If you want to be happy, never get involve in politics!! (Dr. Horst Hutter)
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7:05 PM
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It has been so long I could not write any new posting since the Nargis crisis. I was mostly copying articles from some other websites. I apologize to those who regularly come and read here.
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6:36 AM
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Burma's ruling generals - including Than Shwe, Maung Aye and Thura Shwe Mann [Reuters]JOEL BRINKLEY
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Almost 30 years ago, my editor dispatched me to Cambodia to cover the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime and the resulting refugee holocaust. The images of babies with swollen bellies and only a few days left to live, emaciated and lethargic adults dying from typhoid, cholera or worse have hung with me to this day.
Now, three decades later, the United Nations and the Cambodian government are staging a genocide tribunal for several surviving Khmer Rouge leaders. Nearly 2 million Cambodians died during the Khmer Rouge reign - most of them from disease and starvation.
One country away, in Burma, more than 1 million survivors of Cyclone Nargis have now gone without food, medicine, clean water or sanitation services for more than four weeks. Though Burma's military dictators won't allow anyone to see, babies' bellies are beginning to swell, and listless adults are slipping away, victims of cholera, dysentery or worse. Tens of thousands are likely to die - most of them from disease and starvation.
The fault for all of this lies squarely on Gen. Than Shwe's shoulders. It's past time that the United Nations started planning a genocide tribunal for Shwe, the Burmese leader, and his fellow thugs. The case is clear, the verdict already known.
In Cambodia, prosecutors are digging through musty, incomplete records and relying on testimony from feeble, octogenarian witnesses. In Burma, all the evidence prosecutors would need is in the newspapers and on TV. Put together, it displays a callous disregard for human life so stunning that it would probably embarrass Kim Jung Il, Robert Mugabe - perhaps even Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan.
Here's the dossier: On May 20, Shwe promised Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary-general, he would finally allow aid workers to deliver food and medicine to cyclone victims - three weeks after the storm.
The next day, Shwe ordered his troops to sweep through the Irrawaddy Delta and evict cyclone victims from the few buildings that remained standing so they could be used as polling places. Then soldiers pushed and prodded hungry and sick Burmese to vote in a sham referendum intended to extend Shwe's time in office - and sometimes filled in their ballots for them.
Last Sunday, soldiers ordered cyclone victims to dismantle makeshift shelters they had put up near main roads to escape the floodwaters. The soldiers said they were unsightly.
Meanwhile, the International Red Cross reported that rivers and ponds in the delta remained clotted with corpses. On Tuesday, UNICEF noted that Burmese children were drinking from these fetid ponds. They had no other source of water. Even before the storm, Save the Children said it had identified 30,000 malnourished children in the affected areas. Many of them, the group said a few days ago, "may already be dying for lack of food."
In Rangoon, meanwhile, when Ban proposed a donors conference for reconstruction aid, Shwe's government suddenly perked up and said Burma would be delighted to host it. Save our people, no; give us money - sure!
Representatives from more than 50 countries attended the conference last Sunday. Gen. Thein Sein, the Burmese prime minister, told them he would happily take their money. As for finally allowing aid workers in, he said, "we will consider allowing them in if they wish to engage in rehabilitation and reconstruction work."
The government's relief operations have come to an end, he insisted. Burma is shifting its focus to rebuilding and reconstruction. So much for Shwe's promise to Ban. So much for 100,000 sick and dying people. Last week, Burma admitted about 40 more aid workers - while throwing up onerous restrictions on their work.
For weeks, Shwe had refused even to take Ban's phone calls. Finally, Ban decided simply to show up. So the military set up a Potemkin refugee camp complete with crisp green tents and shiny new cookware. When Sein took Ban there a week later, reporters noticed that cooking oil jars remained sealed and store labels were still affixed to the frying pans.
The New York Times reported that soldiers had used dynamite to rid the streams of unsightly corpses in the areas Ban visited.
Now, a month after the storm, the United Nations estimates that fewer than half of the sick and starving cyclone victims have received even the first dollop of aid, while the generals insist that it's time to give up on the victims and start putting up new buildings.
If the world were a just place, then the first building project would be a prison to hold Shwe and his fellow thugs - after their genocide trial.
Joel Brinkley is a professor of journalism at Stanford University and a former foreign policy correspondent for the New York Times. E-mail him at brinkley@foreign-matters.com. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page G - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Labels: Burmese Leaders, Genocide, Khmer Rouge Tribunal
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5:33 PM
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| | Monday, June 2, 2008 |
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Zarganar, a popular Burmese comedian and social activist, has been heavily involved in volunteer disaster relief aid in the cyclone-damaged areas. An estimated 400 Burmese involved in the entertainment world joined together to do volunteer work in the delta.
Question: Can you talk about the situation on the ground since the cyclone struck Rangoon and the Irrawaddy delta?
Answer: We started our [volunteer] emergency relief work on May 7, and we are still working. I have been to all the townships struck by the disaster, except Nga Pu Taw.
There are 420 volunteers in our group. We divided our volunteers in groups to work more effectively. The places we go to are usually places nobody has been to yet. We have been to 42 such villages, most under the administrative area of Dedaye Township. Three of these villages are large village tracts where the paddy [rice] purchasing center was located.
We went to three large village tracts in Bogalay Township. They hadn’t received aid not only from the government, but also from UN agencies. No NGOs had reached there yet.
Q: What did you see there? What do they need at this moment?
A: I can give you an example. There was a large village tract called Ma Ngay Gyi, where 1,000 families used to live and 700 houses were demolished totally. The other 300 houses left remnants of house-poles and floors. In total, 221 people died in the village and 300 are missing. Nobody knows where they are.
We arrived there on May 22 and until that day, and we saw bodies floating in streams. Survivors there received 7 tins (measurement with condensed-milk-tin) of rice from authorities and an instant noodle pack from some independent donors. Apart from that, they received nothing else. That was the scene we saw 20 days after the cyclone.
On May 28, we went from Bogalay to Tin Maung Chaung, Kyein Su, Hteik Chaung Kyi, Kan Su and Shwe Bo Su villages. The villagers there had received no assistance as well. They had almost no clothing and almost all the children were virtually naked.
In numbers, there were 542 households there and all the houses were heavily damaged. There was a small pagoda left on high-ground. The villagers gathered themselves on the platform of the pagoda and sleep together. There were no UN or NGOs there yet, and they had received nothing. Our private group gave them what we had. The most horrible thing was that they had no water to drink and collected water when it rained. We gave them 10,000 bottles of drinking water.
Q: Has any of the international aid that the regime received reached those areas?
A: There are temporary shelters in Laputta and Bogalay Townships. Some people can stay in tents in those shelters with four or five people to a tent. The people staying there eat rice and rice gruel. Those people receive some assistance, but they are few in number. The people in the villages get no assistance.
Q: The UN said only 25 percent of the storm survivors have received assistance up to last week; do you think that estimate is correct?
A: It’s fairly correct. Only a few people can access these shelters. The other survivors are stranded on islands and in distant villages with hardly accessible roads. They usually rely on boats for transportation.
I would like to share a sad story with you. I met an old lady who had 11 family members and 10 of them died in the storm. I saw many people like her. I saw many traumatized people on the delta islands. Only boats can get in there.
Q: You saw many people suffering trauma and depression?
A: I see three types of people suffering trauma. One type is very violent, and sensitive. They are angry, and I can't say anything to them. They are aggressive all the time.
The second type is people crying and moaning all the time. They think about what happened again and again, and they repeat what happened over and over.
The third type is silent—no talking, very little movement.
We gave people yellow beans and lablab, along with a blanket and mosquito net. We gave a pack of these things to each survivor, and many didn't even appear to acknowledge it. They showed little interest, as if they thought it would be better to die.
Q: How was your experience with the local authorities? Any problems?
A: At the beginning, we took risks, and we had to move forward on our own. Sometime we had confrontations with the authorities.
For example, they asked us why we were going on our own without consulting them and wanted us to negotiation with them. They said they couldn't guarantee our lives.
We said we’d take our chances on our own. Later after the Natural Disaster Prevention and Protection Committee (NDPPC) said private donors could contribute, we faced fewer problems.
After that announcement, well-off traders from Chinatown and gold traders from Mogul Street joined the relief work. It is better now since the survivors can receive more assistance. These rich traders can't go to remote areas, and we try to help them deliver aid to remote villages. For instance, they can drop the assistance in Bogalay and our actors' group takes it to villages.
Q: The Myanmar Alin newspaper said survivors in the delta don’t need foreign ai. They can survive on locally grown vegetables and edible fish and frogs. It says the Irrawaddy delta can prosper again next year with vast golden fields of paddy.
A: I have no idea whether they can catch edible fish and frogs. We renamed the Irrawaddy River and Bogalay River by the color of the water. The rivers are a chalky white color. We call it the Nargis color. There are many dead bodies and cadavers of cattle floating in the rivers. We call that the Nargis odor.
The odor sticks with us when we come back from the villages. Nobody can stand it, and causes some people to vomit. How could people find edible fish and frogs in that environment?
Q: Have many of the bodies have been properly buried?
A: I returned returned from five villages in the Bogalay area on May 28. I couldn't take videos and photos in those villages because there were so many bodies, at least 40 bodies. That was after about 1,000 corpses were burned, I think. I believe some NGOs like AZG and some Christian organizations helped cremate bodies.
Q: Most of the people in the delta are Karens. How is their situation?
A: In Bogalay and Dedaye districts there are Karen villages and most of them are Christians. I like these Karen. When I arrived in their villages, I saw some organizations were already there. They appointed some local Karen leaders to go to Rangoon, and they organized meetings with doctors and other professionals. They are taking a part in their reconstruction effort.
They came back to some villages with relief items like material for shelters, food and utensils. I believe they have already been given some vegetable seeds like morning glory, amaranth, rosells and fertilizers that can be used on any kind of soil.
Q: When do you think the area can start to recover its agricultural potential?
A: In many areas, I think rice will be unworkable for a long time, but vegetables can grow. We need to start working with the people on how to recover the land and work their crops.
There are only 15 days left in the rice planting season. We have talked to private companies and Thai professionals about how to resume the agricultural works with small machinery.
A small mechanical plow, called Shwe Kywe, costs 1.4 million kyat. We have selected the Kyun Nyo Gyi village tract for a pilot project. About 5,514 people live there. Thai professionals said the agricultural work could be resumed. We will try to start the work with 18 small plows. We’ve received 10 plows from donation.
Q: Is any assistance coming from northern and central Burma?
A: Of course, many people come to assist. For example, 10-wheel trucks from Namti, Myit Kyi Na and Lashio arrived with aid. They brought 200 tanks of cooking oil and other supplies. The Christian group from Lashio came with 10 trucks. They are Shan.
Q: How is Rangoon now?
A: We are also reaching out in Rangoon as well.
Q: What do you want to say people living outside of Burma?
A: There are many things we can’t do alone. People can help us a great deal. For instance after the tsunami in Thailand, professionals arrived immediately and built houses for the survivors in a short time. We can't afford such assistance, and it is a very vast area. It would be better if international assistance could help with this.
Q: What is the UN able to do?
A: I am not happy with the UN. It doesn’t seem able to reach many of our people. The UN and NGO staff must work under the eye of the regime. That’s a problem. Why are they so concerned with the government's endorsement of their relief work? They should have taken more risks.
Even if they can't go without permission, they could assist volunteers like us who are willing to go to the villages. There are a lot of groups like us assisting refugees. Many people have received nothing from the UN and NGOs. The UN and a lot of professional organizations send their aid to the compounds of the local township authorities.
Q: What happens with the people who are waiting for food on the roads?
A: Actually, they have to beg as they are starving. The authorities said don't give out food to people on the roads, but they are starving. The scenes are not that chaotic. I didn't see people robbing each other for food.
Q: The US says some relief work could be done with their amphibious boats. They are willing to help. Do you think they are still needed a month after the cyclone?
A: I believe they are necessary. We provided some survivors with radios and asked them to listen to the news, to keep in contact with the world. They were happy with that news, but now they feel sad and desperate because the ships aren’t allowed to come. They feel alone and abandoned.
posted by TTT at
8:38 PM
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Things seem to be improving. I personally welcome the latest development initiated by the military government.
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2:10 PM
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6:24 AM
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