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Burmese storm toll 'tops 10,000'

More than 10,000 people were killed in a devastating cyclone that hit western Burma on Saturday, Foreign Minister Nyan Win has said on state TV.

He said his government was ready to accept international assistance, and aid shipments were now being prepared.

Thousands of survivors of Cyclone Nargis are lacking shelter, drinking water, power and communications, but in many regions help has not yet arrived.

Five regions, in which 24m people live, have been declared disaster zones.

Toll multiplies

Nargis hit the south-east Asian country on Saturday with wind speeds reaching 190km/h (120mph).

Earlier on Monday, the death toll was put at just 351, but later reports from state media increased the known death toll more than 10-fold to nearly 4,000.

The toll soared again when Nyan Win spoke at a news conference, also attended by the country's prime minister and information minister, and broadcast on state television.

"According to the latest information, more than 10,000 people were killed," he said.

He said information about the scale of the disaster was still being collected, and warned the toll could yet rise.

"We will welcome help like this from other countries, because our people are in difficulty," Nyan Win said.

The towns of Bogalay and Laputta, in the region of Irrawaddy, are among those locations particularly badly hit, state media reported earlier.

None of the casualty figures have been independently confirmed.

The BBC is not permitted to report from Burma, also known as Myanmar.

Houses 'skeletal'

But reports from the storm-hit region say thousands of buildings have been flattened, power lines downed, trees uprooted, roads blocked and water supplies disrupted.

A Rangoon resident who spoke to relatives in Laputta has told BBC Burmese that 75% to 80% of the town was destroyed.

He said houses along the coast had been reduced to skeletal structures while, further along the coast, 16 villages had been virtually wiped out.

No help had yet reached Laputta, he said.

Pictures on state TV showed security services working to clear roads to allow help through, but in Rangoon and elsewhere there were complaints that the response to the disaster was weak.

"Where are the soldiers and police? They were very quick and aggressive when there were protests in the streets last year," a retired government worker complained to Reuters news agency.

He was referring to protests led by Buddhist monks last year that were quickly put down.

Earlier, a BBC journalist monitoring the situation in Burma from Bangkok, Soe Win, said the shortages of power and water were particularly critical.

"What [people] are saying is that if the situation continues for another two or three days, that will be really, really difficult for them," he said.

Aid assessment

UN disaster response official Richard Horsey confirmed that several hundred thousand people were in need of shelter and clean drinking water.

However, he said it was impossible to tell exactly how many people had been affected because of damage to the roads and telephone systems.

The UN and international aid agencies have sent assessment teams to the worst-hit areas and shipments are being prepared as more offers of help come in.

Aid agencies had brought some emergency supplies into Burma ahead of the cyclone season - but nowhere near enough to cope with the devastation inflicted by Cyclone Nargis.

Thailand has announced it is flying in a transport plane loaded with nine tonnes of food and medicines.

Meanwhile, India says it is dispatching two naval ships carrying food, tents, blankets, clothing, and medicines immediately from Port Blair.

In a statement, the military junta said a referendum on a proposed new national constitution scheduled for next Saturday would still go ahead, insisting Burmese people were "eagerly looking forward to voting".
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Hundreds of thousands without shelter in Burma

Hundreds of thousands of people have been left without shelter and drinking water in military-ruled Burma after a devastating cyclone tore through the Irrawaddy delta, a United Nations official said on Monday.
Posted: Monday, May 5, 2008, 10:20 (BST)

Hundreds of thousands of people have been left without shelter and drinking water in military-ruled Burma after a devastating cyclone tore through the Irrawaddy delta, a United Nations official said on Monday.

Aid agencies scrambled to deliver plastic sheeting, water and cooking equipment from stockpiles in the former Burma. The government says at least 351 died in the cyclone, which slammed into the delta region on Saturday before devastating Yangon.

That death toll is likely to climb as the authorities make contact with hard-hit islands and villages in the delta, the rice bowl of the impoverished Southeast Asian nation of 53 million.

"It's clear that this is a major disaster," Richard Horsey, of the United Nations disaster response office in Bangkok, told Reuters after an emergency aid meeting.

"How many people are affected? We know that it's in the six figures. We know that it's several hundred thousand needing shelter and clean drinking water, but how many hundred thousand we just don't know," he said.

The International Federation of the Red Cross said teams were trying to assess the damage and aid requirements in the five declared disaster zones where 24 million people live.

"We are issuing water purification tablets, clothing, plastic sheeting, cooking utensils and hygiene items. We're trying to mobilise portable water from local businesses," Michael Annear, head of Red Cross Southeast Asia disaster management unit.

"We're preparing to send more stuff into the country. We have not been restricted," he said.

A new policy imposed on foreign aid agencies in 2006 requires travel permits and official escorts for field trips. It also tightened rules on the transport of supplies and materials.

"That is the existing situation for international staff. The way most agencies work is they use national staff who have more freedom to move," Terje Skavdal, regional head of the U.N. office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), said.

"We will have a dialogue with the government to try to get access to the people affected."

It is not know whether Myanmar, the world's largest rice exporter when it won independence from Britain in 1948, will need to import emergency rice supplies. If it does, it is likely to inflate yet further the already sky-high prices of the staple.

The World Food Programme says it has stocks of around 500,000 tonnes inside the country, but not near Yangon.

CLEAN-UP BEGINS

In the former capital, many roofs were ripped off even sturdy buildings, suggesting damage would be severe in the shanty towns that lie on the outskirts of the city of 5 million people.

State television was still off the air in Yangon and clean water was becoming scarce. Most shops had sold out of candles and batteries and there was no word when power would be restored.

In one western suburb, a group of 100 monks led efforts to clear streets littered with fallen trees and debris from battered buildings, a witness said.

"The clean-up is beginning but this will take a long time. The damage around town is intense," one Western diplomat told Reuters from Yangon, where the airport reopened on Monday.

State media said 19 people had been killed in Yangon and 222 in the delta, where weather forecasters had predicted a storm surge of as much as 12 feet (3.5 metres)

Only one in four buildings were left standing in Laputta and Kyaik Lat, two towns deep in the rice-producing region.

Some 90,000 people were homeless on the island of Haingyi, around 200 km southwest of Yangon on the fringe of the delta.

However, the carnage left by Nargis has not derailed a May 10 referendum on a new army-drafted constitution.

"The referendum is only a few days away and the people are eagerly looking forward to voting," the junta said in a statement confirming the vote would go ahead as planned.

The charter is part of a "roadmap to democracy" meant to culminate in multiparty elections in 2010, but critics say it allows the army to retain an unacceptable degree of power.

Bunkered down in their new capital, Naypyidaw, 240 miles to the north of Yangon, the junta's top brass has not formerly responded to an offer of international assistance.

But Myanmar's Minister of Social Welfare told U.N. officials help may be welcomed, depending on the terms, Skavdal said.

"I think it's a positive sign. As long as we are in dialogue it is good," he said.

Shunned by the West for its detention of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and dismal human rights record, Burma has been the target of Western sanctions for years.

It receives far less foreign aid - about $2.50 per capita - than regional neighbours Cambodia ($47) and Laos ($63) and below the $14 average for low-income nations.
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Death toll passes 22,000 in Burma cyclone
At least 41,000 missing as officials reveal tidal wave destroyed town

The cyclone death toll soared above 22,000 on Tuesday and more than 41,000 others were missing as the international community prepared to rush in aid after Asia's deadliest storm since 1991, state radio reported.

Up to 1 million people may be homeless after Cyclone Nargis, some villages have been almost totally eradicated and vast rice-growing areas are wiped out, the World Food Program said.

Some aid agencies reported their assessment teams had reached some areas of the largely isolated region but said getting in supplies and large numbers of aid workers would be difficult.

Images from state television showed large trees and electricity poles sprawled across roads and roofless houses ringed by large sheets of water in the Irrawaddy River delta region, which is regarded as Myanmar's rice bowl.

"From the reports we are getting, entire villages have been flattened and the final death toll may be huge," Mac Pieczowski, who heads the International Organization for Migration office in Yangon, said in a statement.

Based on a satellite map made available by the United Nations, the storm's damage was concentrated over about a 11,600-square mile area along the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Martaban coastlines — less than 5 percent of the country.

But the affected region is home to nearly a quarter of Myanmar's 57 million people.

Bush offers assistance
President Bush urged Myanmar's military rulers on Tuesday to accept U.S. disaster response teams that so far have been kept out and said the United States stood ready to "do a lot more" to help after a devastating cyclone.

"The military junta must allow our disaster assessment teams into the country," Bush told reporters. He said he was prepared to make U.S. naval assets available to help in search and rescue efforts.

Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Yangon, told NBC's Today show that the cyclone had knocked huge trees in the country's largest city.

"And it blew down a significant portion of them, some of these are 6, 8, 10 stories tall — huge trees, 6 feet, 5 feet in diameter. So they came down on roofs," she said.

Storm surge
The cyclone triggered a massive storm surge that swept inland and left victims with nowhere to run, killing at least 10,000 people in one town alone.

"More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself," Minister for Relief and Resettlement Maung Maung Swe told a news conference in the devastated former capital, Yangon, where food and water supplies are running low.

"The wave was up to 12 feet high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages," he said, giving the first detailed description of the weekend cyclone. "They did not have anywhere to flee."

Relief efforts for the stricken area, mostly in the low-lying Irrawaddy River delta, have been difficult, in large part because of the destruction of roads and communications outlets by the  storm. The first assistance from overseas arrived Tuesday from neighboring Thailand.

Information Minister Kyaw Hsan said the military were "doing their best," but analysts said there could be political fallout for military rulers of the former Burma who pride themselves on their ability to cope with any challenge.

Giving the first detailed account of the worst cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people died in Bangladesh, Foreign Minister Nyan Win said on state television 10,000 people had died just in Bogalay, a town 50 miles southwest of Yangon.

“The losses have been much greater than we anticipated,”  Thai Foreign Minister Noppadol Pattama said after a meeting with Myanmar’s ambassador to Bangkok. Myanmar's ambassador, Ye Win, declined to speak to reporters.

Urgent appeal
The U.N. World Food Program, which was preparing to fly in food supplies, offered a grim assessment of the destruction: up to a million people possibly homeless, some villages almost totally destroyed and vast rice-growing areas wiped out.

"We hope to fly in more assistance within the next 48 hours," WFP spokesman Paul Risley said in Bangkok. "The challenge will be getting to the affected areas with road blockages everywhere."

The country's ruling military junta, which has spurned the international community for decades, urgently appealed for foreign aid at a meeting Monday among Nyan Win and diplomats in Yangon.

Reflecting the scale of the disaster, the ruling military junta said it would postpone to May 24 a constitutional referendum in the worst-hit areas of Yangon and the sprawling Irrawaddy delta.

However, state TV said the May 10 vote on a charter, part of the army’s much-criticized “roadmap to democracy,” would proceed as planned in the rest of the Southeast Asian country where security forces violently cracked down on protests last year.

"Our biggest fear is that the aftermath could be more lethal than the storm itself," said Caryl Stern, who heads the U.N. Children's Fund in the United States. UNICEF said it had dispatched five assessment teams to three of the affected areas and lifesaving supplies were being moved into position.

Other countries, from Canada to the Czech Republic, reacted quickly to the crisis with pledges of aid.

The European Commission was providing $3.1 million in humanitarian aid while the president of neighboring China, Hu Jintao, promised assistance without offering details.

The diplomats said they were told Myanmar welcomed international aid, including urgently needed roofing materials, medicine, water purifying tablets and mosquito nets. The Thais were sending a shipment of 9.9 tons of such supplies.

Suspicious
The appeal for assistance was unusual for Myanmar's ruling generals, who have long been suspicious of international organizations and have closely controlled their activities.

The wife of the U.S. president said her country was ready to pump aid into Myanmar for recovery efforts, but that the ruling junta must accept a U.S. disaster response team.

First lady Laura Bush, who has been the administration's chief voice on human rights and political conditions in Myanmar, faulted the junta for proceeding with the constitutional referendum, and criticized government leaders for not sufficiently warning citizens about the storm.

Brothers and Sisters,

This is so very sad. I was afraid that the first estimates were way too low. Let's keep them in our prayers and pray that they do accept the help being offered. At this point, it's probably unknown how hight the casualty and homeless rate actually is. Time is also a critical factor for water, food, and most certainly disease prevention. Please - let's all pray for them.

Amen.

50,000 feared dead from Burma cyclone
'It might well be more dead than the tsunami caused in Sri Lanka'

Foreign aid workers in Burma have concluded that as many as 50,000 people died in Saturday’s cyclone, and two to three million are homeless, in a disaster on a scale comparable with the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The official death count after Cyclone Nargis stood at just under half that by 1300 GMT today, at around 22,500 people dead plus a further 41,000 missing.

But due to the incompleteness of the information from the stricken delta of the Irrawaddy river, UN and charity workers in the city of Rangoon privately believe that the number will eventually be double that.

"We are looking at 50,000 dead and millions homeless," Andrew Kirkwood, country director of the British charity Save The Children, told The Times.

"I’d characterise it as unprecedented in the history of Myanmar and on an order of magnitude with the effect of the tsunami on individual countries. It might well be more dead than the tsunami caused in Sri Lanka."

The death toll in Sri Lanka on Boxing Day 2004 was 31,000, second only to the 131,000 who died on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Eleven countries were affected.

Four days after the Burma cyclone there is wretchedly little hard information about the victims. Seven townships have been designated as "priority one" disaster areas, because between 90 to 95 per cent of the buildings have been destroyed.

"Anything less than 60 per cent destroyed is not being counted as a priority at this stage by the government, which gives some indication of the scale of the problem," said Mr Kirkwood.

According to the Burmese Government’s figures at least 10,000 people have died in the town of Bogalay alone.

Foreign aid agencies have reported scenes of devastation, with corpses still littering the rice fields and desperate survivors without food or clean drinking water. They are either without shelter or crammed into whatever buildings remain standing.

Burma's junta refused foreign aid after the 2004 tsunami, in which between 60 and 600 of its citizens are reported to have died, but this time the sheer scale of the slowly emerging disaster seems to have forced it to change its mind. "We will welcome help . . . from other countries because our people are in difficulty," said Nyah Win, the Burmese Foreign Minister, in a rare television appearance.

Cyclone Nargis ripped across Burma's agricultural heartland with violent winds that reached speeds of 120mph (193km/h), destroying buildings and fields, toppling trees and washing away roads in the vital rice-growing area of the Irrawaddy delta.

It flattened shanty towns and downed power and phone lines in the sprawling port city of Rangoon, Burma's former capital and home to five million people.

The price of staple foods such as rice, eggs, cabbages have doubled and even quadrupled in some areas.

Bernard Delpuech, a European Union aid official in Rangoon, said that the junta has sent three ships carrying food to the delta region, which is the rice production centre for Burma’s 53 million people. Nearly half the population live in the five disaster-hit states.

UN agencies have handed out what supplies they had from stockpiles in Burma, and are preparing to fly in further emergency food, shelter and medicines to prevent epidemics and starvation inflicting a second disaster.

Today private frustration was growing among aid organisations, however, that although the junta has publicly invited assistance, bureaucracy is impeding the granting of visas to allow foreign workers into the country. As delays drag on, living conditions for the victims is getting worse.

"The power is off, most people don't have water. They are relying on wells, and getting it out of the Inle Lake which is not clean. There is a risk of disease - if people are living together in close proximity then an outbreak of diarrhoea is just a matter of time," said Mr Kirkwood.

The generals – who have traditionally regarded overseas aid workers as spies – have turned down an offer from the US State Department of $250,000 (£125,000) in help and a disaster assistance team, suggesting that it remains selective about whom it accepts. The move prompted a rebuke from President Bush.

"The military junta must allow our disaster assessment teams into the country," Mr Bush told reporters, adding he was prepared to make US naval assets available for search and rescue.

The generals lifted the state of emergency today in three of the five worst-affected states, and also in parts of Rangoon and Irrawaddy, and announced that there was no immediate food crisis in Burma.

"I think there was some damage to rice stored by private merchants and growers, but we have enough surplus for domestic sufficiency," said Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan, the Burmese Information Minister, at a press conference in Rangoon.

The United Nations World Food Programme fears that the cyclone and flooding in two major rice growing areas could also affect food supply in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

The generals confirmed that a controversial referendum on Burma's new constitution, part of its "roadmap to democracy", will go ahead on May 10, although they conceded that it would have to be delayed by two weeks in Rangoon and Irrawaddy states until May 24.

The ruling provoked an outcry from opposition politicians, who say that all the country's efforts should be focused on getting aid to the suffering, rather than delivering ballot boxes and conducting an election.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the imprisoned Burmese opposition leader, has urged followers to boycott the referendum, saying that the draft constitution leaves power still in the hands of the military.

The junta has moved even further into the shadows in the last six months due to widespread outrage at its bloody crackdown on protests led by Buddhist monks in September.

The US and EU states have imposed economic sanctions. In the past, humanitarian aid programmes have also been limited because of fears that they would benefit the generals.

Mr Bush today signed a law giving Aung San Suu Kyi the Congressional Medal of Honour, the highest civilian honour that the US Congress can bestow, calling her a “powerful voice” for freedom.

Factfile: storm deaths

1,500 dead in the southern United States in Hurricane Katrina in August 2005

4,400 dead in Bangladesh in Cyclone Sidr last November, the most recent violent storm to hit South-east Asia

9,000 dead in Central America in Hurricane Mitch in November 1998. Winds of up to 180mph, but most deaths caused by flooding and mudslides so extensive that the maps of Honduras and Nicaragua had to be redrawn

10,000 dead in east Indian state of Orissa in cyclone in October 1999. The winds were accompanied by a 26ft storm surge. Many died of starvation and disease as rescuers failed to reach them in time with aid

50,000 feared dead in Cyclone Nargis in Burma in May 2008

138,000 dead in Chittagong region of Bangladesh in cyclone in April 1991. The 20ft storm surge brought massive flooding that left 10 million homeless

225,000 dead in 11 countries in the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004. 31,229 were confirmed dead in Sri Lanka and 131,028 in Indonesia, mostly in Aceh province on the island of Sumatra. The official death toll in Burma was 61, although witnesses put it closer to 600.

U.S. diplomat: Cyclone toll could be 100,000
Officials say corpses floating in water as Burma disaster grows

Bodies floated in flood waters and survivors tried to reach dry ground on boats using blankets as sails, while the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar said Wednesday that up to 100,000 people may have died in the devastating cyclone.

Hungry crowds stormed the few shops that opened in the country's stricken Irrawaddy delta, sparking fist fights, according to Paul Risley, a spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program in neighboring Thailand.

Shari Villarosa, who heads the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar, said food and water are running short in the delta area and called the situation there "increasingly horrendous."

"There is a very real risk of disease outbreaks as long as this continues," Villarosa told reporters. Some 1 million people were homeless in the Southeast Asian country, the U.N. said.

State media in Myanmar reported that nearly 23,000 people died when Cyclone Nargis blasted the country's western coast on Saturday and more than 42,000 others were missing.

But U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said that the cyclone's death toll may rise "very significantly."

Villarosa said 100,000 may have died and that 95 percent of buildings in the affected area are demolished.

The military junta normally restricts the access of foreign officials and organizations to the country, and aid groups were struggling to deliver relief goods. 

"Basically the entire lower delta region is under water," said Richard Horsey, Bangkok-based spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid.

"Teams are talking about bodies floating around in the water," he said. This is "a major, major disaster we're dealing with."

Foot-dragging alleged
But internal U.N. documents obtained by The Associated Press showed growing frustrations at foot-dragging by the junta, which has kept the impoverished nation isolated for five decades to maintain its iron-fisted control.

"Visas are still a problem. It is not clear when it will be sorted out," according to the minutes of a meeting of the U.N. task force coordinating relief for Myanmar in Bangkok, Thailand on Wednesday.

It said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "will contact Myanmar" Wednesday to arrange a meeting with high-ranking officials on the issue.

State television in Myanmar, though, said that the government would accept aid from any country and that help had arrived Wednesday from Japan, Bangladesh, Laos, Thailand, China, India and Singapore.

The storm is Asia's most devastating cyclone since a 1991 storm in Bangladesh that killed 143,000.

'Major logistical challenge'
"With all those dead mostly floating in the water at this point you can get some idea of the conditions facing the teams on the ground. It's a major logistical challenge," Horsey said.

The U.S. military has put people and airplanes into position to work on any relief effort, as officials awaited word on whether the Asian nation would accept American help.

Villarosa did not sound optimistic.

"It's a very paranoid regime," she said. "They are very paranoid about the United States."

Experts say Myanmar's ruling military must overcome their distrust of the outside world and open up to a full-scale international relief operation. Horsey said the government "recognizes this is an unprecedented emergency" that needed international involvement.

France suggested invoking a U.N. "responsibility to protect" clause without waiting for military approval to deliver aid. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told reporters on Wednesday the idea was being discussed at the United Nations.

The United Nations recognized that concept in 2005 to protect civilians, even if intervention violates national sovereignty.

Water purification tablets, plastic sheeting, basic medical kits, bed nets and food were priorities, U.N. officials said.

Most of the victims were swept away by a wall of water from the cyclone that smashed into coastal towns and villages in the rice-growing delta southwest of the biggest city of Yangon.

Military helicopters dropped food and water on Wednesday to survivors in the Irrawaddy delta, where entire villages have been washed away, officials said.

State television on Wednesday quoted Yangon official Gen. Tha Aye as reassuring people that the situation was "returning to normal" in certain areas of Karen state that were hit by the cyclone. He was shown thanking volunteers and visiting the village of Naungbo, outside Yangon, where locals were cutting apart downed trees and brush to clear the roads.

But nearby in Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city, cyclone victims faced new challenges as markets doubled the price of rice, charcoal and bottled water. Electricity was restored to a small portion of the city's 6.5 million residents, but most, who rely on electric wells, had no water.

At a morning market in the Yangon suburb of Kyimyindaing, a fish monger shouted to shoppers: "Come, come the fish is very fresh."

But an angry woman snapped back: "Even if the fish is fresh, I have no water to cook it!"

Prices double
Vendors sold bottled water at 500 kyat — about 50 cents — a liter, more than double the normal price. A standard 73-pound bag of rice had doubled in price to about $40 — an astronomical price in a country where many scrape by on $2 a day.

The U.N.'s World Food Program said late Tuesday it has begun distributing aid in damaged areas of Yangon, where 800 tons of food had arrived.

But some villages have been almost totally eradicated, and vast rice-growing areas were wiped out by Cyclone Nargis, which hit Myanmar early Saturday, the WFP said.

Images from state TV showed large trees and electricity poles sprawled across roads and roofless houses ringed by large sheets of water in the Irrawaddy River delta, which is regarded as Myanmar's rice bowl.

Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns wielding knives and axes joined Yangon residents Tuesday in clearing roads of ancient, fallen trees that were once the city's pride. Soldiers were out on the streets in large numbers for the first time since the cyclone hit.

Britain said it will contribute up to about $9.8 million in initial relief funds and will send an emergency field team to help with international relief efforts.

U.S. offers $3 million
The United States said it was giving $3 million to U.N. agencies to help with their efforts. The European Union will provide $3.1 million.

China is providing $1 million in aid, including relief materials worth $500,000, to help with disaster relief and rehabilitation efforts, a spokesman said.

Indonesia, the country hardest hit by the 2004 Asian tsunami, pledged $1 million in aid on Wednesday.

But the United States and France complained about Myanmar's reluctance to accept direct aid.

Kouchner said France minimized its aid to about $309,000. He said Myanmar officials are willing to accept aid but insist on distributing it themselves, which he said was "not a good way of doing things."

The cyclone came only a week ahead of a key referendum on a constitution backed by Myanmar's military leaders as an important step forward on their "roadmap to democracy."

State radio also said Saturday's vote would be delayed until May 24 in most of the townships in the Yangon area and seven in the Irrawaddy delta. But it indicated that the balloting would proceed in other areas as scheduled.

The decision drew swift criticism from dissidents and human rights groups who question the credibility of the vote and urged the junta to focus on disaster victims.

Military rule
On Wednesday, about 30 Filipino protesters demanded that Myanmar's junta postpone the constitutional referendum and allow the unrestricted entry of international relief.

Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. Its government has been widely criticized for suppression of pro-democracy parties such as the one led by Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been under house arrest for almost 12 of the past 18 years.

At least 31 people were killed and thousands more were detained when the military cracked down on peaceful protests in September led by Buddhist monks and democracy advocates.

U.N. warns of new ‘wave of deaths’ in Myanmar
Thai team barred from junta-ruled country; toll could top 127,000

Another powerful storm headed toward Myanmar’s cyclone-devastated delta, where so little aid has been delivered that the United Nations warned on Wednesday of a “second wave of deaths” among an estimated 2 million survivors.

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej said Myanmar officials told him they were in control of the relief operations and don't need foreign experts in the Irrawaddy delta area.

The area was pulverized by Cyclone Nargis on May 3, with the Red Cross estimating on Wednesday the toll will be between 68,833 and 127,990.
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The government, for its part, have given a toll of least 34,273 dead and 27,838 missing.

An estimated 2 million survivors of the storm are still in need of emergency aid. But U.N. agencies and other groups have been able to reach only 270,000 people so far.

The military regime has barred foreign aid workers from travelling to the delta since Nargis roared ashore.

The Myanmar junta guaranteed that there were no disease outbreaks and no starvation among the survivors, Samak told reporters after returning from Myanmar’s main city of Yangon, where he met with his counterpart, Prime Minister Lt. Gen. Thein Sein.

Myanmar did not want any foreign aid workers because they “have their own team to cope with the situation,” Samak said.

Myanmar's response woefully slow
Bottlenecks, poor logistics, limited infrastructure and the military government’s refusal to allow foreign aid workers have left most of the delta’s survivors living in miserable conditions without food or clean water. The government’s efforts have been criticized as woefully slow.

“The government has a responsibility to assist their people in the event of a natural disaster,” said Amanda Pitt, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs.

“We are here to do what we can and facilitate their efforts and scale up their response. It is clearly inadequate and we do not want to see a second wave of death as a result of that not being scaled up,” she said.

Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown, called for an emergency U.N. summit to coordinate efforts to rush aid to cyclone victims.

He said one British aid plane, carrying shelter for up to 45,000 people, had been allowed to land in Yangon and that three more were expected to land shortly.

He said the main goal now should be for countries in Asia and other parts of the world to "pressure the regime" in a coordinated way "to make sure that aid gets to the people of Burma as quickly as possible."

Brown said he had asked U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to convene an emergency meeting, and had sent Foreign Office Minister Lord Malloch-Brown to Asia to meet with ministers there to come up with an action plan.

New storm brewing
The U.S. military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said there is a good chance that “a significant tropical cyclone” will form within the next 24 hours and head across the Irrawaddy delta area.

The news of a second cyclone was not broadcast by Myanmar’s state-controlled media. But Yangon residents picked up the news on foreign broadcasts and on the Internet.

“I prayed to the Lord Buddha, ‘please save us from another cyclone. Not just me but all of Myanmar,”’ said Min Min, a rickshaw driver, whose house was destroyed in Cyclone Nargis. Min Min, his wife and three children now live on their wrecked premises under plastic sheets.

“Another cyclone will be a disaster because our relief center is already overcrowded. I am very worried,” said Tun Zaw, 68, another Yangon resident who is living in a government relief center.

Prof. Johnny Chan, a tropical cyclone expert with City University of Hong Kong, said the new cyclone would likely not be as severe as Nargis because it is already close to land, and cyclones need to be over sea to gain full strength.

“There will be a lot of rain but the winds will not be as strong,” he told The Associated Press.

Report: Myanmar's junta wishes to hear no evil

Survivors join in rescue effort
Soldiers have barred foreign aid workers from reaching cyclone survivors in the hardest-hit areas, but gave access to an International Red Cross representative who returned to Yangon on Tuesday.

Bridget Gardner, the agency’s country head, described tremendous devastation but also selflessness, as survivors joined in the rescue efforts.

“People who have come here having lost their homes in rural areas have volunteered to work as first aiders. They are humanitarian heroes,” said Gardner.

Gardner’s team visited five locations in the Irrawaddy delta. In one of them, they saw 10,000 people living without shelter as rain tumbled from the sky.

“The town of Labutta is unrecognizable. I have been here before and now with the extent of the damage and the crowds of displaced people, it’s a different place,” Gardner was quoted as saying in a statement by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

In Labutta and elsewhere she said volunteers were giving medical aid to hundreds of people a day even though “they have no homes to go back to when they finish.”

Some survivors of Cyclone Nargis were reportedly getting spoiled or poor-quality food, rather than nutrition-rich biscuits sent by international donors, adding to suspicions that the junta may be misappropriating foreign aid.

The military, which has ruled since 1962, has taken control of most supplies sent by other countries, including the United States, which began its third day of aid delivery Wednesday as five more giant C-130 transport planes loaded with emergency supplies headed to Myanmar.

Lt. Col. Douglas Powell, a spokesman for what has been dubbed operation Caring Relief, said a total of 197,080 pounds of provisions have been sent into Myanmar on the eight U.S. military flights that have been cleared to go.

Most of the provisions have been blankets, mosquito nets, plastic sheets and water.

As the U.S. military’s effort to expand its relief effort appeared to make major headway, Myanmar also agreed to attend an emergency meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers next week to discuss problems in getting foreign aid the country, Asian diplomats said Wednesday.

Diplomats from the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes Myanmar, were crafting the agenda for the meeting to be held Monday in Singapore, said two Manila-based Southeast Asian diplomats knowledgeable about preparations for the gathering.

Singapore, which currently heads the ASEAN bloc, organized the meeting after getting a nod from Myanmar, which has committed to sending its foreign minister, according to one of the diplomats. Both spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to media.
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Joining other individual and institutional donors around the world, Hollywood stars have donated $250,000 for survivors through Save the Children. The global aid agency said Not On Our Watch, a nonprofit group founded by actors George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and others, has also pledged more donations over a one-year period.

‘This is terrible’
Getting to the worst-affected areas was getting more and more difficult, and the impending storm was expected to compound the misery of the survivors.

“They are already weak,” said Pitt, the U.N. spokeswoman. A new storm will impact “people’s ability to survive and cope with what happened to them ... this is terrible.”

U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had expressed concern that aid was being diverted to non-cyclone victims, but so far there was no evidence.

CARE Australia’s country director in Myanmar, Brian Agland, said members of his local staff brought back some of the rotting rice being distributed in the devastated Irrawaddy delta.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Christian human rights organization condemns Myanmar referendum result

By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

MYANMAR (BURMA) (ANS) -- The ruling military junta in cyclone-ravaged Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has claimed that 99 percent of the electorate turned out to vote in the referendum that was held on May 10. It stated that 92.4 percent of voters approved the constitution voted upon on that day.

The junta is now gearing up to hold a further round of voting on May 24 in areas which were severely affected by Cyclone Nargis.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) today unequivocally condemned the result of the referendum held to approve the new constitution in Myanmar. The Christian human rights organization did so as its Advocacy Officer, Benedict Rogers, returned from a two-week fact-finding visit to the Thailand-Burma border.

During his visit, Rogers visited Karen and Karenni refugees, Chin and Kachin activists and relief organizations currently responding to the humanitarian crisis in Burma following the cyclone. Rogers traveled to the Thailand-Burma border from Japan, where he had discussions with Japanese Members of Parliament and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the crisis in Burma.

Rogers said: "The result of the referendum announced by the military junta in the midst of indescribable suffering of the people of Burma must be internationally rejected and immediate action must be taken to ensure delivery of aid to the victims of Cyclone Nargis."

He continued: "During the past two weeks I have met with relief teams doing courageous work to get aid to the victims of the cyclone, despite the military regime’s obstruction. I have been given reports and photographs which illustrate the catastrophe unfolding in Burma."

He added: "I have also heard widespread reports of the regime’s efforts to rig the referendum on 10 May and have been told of the people’s courageous defiance of the regime in some places by overwhelmingly voting against the proposed constitution. In addition to these humanitarian and political crises, human rights violations continue to be perpetrated on a systematic scale in Karen and Karenni areas and throughout Burma.
"Every hour of international inaction is costing lives. It is now time to hold the regime to account for these collective crimes against humanity."

CSW is a human rights organization which specializes in religious freedom, works on behalf of those persecuted for their Christian beliefs and promotes religious liberty for all.
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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Situation Remains Critical for Cyclone-Devastated Children and Families in Myanmar

By Jeremy Reynalds
Correspondent for ASSIST News Service

MYANMAR (ANS) -- World Vision has been working around the clock to assist more than 100,000 children and adults with essentials like water, clothing, and temporary shelters.

Its team in Myanmar plans to provide aid to nearly 500,000 cyclone survivors if it can get the additional funds, expertise, and supplies to the affected areas. Staff on the ground are already seeing cases of waterborne diseases, and the health of children is of critical concern.

“We are now getting relief supplies into the delta area, where there is staggering need,” said Steve Goudswaard, World Vision's cyclone response manager, in a news release. “If we can maintain the access to survivors and increase our supplies, we will be able to reach almost half a million people.”

According to World Vision, an operation base has been set up in the eastern part of the delta in a town called Pyapon — about a four-hour drive from Yangon, Myanmar's largest city — through which aid is beginning to flow. World Vision staff members have been trucking emergency kits, assembled by a team in Yangon, down to the base. Pyapon is close to three of the worst affected townships in the delta region.

The aid to Myanmar began to move after the government permitted access to those in need. World Vision said in a news release that the organization has complete control over its aid.

In Myaung Mya, an area about 30 miles north of the devastated town of Labutta, World Vision's national staff said in a news release that approximately 30,000 people are need food, water, and medical attention. Children – many of them orphans – are suffering from fever, diarrhea, and respiratory infections.

World Vision has been supplying clean water to survivors in the Irrawaddy area. Our teams also have started chlorinating wells, providing water tanks, and disinfecting camp sites with bleaching powder.

Meanwhile, in Yangon, World Vision reported that more than 78,000 people have received clean water, rice, and other emergency aid, such as clothing, blankets, and tarpaulins. Diesel fuel is being distributed to operate water pumps.

World Vision said its staff have also have distributed sterile dressings, anti-bacterial medicines, mosquito nets, and disinfectants, but additional resources are needed.

The organization said that much of this equipment is available, and could be within the country in hours from World Vision's global warehouses in Dubai and Frankfurt.

A World Vision news release stated, “We hope to conduct aid flights from these locations in the next few days, as soon as we receive clearance from the government of Myanmar.”

According to World Vision, its current short-term emergency response phase will be followed by a two- to-three-year rehabilitation and reconstruction phase. World Vision plans to increase the number of its staff from the current 580, and provide specialized training to ensure an effective response.
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