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Burma fair to muddling in wake of savage blow
BOGALAY, Burma: Two months after a cyclone savaged the fertile Irrawaddy Delta, in Burma's south-west, the bones of drowned victims still clutter the muddy banks of waterways.
One bamboo stick at a time, survivors in hundreds of flattened villages are struggling to rebuild their homes. For shelter, they squeeze several families into a single tent. For drinking water, they collect monsoon rainwater that trickles off tarpaulin roof coverings into buckets or salvaged ceramic vases. For food, they cook communal meals with rice, beans and oil from hand-outs. Sometimes it is spoiled.
In one village, survivors kept up a steady pace of sawing and hammering at planks salvaged from the wreckage.
"To work is to be busy, and to be busy helps them forget," said Soe, the village leader. BOGALAY, Burma: Two months after a cyclone savaged the fertile Irrawaddy Delta, in Burma's south-west, the bones of drowned victi... more -
Myanmar praises Muslim Aid efforts
The country which is reluctant in accepting foreign aid has praised Muslim aid for its relief in the cyclon-hit country. Myanmar Ambassador U Tin Oo thanked Pakistan and its people for their help.
Wahidi briefed the ambassador on relief activities of Muslim Aid. He said 250 families had been provided food by his organisation and they were imparting training to people for water purification.
Earlier this week Islam channel (sky ch 813) appealed for money to help relif efforts in Myanmar, using presenters such as Yusuf Chambers who regularly appears on the Islamic channel Peace Tv (sky ch 823). The country which is reluctant in accepting foreign aid has praised Muslim aid for its relief in the cyclon-hit country. Myanmar Ambas... more -
Concerns Over Myanmar Junta’s Role
Further deliveries of small-scale aid arrived in Myanmar on Tuesday — a darkly clouded and rainy day in Yangon and in the south — but international aid experts and diplomats in the capital expressed concern that the Burmese government may not be up to delivering it, a task it has claimed almost exclusively as its own.
In Brussels on Tuesday, the foreign policy chief of the European Union, Javier Solana, said that if the Myanmar government continued to bar large-scale aid, outside donors should find a way to deliver it anyway.
“We have to use all the means to help those people,” he said. “The United Nations charter opens some avenues if things cannot be resolved in order to get the humanitarian aid to arrive.”
Ten days after the devastating cyclone struck, the isolationist military government has slightly eased its restrictions on aid but is still blocking most large-scale deliveries of relief supplies, aid officials said. Adding to the difficulties, the hundreds of thousands of people who most need help are largely in remote and inaccessible coastal and delta regions.
Myanmar’s state television reported that the death toll from the May 3 cyclone had risen again, to 34,273, The Associated Press reported, with 27,838 missing. The toll has been increasing daily, as more and more of the missing are identified as dead. The United Nations has estimated that the toll could be more than 60,000.
Still, the junta was making some progress in accepting aid. Two more American relief flights landed Tuesday and United States officials said they were talking to the government about expanding the relief program. But Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Myanmar, said the junta has refused the United States’ offer to send in search-and-rescue teams and disaster-relief experts. The United States is conducting a military exercise together with Thailand and has 11,000 troops in the area and several ships off the coast.
Ms. Villarosa also said the government had also rebuffed teams from China, Bangladesh, Singapore, Thailand and other countries.
The New Light of Myanmar, a government mouthpiece, also published photographs on Tuesday showing the arrival and distribution of foreign aid, a surprising representation of assistance considering the junta’s hostility toward outside influences, particularly the United States. Among these were an eight photographs of American deliveries, including one close shot of the nose of the aircraft, bearing the words U.S. Air Force.
In a report from Yangon, the official news agency of Myanmar’s friend and neighbor, China, said that international aid had been arriving in Myanmar since last week with aircrafts landing at the airport one after another. The Chinese reports made no mention of delays. Further deliveries of small-scale aid arrived in Myanmar on Tuesday — a darkly clouded and rainy day in Yangon and in the south — but ... more -
China quake won't affect Burma aid
The massive earthquake in China will not divert relief efforts from Burma, which still needs massive international support, aid agencies said Tuesday.
The 7.8-Richter scale quake that struck Sichuan province in western China on Monday killed more than 10,000 people and the death toll is rising.
"International aid agencies will not turn from Burma to China," said U Aye Win, spokesman for UN agencies in Burma.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Cross Society (IFRC) has assessment teams and staff working in China with the China Red Cross. Each country has its own IFRC team, and is not affected by disasters in other countries, he said.
"Last night, we released US $235,000 dollars to assist the preliminary effort [in China]," Cochrane said. "We also have a regional delegation sitting in Beijing who will provide international support and coordination."
IFRC, meanwhile, is continuing its relief shipments to Burma. "So far, we've sent at least 10 flights to Burma but at the end of this week we expect to have at least 17 flights, if not more, landing in Rangoon," he said.
The includes shelter supplies, mosquito nets, water purification tablets, spades to dig latrines, and family packs – clothes, cooking utensils and soap.
All aid agencies face the same challenge of getting aid quickly to the most affected areas because road and bridges were damaged from the cyclone.
An aid convoy form Rangoon airport to the delta takes two days, Aye Win said. Only small trucks of 6 tons can be used to take supplies to the delta because the roads are too poor to handle larger vehicles.
Currently, the UN has been using only roads and waterways to deliver aid, but the Government has used helicopters.
Aid is beginning to trickle through to the country. In the past two days, US planes have been able to unload supplies in Rangoon, which was also badly damaged by the storm winds.
More shipments are on the way. The supplies, including wood, buckets, nails, blankets and plastic tarpaulin – items to help provide shelter needs – and thousands of bottles of clean water were handed to the military junta to distribute.
There are also shipments from China, Japan, India, Singapore, Thailand and Russia. Two planes from Moscow have landed humanitarian and medical supplies, including tents, blankets, generators, disinfectants, bandages and food. Most of this aid is being handed directly to the Burmese authorities.
The European aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has also delivered a planeload of relief goods, which includes treatments for diarrheic diseases and malaria, Ready-To-Use Therapeutic Food, plastic sheeting, water containers, water pumps and an eight-person Zodiac boat. Three more MSF cargo planes are on their way to Rangoon with further supplies.
The UN has also used food stocks, equipment and medical supplies that had been already been stored in the country. But less than 20 percent of the food has been delivered to the delta, warned the UN's World Food Programme.
The issue, however, is not simply food and supplies.
"What is needed is the logistical expertise the UN and other international aid agencies can offer," said Marcus Prior, a senior WFP official. "At present we have less than 10 percent of the logistical staff we need to run an operation the size that is needed currently in Rangoon."
The Burmese junta is deeply suspicious of the outside world and has refused to let in foreign experts who specialise in getting aid to disaster victims.
The Thai military authorities, who have good contact with their Burmese counterparts, have been negotiating behind the scenes and are confident the UN personnel will be cleared to enter Burma in the coming few days – but aid officials remain pessimistic in private. The massive earthquake in China will not divert relief efforts from Burma, which still needs massive international support, aid agenci... more
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