergency Committee is made up of 13 UK registered humanitarian charities and have been working to provide aid to victims of overseas disasters.