http://advocates-wvox.com/2008/05/21/burma-human-tragedy-and-social-disaster-45-years-in-the-making.aspx
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Ms. Maureen Aung Thwin of Burma Soros Project and Kyi May Kaung interviewed by Richard Garfunkel of The Advocate radio.
Burmese junta allows in one expert -- to take part in their guided tour --
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,23745138-5005962,00.html?from=public_rss
Trauma risk for Burmese aid workers -- and survivors --
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7414385.stm
Everyone is working with no psychiatric support whatsoever.
The only psychiatrist I heard of was one who went in with Thai team, and he was only there 2 weeks.
ASEAN head Dr. Surin Pitsuwan calls for transparency and accountability by the Burmese junta on the numbers and aid estimates --
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=13134281
From AP and IHT
Interview of Dr. Zarni in the Irrawaddy -- on Burma and R2P
Hut damaged by Cyclone Nargis in Irrawaddy Delta, Burma -- photo copyright Citizen Journalist.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/interview_show.php?art_id=12190&page=4
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Guest column -- Burma and Cyclone Nargis: Is Anybody There? By Nora Rowley
Photo -- copyright Citizen Journalist -- Burma.
Is anybody there, does anybody care?”
Line from musical play 1776.
The secondary death toll from the Burmese junta’s blocking Cyclone Nargis survivors from receiving abundantly offered and supplied international humanitarian aide goes beyond negligent homicide or laissez-faire/passive extermination.
Cholera outbreaks have been confirmed in areas devastated by Cyclone Nargis. A report is circulating that the Myanmar military made an announcement that all aid has been delivered and therefore, relief efforts are done. The UN says that only 25 % of cyclone victims have received the most rudimentary of aid rations. Reports and photos document the rotten rice being handed out to starving cyclone victims by Myanmar’s military. At the same time, photos document government workers loading sacks of good quality rice for shipment to Bangladesh for the ruling military’s profit.
The military has handed out plain biscuits to starving survivors while the high-energy biscuits donated by the UN’s World Food Program remain in storage.
Foreign aid workers are refused entry to areas where the most destitute and needy survivors are. Burmese laymen and aid workers have been stopped, harassed, arrested, turned back and robbed of their truckloads of relief goods by the military and its allies.
Traumatized and economically devastated cyclone survivors are forced to leave refugee camps. They are ordered to go back where their homes were before cyclone Nargis, without food, clean water, money, or materials for shelter, let alone reconstruction. Some rations and supplies can be bought for 5000 kyats in exchange for a vote for the referendum that legitimizes this murderous regime’s rule.
Emergency shelter, generators and other reconstruction supplies are being used by the military rather than distributed to the cyclone survivors.
I am disturbed by these reports and photos, but not surprised.
I spent 6 months in Northern Rakhine State doing medical fieldwork. There was a surge in the already too prevalent human rights abuses. There was no hiding the resulting physical injury, starvation and death from the regime and their thug allies. Too many young boys’ faces told the story of generations of oppression whether carrying a furrowed brow or void of any emotion, i.e. poverty of spirit.
The surge brutality I saw coincides with the numerous international energy and economic development projects that will further enrich the junta, solidify Myanmar’s neighbors as partners in crime and most of all escalate the degradation, starvation, enslavement and death of populations clinging to the hope of survival amidst inhumanity.
The Irrawaddy Delta is the agricultural heartland of Myanmar. Is the active blockade of life saving aid to Cyclone Nargis victims because the Myanmar rulers want these people to die? Do they want to create a population enslaved to the regime for every morsel that passes their lips? Do the Myanmar rulers want to get their hands on this precious land? Is it for profit from the agricultural potential or is something more militaristic in the planning?
I was amazed at the many people in Burma who looked to America as their future heroic rescuer. Pleas from people for information about what the U.S. was doing to help them were difficult for me to face. U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice previously sat on the board of Chevron, which brings in billions of dollars to the Myanmar regime, despite the 2003 U.S. embargo against Myanmar. The role of mega-corporations in the conflicts which are alive and well in the world today is astounding. Is that what is holding up rescuing the 2.5 million Cyclone Nargis survivors, let alone the rest of the 56 million people of Burma?
Whatever the reason, it is EXTERMINATION BY BLOCKADE OF HUMANITARIAN AID.
Nora Rowley is a Burma focused human rights activist and medical doctor.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The Other Burmese Disaster --
The Lighthouse
“Enlightening Ideas for Public Policy”
Volume 10, Issue 20: May 19, 2008
In this week’s issue:
1) The Other Burmese Disaster
2) U.S. Military Reform Unlikely, Eland Argues
3) Latin America’s Populist Party and Coming Hangover
4) Freedom’s Future: Tempering Optimism with Realism
The Other Burmese Disaster
Although natural disasters often bring out the best in people, Cyclone Nargis has brought out the worst: it has shown the world that Myanmar’s (Burma’s) generals are concerned more with retaining and enhancing their political power than with saving the lives of the unfortunate people they rule.
“The Myanmar catastrophe is the result of a political mind-set—that is, of cold-blooded decisions aimed at protecting the military government from the threat of instability,” writes Alvaro Vargas Llosa, director of the Independent Institute’s Center on Global Prosperity.
Myanmar’s rulers concealed from the public the magnitude of the approaching tempest, lied about the number of victims left in its wake, obstructed the efforts of foreign relief agencies, forbade civilians from distributing the little aid that made it through, and sought to legitimize and further entrench their rule with a bogus referendum. “The Myanmar government’s conduct in the last few weeks,” continues Vargas Llosa, “may soon rank among the worst tragedies in living memory caused by people obsessed with power.”
“Myanmar’s Real Cyclone,” by Alvaro Vargas Llosa (5/14/08) Spanish Translation
Purchase Liberty for Latin America: How to Undo Five Hundred Years of State Oppression, by Alvaro Vargas Llosa.
“You may not agree with everything Alvaro Vargas Llosa says in his Liberty for Latin America, but you should take very seriously his central argument: that lack of political and economic freedom is at the root of our region’s underdevelopment. With this volume, Alvaro makes an important contribution to the present debate on the causes of Latin America’s poor economic and social performance.”
—Ernesto Zedillo, former President of Mexico; Director, Center for the Study of Globalization, Yale University
Will be interveiwed live by Westchester NY radio The Advocate -- tomorrow, May 21 at 12.05 PM
Photo -- Burmese victims of storm -- copyright Citizen Journalist.
"This Wednesday we will have on Ms. Kyi May Kaung, a
Burmese
ex-patriot(sic)expatriate, writer and activist, who will talk about the recent cyclone
that is threatening 1,000,000 people in Burma and the military junta that
controls 55,000,000 people with an iron fist!
Catch our program live-streaming on your computer www.wvox.com at 12
noon.
You can find all of our archived shows at www.advocates-wvox.com.
(Richard Garfunkel)"
Burmese junta's barring of international aid is criminal --
International Herald Tribune article:
US official says Myanmar's leaders will be responsible for deaths if aid not allowed
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
A senior U.S. diplomat said Tuesday that Myanmar's military-led government will be responsible for a second catastrophe if thousands of desperate cyclone survivors die because the junta continues to bar foreign aid and disaster workers.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Scot Marciel told lawmakers that the generals running Myanmar, also known as Burma, cannot manage the distribution of aid needed to help people facing disease, malnutrition and exposure to the elements.
"The situation is increasingly desperate," Marciel said. He called the government's response to Cyclone Nargis appalling and blamed its failure to give foreign aid workers greater access to victims for putting hundreds of thousands of lives at risk.
"Let me be clear: if assistance is not allowed in, and thousands of Burmese perish, the responsibility for this catastrophe will fall squarely on the shoulders of Senior Gen. Than Shwe," the head of the country's ruling junta, and other leaders, Marciel said in testimony before the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia. "Every day that goes by and more people suffer, increasingly the blame falls on the government."
Marciel said Myanmar's decision to hold a referendum on its draft constitution after the May 2-3 storm hit clearly shows its indifference to its own people's welfare. He criticized the government's "inexplicable failure to allow aid, to make relief a priority."
His comments came as the U.N.'s top humanitarian official made fresh pleas to Myanmar to allow in more foreign aid for survivors. The country has begun three days of mourning for the 134,000 dead and missing from the storm.
U.S. officials have complained that skilled aid workers are being forced to sit on the sidelines, waiting for permission from the government to enter, as victims of the cyclone die.
Lawmakers also lashed out against Myanmar's military, which has held power since 1962; the current junta came to power in 1988.
Democratic Rep. Joseph Crowley called the generals' response to the storm a "crime against humanity." "They know deep down inside that what they're doing is wrong, that they're morally corrupt," he said.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican, said he hoped the disaster would spur change in the country's leadership. "This is criminal behavior," he said.
Marciel, who is also U.S. ambassador to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said the U.S. has made available more than $17.5 million (€11.2 million) in aid; more than $16 million (€10.2 million) have gone to U.N. programs and "trusted non-governmental organizations. "
Myanmar's generals received international criticism for sending troops to quash peaceful protests in September. The country's junta held elections in 1990 but refused to hand over power when the opposition party won in a landslide.
http://www.iht. com/articles/ ap/2008/05/ 20/america/ NA-GEN-US- Myanmar.php
Dr Kyi May Kaung to speak on political aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in Burma -- today -- May 20th
At The Social Hall (Room in the Program Building at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax (UUCF), which is located at 2709 Hunter Mill Road, Oakton, VA 22124. (UUCF has 3 - 4 buildings, all located at the back of a huge gravel parking lot.)
at 7.15 PM -- free and open to the public.
Not much aid reaching Burmese storm victims -- while shops in Rangoon openly sell US and other aid items --
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=12119
Pictures from Labutta in Burmese delta --
Nargis story 2
We are orphans. I don't know where my parents are. They might have passed away.
Sometimes, we receive some clothes like that. (in too big sizes)
Some of us are living in monasteries.
Some of us are living in schools.
Now, we are lining up for food.
Now, they are distributing rice. But, please look at it. (It's brown and in lumps that look like elephants!)
Are they for pigs? We don't think people donated rice like that.
They are wet, stinky and old. Anyway, we have to cook them to eat.
Editor's note -- sorry, the pictures could not be uploaded --
Mindset of the Burmese generals --
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=489
article by Benedict Rogers
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Burma disaster -- from Al Jazeera.net -- most comprehensive so far
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnc3W-K9u2A
Burma aid -- from BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7399830.stm
Person shown in red shirt is a private citizen trying to do his part --
Burmese officials taking aid supplies and re-selling at a profit --
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/burmamyanmar/1949919/Myanmar-cyclone-Burmese-officials-selling-emergency-supplies-in-local-markets.html
Burmese government still blocking aid --
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/world/asia/14myanmar.html?th&emc=th
Junta harrasses local aid workers and NGOs while giving re-building contracts to its cronies
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=12025
Burma -- first foreign aid worker on scene describes an unrecognizable landscape -- junta does not have heavy machinery to unload 747s
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080514/ap_on_re_as/myanmar_65
survivors held onto trees and were sand blasted by sea water and sand and lost topmost layer of skin --
30 Thai MDs to leave for Burma on Friday -- sent by Thai Crown Prince.
http://enews.mcot.net/view.php?id=4263
Includes psychiatrists --and $100,000 worth of supplies -- several other aid planes and experts sent away from Rangoon airport by junta, including a plane from Qatar.
Cyclone Nargis and Burma: Dead Baby's finger was found inside a river fish --
Someone inside Burma relayed this to me from direct experience --
If you have data/guidelines on food and sanitation precautions after a flood, please leave a comment on this site.
kmk
Latest articles on Burma --
Go around the generals (Washington Post)
US Admiral: Myanmar junta unconcerned about cyclone (CNN)
Use all means to get aid to Burma, says EU chief (Guardian, UK)
Accounts: Burma junta steers bad food to cyclone victims (USA Today)
The UN's responsibility to protect (International Herald Tribune, France)
'No Foreigners, No Cameras' in the Irrawaddy delta: Burmese PM (Mizzima)
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Burmese junta forcing storm victims to leave monasteries, separating families and blocking private donors --
Burmese resident tells Oslo-based radio about relief problems
1253 words
13 May 2008
11:48
English
(c) 2008 The British Broadcasting Corporation. All Rights Reserved. No material may be reproduced except with the express permission of The British Broadcasting Corporation.
Text of report by Norway-based Burmese Democratic Voice of Burma website, on 12 May
Cyclone Nargis, which struck Burma on 2 and 3 May, left 100,000 people dead and missing in Irrawaddy Division. Bogale which is located in that region also suffered many casualties.
We understand that there have been reports of cholera in Bogale and that the town is in urgent need of clean water and medicines.
Waterways around Bogale are also reported to be clogged with corpses and scarcity of relief aid and gasoline has also prevented relief teams from visiting villages distant from Bogale. Clean water and water purification devices donated by the international community have reached Bogale but they cannot be distributed because the order from higher authorities has not been received yet. Local authorities are also said to be keeping a close watch on private donors.
Democratic Voice of Burma Correspondent Ko Aye Naing interviews a person who is undertaking relief work in Bogale about the situation there.
[Begin recording] [DVB] Can you please tell me about the situation in Bogale?
[Unidentified male] There are many people taking refuge here. The monasteries are sheltering them. I have visited about four monasteries and saw over 3,000 of them. I understand they are being moved to Ma-ubin, where they have opened five shelters. Some people - I understand about 900 of them - were taken to Ma-ubin but the cyclone victims did not want to go there. So, they used force to take them away and some families got separated. For instance, husbands were moved and wives were left behind or children taken away without the husbands, and so forth.
[DVB] Who is moving them out?
[Unidentified male] They were taken away in military trucks. People were forced into the trucks and ordered not to remain at the monasteries. Many cyclone victims who did not go with the trucks were evicted from the monasteries and some of them are now living along the coast.
[DVB] Did you say that you saw about 3.000 people in trouble in Bogale?
[Unidentified male] Yes. Some people had open sores and there is no medicine. They do not have food, not even rice gruel. Three or four of them have to share a bowl of rice gruel.
[DVB] Aren't the authorities helping them?
[Unidentified male] No. But a few people bought rice at 800 kyats per pyi [about 4.5 pounds] and distributing about a pyi of rice to each cyclone victim. There were about 80 distressed people at a monastery and they went without food yesterday morning. In the evening a private donor gave a sack of rice to the monastery. The people there had to cope with what they have.
[DVB] Isn't the town feeding them?
[Unidentified male] Yes, there are private donors. But they also have difficulties as well. By difficulties, I mean, they encounter problems with (?officials). The authorities keep a close watch on donors at times and sometimes behave in an unpleasant way.
[DVB] Can you explain briefly about the situation in Bogale?
[Unidentified male] Some monasteries are given free access because they get along with the officials. Some monasteries, however, are difficult to get access. It is not easy even to get in touch with some monasteries because local officials have imposed restrictions.
[DVB] You mentioned about not being able to get medicines. What sort of health problems are there?
[Unidentified male] Rabies and open sores are the common problems. From my experience, I have seen those problems in about a hundred people. There is about to be more.
[DVB] Aren't the doctors and medics giving out medicines?
[Unidentified male] There is no medicine at all. Let me give you an example. We sent a corpse to the hospital and the next day we found the same corpse in the river. We sent a dead person to the mortuary and the next morning we found it in the river. Two pregnant women were sent to the hospital and they died. No treatment was given to them. In fact, there have been incidents about patients being turned away from the hospital.
[DVB] How about the people in the town?
[Unidentified male] The main problem is water. By that I mean, the water is really unclean. Of course, there are about two reservoirs in Bogale. But some reservoirs are filled with dirt and leaves and totally unfit for consumption but people are still using the water from them. From our estimate, there are about 120 villages. ((Words indistinct)) the exact number of people that we can ascertain is 97, but, they estimate about 300 people.
[DVB] Are people returning to their villages in Bogale Township?
[Unidentified male] About 50 to 80 people remain in some villages which used to have about 300 to 400 villagers. They continue to live there, coping with the water, food, and medicine shortage by themselves. No one has distributed anything to them.
[DVB] How are they surviving?
[Unidentified male] They share whatever is available and, of course, the children come first. As far as I know, they cannot go on living like this for too long.
[DVB] But the relief teams are there already, isn't it?
[Unidentified male] Well... as far as I know a truck from private sources arrived, but, it was not allowed to come into the town. The local people went to ask the truck in but the authorities insisted on taking one third of whatever was in the truck. When we send relief goods in, some exchanges of payments are made also.
[DVB] Who are the people asking for a one-third share?
[Unidentified male] I don't know, but there are soldiers around. Many shops in Bogale will not allow unfamiliar faces to enter the premises. If they allow you in, they unlock the door slightly so that only a person can go in and then they sell their stuff. What I have heard is that relief aid has arrived but I have not seen it being distributed.
[DVB] Why is that?
[Unidentified male] They said they were waiting for an approval from the higher authorities. That was what a military officer told me when I was helping (?carry the relief goods). I was told that some relief people are there too and some supplies are in the mosque on ((words indistinct)) road. They say there are devices (?to purify water) but I have not seen them being used until now.
[DVB] Aren't the overseas Burmese or the local people - the wealthy people and the big entrepreneurs - giving you rice?
[Unidentified male] Yes, they have. But, the amount given to us can be compared to feeding an elephant a fistful of sesame. The food, clothing, and shelter situation is very bad. We need water and food. People do not even have clothes to wear. There are open sores with pus on their bodies. Since we are private individuals, we have to make do with whatever is available. We use traditional as well as modern medicines but we do not have enough of them. The amount of food we have is very limited and we cannot meet the demand. The future is very bleak. [End recording]
That was Ko Aye Naing interviewing a resident of Bogale who has been helping cyclone victims about the situation in the region.
Source: Democratic Voice of Burma website, Oslo, in Burmese 1430 gmt 12 May 08
Monday, May 12, 2008
German Chancelor Angela Merkel seeks UN Security Council action to send aid to Burma unilaterally --
Asia Europe USA Environment
Merkel seeks UN Security Council action on Myanmar aid crisis
Posted: May 10, 2008
From: Mathaba
German Chancellor Angela Merkel here Friday urged the intervention of the UN Security Council to force the Myanmar military junta to allow international aid for hundreds of thousands of victims of Cyclone Nargis.
"From the point of view of the federal (German) government the UN Security Council has to deal with the issue," Merkel's deputy spokesperson Thomas Steg said at a weekly news conference in Berlin .
Merkel was scheduled to phone with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon later in the day to discuss the situation in disaster-stricken Myanmar .
Steg expressed the chancellor's "incomprehension" over the fact that Burmese military rulers were still blocking international relief.
Meanwhile, Berlin has also doubled its emergency financial aid to two million euros.
On Thursday, the German Foreign Ministry called in the Burmese ambassador to voice its protest over the ongoing delays of international aid deliveries in the aftermath of the weekend's devastating Cyclone Nargis. --IRNA
Open letter to BBC Burmese Service etc to "stop insulting invited guests."
Sent by Aung Moe Win --
unofficial translation:
"You invited Dr. Khin Saw Win (once Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's personal physician and a well known dissident) and then you cut her off, saying you were out of time. If you were out of time, why do you bother at all?
"For you to know, she is a medical doctor. -- The Saturday round table is like an interrogation, like SPDC (the Burmese junta) interrogating the accused or the defendant. (We have) to endure the junta violating us in one way and the Burmese language media (overseas) in another. Before you learned to be a journalist, you learned to insult people. I don't know why you all are suffering from inflated egos. Please reduce this offensive behavior."
McCain Convention chief linked to Burmese junta resigns --
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/us/politics/11mccain.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
DCI has had relations with Burmese junta since 1997, and as recently as 2003.
Bain and Co. was PR firm for junta circa 1998, see articles in Washington Post archive from that time.
Before that junta was represented by same firm that represented Saddam Hussein.
Leave comments if you know more about this. Comments may be left anonymously. Will be forwarded to media and activist community.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Rally in Chicago
Poster by Nora Rowley
Free Burma-Chicago joins
*MAY 10, SaturdayChicago
*MAY 10, Saturday
11 AM Lincoln Park
North Pond-N. Stockton Drive Fullerton
This event will include a rally, speeches by human rights activists, a Torch parade procession and at least our group will have a display and information table.
The event organizers want to keep the event theme human rights and not political. Therefore, we will be using StopBurma
* THIS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE A HUGE RALLY. WE NEED TO GATHER PEOPLE FROM ALL SECTORS TO ATTEND.
FREE BURMA- CHICAG/US CAMPAIGN FOR BURMA WILL STRESS
1) CHINA’S FINANCIAL, WEAPONS AND POLITICAL SUPPPORT OF BURMA'S RULING MILITARY REGIME
2) CHINA'S PRONOUNCEMENT THAT ALL WAS BACK TO NORMAL AND CALM IN OCTOBER 2007 AS MONKS AND OTHER PROTESTORS WERE CHASED OFF THE STREETS, OUT OF MONASTERIES, INTO THE JUNGLES, BEING TORTURED, CREMATED WHILE STILL ALIVE AND MURDERED BY BURMA’S REGIME.
3) CHINA'S ENERGY DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS IN BURMA DIRECTLY CAUSE BRUTAL HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
4) GRANT AUNG SAN SUU KYI'S HUMAN RIGHTS AND RELEASE HER FROM HOUSE ARREST, one year extension ends May 24!
This event will include a rally, speeches by human rights activists, a Torch parade procession and at least our group will have a display and information table.
The event organizers want to keep the event theme human rights and not political. Therefore, we will be using Stop
* THIS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE A HUGE RALLY. WE NEED TO GATHER PEOPLE FROM ALL SECTORS TO ATTEND.
FREE BURMA- CHICAG/US CAMPAIGN FOR BURMA WILL STRESS
1) CHINA’S FINANCIAL, WEAPONS AND POLITICAL SUPPPORT OF BURMA'S RULING MILITARY REGIME
2) CHINA'S PRONOUNCEMENT THAT ALL WAS BACK TO NORMAL AND CALM IN OCTOBER 2007 AS MONKS AND OTHER PROTESTORS WERE CHASED OFF THE STREETS, OUT OF MONASTERIES, INTO THE JUNGLES, BEING TORTURED, CREMATED WHILE STILL ALIVE AND MURDERED BY BURMA’S REGIME.
3) CHINA'S ENERGY DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS IN BURMA DIRECTLY CAUSE BRUTAL HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
4) GRANT AUNG SAN SUU KYI'S HUMAN RIGHTS AND RELEASE HER FROM HOUSE ARREST, one year extension ends May 24!
5) Cyclone Nargis
** As Part of The Global Human Rights Torch Relay www.humantorchrelay.com
The founding premise is that Crimes Against Humanity and the Olympics cannot co-exist inChina Australia
The founding premise is that Crimes Against Humanity and the Olympics cannot co-exist in
CNN's Dan Rivers now out of Burma -- says he was hunted while there by the Burmese authorities.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/09/rivers.btsc/index.html
Must read article-- Cyclone Nargis had all the makings of a perfect storm --
by Michael Casey, AP Environmental Writer --http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080508/ap_on_re_as/the_perfect_storm&printer=1;_ylt=Amt8j_au7e6VG7zsSnpgScH9xg8F
Summary -- this was a once in 500 years "event" -- why don't governments get it?
Bangladesh has a cyclone warning system --
all vegetation on Burma coast -- mangrove forests depleted by shrimp farms etc.
24 mins ago -- at time of posting -- first US aid C 140 arrives in Rangoon.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_myanmar
Nargis Cyclone and Burma by Kyi May Kaung
Storm victims inside Burma -- copyright Citizen Journalist.
"Amazing weather forecast" clipping obtained from other Burmese dissidents, that is dated "Naypyidaw April 29. Underlined sentences say "Cyclone Nargis has not grown in strength perceptibly", "It is estimated that in the next 24 hours it will not increase in strength and will move slowly to the Northeast." At end it says "while winds are strong, wind speeds on water surfaces may blow from 40 to 45 mph." I was not able to confirm authenticity of this, but it looks like a clipping from a Burmese newspaper, which are all state owned and run and in any case, most rural people do not read newspapers.
(A shorter version of this article is on Wild River Review at Large, May 2008.)
On Sunday official reports on the deaths caused by Cyclone Nargis in Burma started with the low estimate of “just three women died as they paddled their sampan on the river.” The tropical cyclone hit at 5 AM local time early Saturday morning and continued till 11 AM, with powerful winds of up to 150 mph.
Yeah, yeah, I thought, there they go again. I remembered the initially low estimate when the tsunami hit in December 2004. I saw then, on Boxing Day, an animated map on TV where the wave was shown lapping at the shores of all the countries in South Asia and S.E. Asia. It was just physically impossible that all the other countries such as Sri Lanka and Thailand would be so hard hit, and hardly any deaths in Burma! An airhead woman correspondent on a TV channel I can’t remember did not understand waves at all, let alone a tsunami. She spoke as if a wave were a solid wall moving through the water in one direction.
You bet, the numbers will go up, I thought to myself, in the voice of my redoubtable old grandmother, Snow Maiden, a real straight talking Moulmein woman, practical to a fault, who once asked her distant spinster cousin who had a tic, “How long have you been living here with us, Miss Blossoming Diamond? Eight months? Well, today is the day you leave. Go now.” She also regularly told guests who said, “I’d better go now,” -- “Good! Go, Go!” Of course she meant, “Go home before it gets dark,” or something like that.
With Cyclone Nargis, sure enough, the news has gotten worser and worser, as Alice in Wonderland might say.
Nargis is a beautiful word and means “narcissus” in Urdu. It was also the name of a famous Bollywood actress who was achingly beautiful, with a pale oval face, black arched eyebrows and plump arms. In one of the novels of Salman Rushdie, the woman who cooks, but cooks with rancor, turns out nargissi kofta, or deep fried meat balls encasing hard boiled eggs, otherwise known as Scotch eggs.
Something so beautifully named has caused a lot of death and destruction. We are only now starting to hear excruciating survivor stories. After the all time low estimate of three, it then went up to 350 and then 351, before it jumped to 10,000, then 22,000 and even 63,000 in an official release from the Burmese Foreign Ministry. U.S. Charge d’Affaires Shari Villarosa said yesterday that the death toll is likely to reach 100,000. http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/07/myanmar.aidcyclone/index.html
This U.S. estimate is five times higher than the number given by the Burmese junta. Many countries including the United States have pledged millions in emergency aid, but the Burmese junta is still vacillating about granting entry visas to disaster assessment teams and aid workers, who are all set to go in Thailand and in Australia. We see planes being loaded in Brindisi, Italy. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said quite bluntly, “we would give more, except we don’t like the way the Burmese government does things.” Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy has always insisted that any humanitarian aid be monitored so that it gets to the people it was intended for. I can think of a number of notorious cases from my time in Burma till the early eighties, when I left on a scholarship. In one case the doctor in charge of leprosy medication took the medicines and sold them on the black market. The more powerful were more corrupt. The elder sister of Ne Win’s third (and fifth) wife Daw Ni Ni Myint, was said to have taken all the aid supplies from an earlier USAID aid shipment for a cyclone in Arakan State in the late 1960s. For this, for a while, Ne Win had a token separation. When they reconciled after the interim in which Ne Win married a descendant of former Burmese royalty, Yadana Nat Mè, at an official function Ne Win obviously told the government controlled press not to show her photograph. A small petite woman, she was then reduced to one small white hand sticking out from behind Ne Win’s big frame as she greeted some foreign dignitary at on official reception. (He also had a token separation with his second wife Kitty, who was alleged to have taken all the jewelry that Mogok gem merchants gave her for sale overseas.) Still, all that pales compared to the level of corruption in the so-called “open economy” after 1988. Someone connected to a junta insider told me that in those years Mercedes and other luxury cars would arrive from anonymous donors intended for the top generals and that their homes were “now full of junk, but expensive junk.”
So Kouchner and all of us Burmese dissidents have a strong point. Today (May 8th, 2008) there are reports that the junta has let in aid planes from six countries. One foreign diplomat is said to have called that "delivering aid with an eye dropper." So far, I have only seen on TV (from official Myanmar TV) rows of fat generals and their cohorts “supervising” the unloading of boxed supplies from planes, but we have not seen anything actually delivered. There is only one foreign correspondent (from CNN) in Burma right now. Everyone else has been denied an entry visa, including Anderson Cooper. The Irrawaddy reports that inside Burmese say “we only see the army on TV, nowhere else.”
Washington DC based U.S. Campaign for Burma is starting a letter writing campaign so that there is a U.N. Security Council resolution and aid can be sent to Burma whether the Burmese authorities agree or not. Bernard Kouchner also suggested going in without waiting for the junta’s permission. Condoleeza Rice said sending aid is “not a matter of politics.” http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080507/ts_nm/myanmar_cyclone_dc
The Thai government has started flying in emergency water and other supplies, and has promised to send a planeload a day, it is uncertain for how long. Burma experts such as Dr. Sean Turnell of Macquarie University, Sydney’s Burma Economic Watch predict longterm food shortages. From the inundated areas in satellite photos, it would certainly seem so.
Before and after satellite photos: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/08/myanmar/index.html
I don’t think in this case the Burmese authorities are exaggerating, in fact the junta is now literally out of its depth in this human disaster of humungous proportions. I do know from experience that the Burmese military government is “expert” at manipulating data. Since the coup by the late General Ne Win that put them in place in 1962 and the Moscow trained chief economist (later relieved of his duties) the late U Ba Nyein, they have had an obsession with control and figures. Burma’s famous clowns have always joked of htan pin or “toddy palm surveys” in which you climb on a toddy or sugar palm and then count. In this case, satellite images have shown a disturbing high percentage of flooded areas post-Nargis compared to photographs taken before Nargis, which have inundated the land and changed the Irrawaddy Delta area and Burma’s southern coastline drastically. http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/07/myanmar.aidcyclone/index.html#cnnSTCText
In the seventies, former graduates of the Institute of Economics in Rangoon were visiting and told me that they “fixed” the population figures to get a nice looking 3 % annual growth rate. I can still feel my jaw dropping. In the fifties, the head of the Central Statistical Department told us how the foreign experts wanted to see if there was enough bamboo forest for raw material for a paper factory, so they flew him over a bamboo forest. After some time the Burmese asked if he had seen enough, the foreign expert said “yes” and the plane flew back to Rangoon. But after the factories were set up, the entire bamboo forest bloomed and then died, as is the nature of bamboo. The factories were stuck without raw material.
In 1988, the Burmese government retracted its being awarded the Shah Reza Pahlevi prize from the U.N. for literacy programs, saying it was only “monastic education literacy” in order to have Burma demoted from a less developed nation to a least developed nation, in order to qualify for more international aid. This is widely recognized as one of the tipping events which set off the mass pro-democracy movement, which brought Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy, to the forefront and which continues mobilizing and speaking out under severe duress to this day.
Last year, in September, the military regime beat, killed and imprisoned many monks who were peacefully demonstrating and chanting the metta suttra, in what is now known as the Saffron Revolution. The junta has been s-l-o-w-l-y dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on a document it calls a “constitution” for fifteen years, and May 10 was scheduled to be the date of a countrywide referendum. Up till Monday, the junta was insisting that it would go ahead but it does not seem as if it will be able to.
Survivor stories -- http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=11823
Burmese Americans are having a hard time finding ways to send aid. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080507/ap_on_re_us/myanmar_helping_out
A food drop is not a good option. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080508/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_myanmar
I remember seeing bags of rice burst into the flood waters from “food drops” in Bangladesh.
I’d like to conclude by saying that aid needs to go in and go in fast. Already bloated corpses are floating in the water, which is salt water, so water purification tablets cannot be used. The United States and the Bush administration and Burmese exile communities overseas and international volunteers should play a leading role in both the delivery and monitoring of emergency aid as well as long term structural changes. Tropical storms are likely to grow more severe worldwide due to global warming, but in Burma the disaster has been much exacerbated by the military junta’s years of neglect of physical infrastructure and civil society. One dissident mentioned all the forests that have been felled, making Rangoon much hotter these days. All the junta has known is how to enrich themselves and how to hang onto their own power. This has to end.
*
Kyi May Kaung (Ph.D.) is a Burmese writer and Burma analyst in exile.
Kyi May Kaung -- Burma: The Great Storm that ended it all? is on Wild River Review at Large --
http://www.wildriverreview.com/wrratlarge/
This was written two days ago.
Thank you Wild River Review for timely publication.
In the meantime, the Burmese junta is acting true to form.
The U.N. is reported to be furious and has stopped aid shipments because its first consignment was confiscated and is now lying on the tarmac.
See CNN.
Cyclone Nargis' path -- New York Times interactive --
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/05/08/world/20080508_MYANMAR.html
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