Over 10,000 Die In Cyclone

[rogueyam]

Abetting Burma

The United Nations is complicit in the current catastrophe.

by Joseph Loconte

The Weekly Standard

05/08/2008

 

IF THERE IS A DEFINING mood about the catastrophe that has engulfed Burma, it is the sense of denial. When a devastating cyclone ripped through the country over the weekend, the military regime reported that the storm had killed 351 people. While residents of Rangoon, the largest city, scrambled for food and shelter, state television broadcast an opera. At least a million people have been made homeless in the storm's wake--and none of them will be going to the opera. As of this writing, the death toll is expected to reach as high as 100,000.

 

Yet the air of self-delusion which the Burmese regime breathes so freely is shared by others, particularly those in the cloistered confines of the United Nations. For years, as the military junta has brutalized and impoverished its population, U.N. officials either have ignored its atrocities or imagined they could be negotiated away.

 

Indeed, the same U.N. institutions that have accommodated and "engaged" the Burmese government are stupefied by how sluggishly the regime has responded to this disaster. Meteorologists in India say they warned Burmese officials at least 48 hours before the cyclone slammed into the country. Yet state-run media failed to issue timely warnings to villagers in the storm's path. As thousands of tons of relief assistance sat idly along its border, the government dithered over whether to issue visas allowing relief organizations into the country. A U.S. offer to divert three Naval ships in the Gulf of Thailand to assist relief efforts was rebuffed. Earlier

this week, many aid workers were still being denied visas.

 

"Running the country on a combination of internal repression and xenophobia," writes Kenneth Denby in the Times (London), "the junta seems not to have made up its mind that this is a tragedy that it cannot remedy on its own." The government's craven disregard for the survival of its own people in the midst of this catastrophe, the worst since the 2004 tsunami, should surprise no one. It is the easily predictable reflex of a brutal and paranoid regime--aided and abetted by U.N. apologists and a culture of human-rights hypocrisy.

 

The monstrous contradiction between U.N. ideals and its willingness to implement them.

[Bangkoktraveler]

Press Association

5/8/08

 

 

Fears for Britons missing in Burma

 

Aid has begun to trickle into cyclone-hit Burma as it emerged 17 British nationals were among the tens of thousands of people still unaccounted for.

 

The Foreign Office said it was "urgently" trying to clarify the status of a small number of long-term residents in the country who had failed to make contact with their families in the UK.

 

And with the crisis six days old, much-needed relief is only just beginning to arrive in the ravaged south-east Asian nation. The first UN aid flight arrived in the closed country on Thursday.

 

Cyclone Nargis struck on Saturday, bringing winds of up 120mph and flooding to the badly-affected Irrawaddy Delta region. Official figures put the death toll thus far at 22,000, but aid agencies and international representatives in Burma believe the final death toll could be more than four times higher.

 

Shari Villarosa, the charge d'affaires of the US embassy in Burma, has said there may be "over 100,000 deaths" in the Irrawaddy Delta area. In addition, rotting human and animal corpses are threatening to spread disease in the beleaguered Delta region.

 

But despite the increasing desperation of the situation and threat of looting, aid agencies are being frustrated from delivering much-needed supplies by the ruling Burmese junta.

 

Ray Hasan, head of Asia policy at Christian Aid, said: "The indications are the situation is getting increasingly tense and there is a sense that not enough is being done. Communities are expecting assistance and assistance isn't being provided, certainly not in any significant manner, across the whole of the region it is nowhere near enough.

 

"There is evidence of looting because people are desperate and I think there is that sense growing right now of 'help has not come, why has it not come?'. The message that needs to be got out there and needs to be pushed is the absolute necessity for the Burmese government to give unrestricted access to humanitarian workers to the affected areas, particularly the Irrawaddy Delta."

 

In the House of Commons, International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander told MPs that a UN World Food Programme flight carrying seven tonnes of high energy biscuits had landed in Burma. A second flight with 18 tonnes of biscuits, currently in Dhaka, Bangladesh, was also granted landing rights for Burma.

 

"The delays for these first two flights were due to delays in obtaining clearances," Mr Alexander said. He described the crisis in Burma as "very grave" adding it was "on a scale not seen since the Tsunami of 2004".

 

Link

[Bangkoktraveler]

News.com.au

May 08, 2008 06:54pm

 

 

17 Brits in Burma fail to make contact

 

SEVENTEEN Britons in Burma have failed to get in touch with friends and family since the cyclone that killed tens of thousands there, Britain's Foreign Office said today.

 

"We are aware of 17 British nationals that friends and family have not yet been able to get in contact with," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

 

"We don't believe that they are in any danger - obviously communications there are very difficult, telephone lines are done and phones are blocked."

 

She added that there were "no reports of casualties".

 

Consular staff emailed 200 people on May 1 to warn them about the cyclone, although this is not necessarily the exact number of Britons there.

 

Link

 

 

[bust]

We are trying to locate a friends father at the moment.

 

Just no info coming out.

[bust]

The huge death toll in the cyclone that hit Burma last Saturday would not have been so high if the Burmese government had heeded warnings from India and Thailand that a cyclone was on its way, according to meteorological experts.

 

Indiaâ??s state-run Meteorological Department said it had alerted Burma two days before the cyclone struck. The departmentâ??s spokesman, B P Yadav told reporters in New Delhi on Wednesday: "Forty-eight hours in advance we informed the Burma weather department about the likely area of landfall as well as time and intensity of the cyclone."

 

The New Delhi-based Meteorological Department issues regular cyclone warnings and updates to Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Oman and Pakistan, Yadav said.

 

The Thailand-based Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, set up after the 2004 tsunami, said it had also warned Burma that a cyclone was on its way. The centerâ??s executive director, Dr Bhichit Rattakul, said Cyclone Nargis had been detected in the Bay of Bengal on April 27, five days before its landfall in Burma.

 

The Burmese government says warnings of the approaching cyclone were published in the official press. The state-back media, however, concentrated almost exclusively on the constitutional referendum in its coverage of current affairs in the days leading up to the cycloneâ??s arrival.

[Torneyboy]

Nothing much going on at all ..they are making it so hard for the Aid workers to get into the joint...

[Flashermac]

The Sun joins in:

 

 

THE death toll in cyclone-ravaged Burma could hit 500,000 â?? more than TWICE the total killed by the Boxing Day Tsunami.

 

Last nightâ??s warning came as it emerged that 17 Britons, including ex-pats and backpackers, were still missing.

 

Sources said 200,000 people were already dead or dying.

 

But the figure could rise to HALF A MILLION through disease and hunger if the nationâ??s hardline army rulers continue to block aid for the devastated lowlands of the Irrawaddy Delta.

 

That would dwarf the 230,000 deaths across South East Asia in the 2004 catastrophe.

 

Nyo Ohn Myint, of exiled opposition party The National League for Democracy, told The Sun at a border crisis centre: â??Much of this will be a man-made disaster, caused by the military regime.

 

â??The bodies need to be collected and burnt as soon as possible or disease will claim many more lives. But the government has organised nothing and its 400,000 soldiers are doing nothing while undistributed aid piles up.

 

â??They are hoping bodies will be washed out to sea so the final count is smaller â?? but it could kill half a million people within a matter of weeks. The world must know what is going on.â?Â

 

 

 

Link

 

 

[Flashermac]

1st big foreign aid flights finally let in by Myanmar junta

 

 

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Myanmar's military regime allowed in the first major international aid shipment Thursday, but it snubbed a U.S. offer to help cyclone victims struggling to recover from a tragedy of unimaginable scale.

 

Five days after the storm, the junta continued to stall on visas for U.N. teams and other foreign aid workers anxious to deliver food, water and medicine to survivors amid fears the death toll could hit 100,000.

 

Among those stranded in Thailand were 10 members of the USAID Disaster Assistance Response Team. Air Force transport planes and helicopters packed with supplies also sat waiting for a greenlight.

 

"We are in a long line of nations who are ready, willing and able to help, but also, of course, in a long line of nations the Burmese don't trust," U.S. Ambassador Eric John told reporters in Thailand's capital, Bangkok.

 

"It's more than frustrating. It's a tragedy," he said. Each day of delay means "a lot more people suffering," he said.

 

Myanmar's isolationist regime issued an appeal for international assistance after winds of 120 mph and a storm surge up to 15 feet high pounded the Irrawaddy delta Saturday.

 

But the junta has been accused of dragging its feet despite emerging reports on entire villages submerged, bodies floating in salty water and children ripped from their parents arms.

 

"My children were crying all night. There is not enough food. There will be no food this evening," said Daw Thay, who took refuge in a monastery with her three children and her 99-year-old mother in a town 60 miles south of Yangon, the country's biggest city.

 

Daw Thay, 42, said monks were going without food so others could eat.

 

"We share what we have but there isn't enough. So they (the monks) give the food to the children and the old people first," she said.

 

In the swampy delta, a horrible stench rose from corpses and dead animals, bloated and floating in the water. Someone had written on a black asphalt road in Kongyangon village: "We are all in trouble. Please come help us." A few feet away, the desperate plea, "We're hungry."

 

 

Tired of waiting for help in Yangon, red-robed monks, other civilians and dozens of soldiers cleared piles of debris and toppled billboards from streets and cutting branches off uprooted trees.

 

"They've started doing the clean up themselves," Aye Chan Naing, chief editor of Democratic Voice of Burma, said as a light rain showered down. "They are volunteers."

 

Public transportation was slowly coming back to life in the city, with some trains operating, and cars formed lines three miles long to get rations of two gallons of gasoline.

 

The cyclone blew off the roof of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's dilapidated bungalow in Yangon and cut off its electricity, a neighbor said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Suu Kyi, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for her pro-democracy activism, has been under house arrest for years.

 

 

Link

[Torneyboy]

I hope aid gets throuhg soon ..so many need help..

[bust]

Nice show for the cameras

http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200805/r248895_1020296.asx