Mission & Justice

Graham Reilly; 8/5/08

The Burmese Government has put self-interest ahead of its duty to its citizens, writes Graham Reilly. For the long-suffering people of Burma, life is misery piled upon misery. Since 1962 they have struggled under the repressive rule of an isolationist, economically inept and intensely paranoid military regime immune to domestic and international pressure to introduce political freedom, personal liberty or human rights. Once the region’s rice bowl, the country is now an economic basket case crippled by spiralling inflation and the regime’s allocation of 40% of the national budget to the 400,000-strong military, a commitment that perpetuates its own power and wealth at the expense of the interests of ordinary Burmese.

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9/5/08

The first UN aid plane arrived in cyclone-ravaged Burma last night, but US and other international efforts were on hold after the country’s military generals rescinded their approval for American planes to enter Burma. The generals had bowed to international pressure, agreeing to allow the US military to fly critical aid to survivors of last Saturday’s cyclone, which has left up to 100,000 feared dead and one million missing. Thailand’s Supreme Commander Boonsrang Niumpradit said yesterday Bangkok had convinced Burma’s secretive junta to accept US assistance using planes that have been in Thai-US military exercises. A US embassy official confirmed the decision, but US ambassador to Thailand Eric John said later the flight was not going ahead.

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8/5/08

Frustrated aid groups rounded on Burma’s military rulers last night, accusing them of letting cyclone survivors die while the junta blocked urgent visa applications from disaster experts. The junta stalled on issuing visas to aid workers as millions of people were left homeless in the wake of Cyclone Nargis and tens of thousands of bodies piled up in the disaster zone.  The number of dead and missing soared past 60,000 yesterday, and was expected to climb as a vast swath of Burma’s inundated delta region remained cut off. Entire towns were swept away by the storm and ocean surge, leaving millions homeless and lacking food and clean water, triggering fears disease could push the death toll still higher.

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Mark Dodd; 7/5/08

The Burmese junta last night threw a roadblock in the path of the biggest regional rescue operation since the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, as the toll from Cyclone Nargis rose to 22,500 dead with a further 41,000 people missing. The scale of the disaster in the military-ruled Southeast Asian nation had drawn a rare acceptance of outside help from the diplomatically isolated generals, who spurned such approaches after the 2004 tsunami that killed 220,000 people in the region. But last night, Social Welfare Minister Maung Maung Swe said foreign aid teams wanting to enter the country to help with the relief effort would have to negotiate with the regime to be granted access. “For expert teams from overseas to come here, they have to negotiate with the Foreign Ministry and our senior authorities,” he said in Rangoon.

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6/5/08

The death toll from Cyclone Nargis last night rose more than 10-fold to nearly 4000, with another 3000 missing, as rescuers made contact for the first time with devastated districts 72 hours after the hurricane hit Burma. Burmese Foreign Minister Nyan Win said the death toll could reach 10,000. State television said tens of thousands more could have perished in areas where rescue workers had not yet been able to gauge the full devastation of the category-three cyclone. As the scale of the devastation unfolded, Burma’s reclusive military regime said it would allow in international aid for the first time since Nargis tore through the Irrawaddy delta late on Friday (Saturday AEST), before hitting Rangoon 220km to the northeast. Earlier official reports put the death toll at 351, but the number of casualties had been expected to rise as authorities made contact with hard-hit islands and villages in the country’s rice bowl.

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2/5/08

As the military continues to get the poor and the illiterate to vote in favour of the constitution by using threats and tricks, in the cities the ruling junta is pressuring voters to cast a favourable ballot if they want to get their papers. Sources in fact have told AsiaNews that in government offices officials are telling those who want to renew their driver’s licence or register a new car that they must vote Yes in advance polls if they want their papers. Elsewhere in Yangon and Mandalay residents are complaining that the military regime is pulling tricks out of its hat that verge on the ridiculous. Government officials are actually telling people that they must take part in referendum trial runs so that they can be shown how to vote by placing an X on the ‘Yes’ box; however, once this is done the supposedly fake ballots are taken and participants are told that they don’t have to go to vote on 10 May, the day when Myanmar’s generals expect their new constitution to be approved, which many human rights activists and the country’s pro-democracy opposition see as a simple tool to legitimise the status quo.

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Nopporn Wong-Anan; 11/4/08

Survivors of a human smuggling tragedy in Thailand, in which 54 people suffocated in a locked container truck, will be deported back to army-ruled Myanmar, a Thai court has ruled. Fifty survivors were fined up to 2,000 baht each for being in the country illegally, but most could not pay and faced a brief jail term before they are deported, court officials said. Another 14 youths were sent to an immigration centre to await immediate deportation. The driver, named by police as Suchon Boonplongin, has eluded a manhunt since he abandoned the truck late on Wednesday.

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9/4/08

At least 54 migrant workers from Myanmar - most of them women - have suffocated to death in the back of a truck in southern Thailand. They were among 121 people being smuggled inside the freezer truck used to transport seafood late on Wednesday to the Thai resort island of Phuket to work as labourers, police Colonel Kraithong Chanthongbai said. Of the dead, 37 were women and 17 were men. Police say the driver failed to turn on the air-conditioning in the back of the truck. He stopped driving when he heard people banging on the walls and fled after opening the door to the container and seeing the bodies.

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5/4/08

Anti-riot trucks from China are arriving in the outskirts Yangon where volunteers are being train on how “to beat and disperse” demonstrators. In the meantime in Insein Prison guards are putting pressure on inmates to vote yes in the upcoming referendum whilst on the outside pro-democracy activists are increasingly being harassed and assaulted. Myanmar is indeed preparing itself for next month’s referendum and this is how the ruling military junta is organising the process designed to sanction its draft constitution. But a vast No campaign is also underway involving many dissident groups both inside and outside the country. Still theirs is an uphill battle, limited as it is, by the many measures taken by the military to prevent and eventually crack down on any form of civil protest during the campaign.

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Kenneth Denby; 31/3/08

The authorities in Burma are risking lives and increasing the dangers of an HIV epidemic in the country by preventing foreign aid organisations from giving crucial help to patients suffering from AIDS. The ban is part of Burma’s growing hostility towards international organisations since the mass demonstrations by monks and political activists that were suppressed violently by the junta last September. The Government has prevented aid workers and diplomats from visiting some projects, made it difficult for them to secure visas and expelled the head of the UN mission in Burma for drawing attention to the humanitarian catastrophe facing the country. An HIV/AIDS project run by the opposition National League for Democracy on behalf of its detained leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been devastated by the arrest of its leaders and organisers by security authorities.

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