Mission & Justice

Aung Hla Tun; 12/5/08

Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta yesterday in search of food, water and medicine as aid workers warned that up to 1.5 million faced death if emergency supplies did not get through soon. Buddhist temples and schools in towns on the outskirts of the storm’s trail of destruction were now makeshift refugee centres for women, children and the elderly as millions of dollars in emergency aid was stalled on airport tarmacs pending permission to enter the country and hundreds of relief specialists were waiting for visas. The reclusive military government is accepting aid from the outside world, including from the UN, but has made clear it will not let in the foreign logistics teams needed to transport the aid into the inundated delta.

(more…)

Aung Hla Tun; 12/5/08

Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta yesterday in search of food, water and medicine as aid workers warned that up to 1.5 million faced death if emergency supplies did not get through soon. Buddhist temples and schools in towns on the outskirts of the storm’s trail of destruction were now makeshift refugee centres for women, children and the elderly as millions of dollars in emergency aid was stalled on airport tarmacs pending permission to enter the country and hundreds of relief specialists were waiting for visas. The reclusive military government is accepting aid from the outside world, including from the UN, but has made clear it will not let in the foreign logistics teams needed to transport the aid into the inundated delta.

(more…)

11/5/08

While Burma’s military regime restricted the rush of international aid offered to help hungry and homeless cyclone survivors, the Government was exporting tonnes of rice through its main port. Four of Thilawa port’s five berths were empty yesterday, but a crane was loading large white sacks into the hold of a freighter. The sacks were filled with rice destined for Bangladesh, according to the drivers of at least 10 transport trucks waiting to deliver more rice to the docks. The junta has a monopoly on rice exports and said last week that it planned to meet commitments to sell rice, which has reached record high prices on the world market, even though Burma’s main rice-producing region sustained the worst cyclone damage. The cyclone caused massive destruction in the Irrawaddy River delta, where farmers are now desperate for food.

(more…)

10/5/08

Myanmar’s junta went ahead with a constitutional referendum on Saturday despite international calls to postpone it after the devastation of Cyclone Nargis. The vote was postponed by two weeks in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta and Yangon although voting went ahead in other parts of the country. The opposition had denounced the constitution and vote as an attempt by the military to legitimize its 46-year rule. Meanwhile, the United Nations has appealed for $187 million in aid for the more than one million victims of the cyclone that hit the country.

(more…)

10/5/08

Seven Red Cross aid workers, including four Australians, have received visas to enter cyclone-hit Burma. Australian Michael Annear, regional disaster response coordinator who has been in Burma since Tuesday, spoke to international media tonight. An estimated 1.5 million people have been left homeless by the deadly cyclone Nargis, which has killed an estimated 66,000 people. Red Cross workers in Burma have had two truckloads of aid supplies arrive, Mr Annear said.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)