Myanmar says more than 133,000 dead, missing in cyclone
May 16, 2008
Satellite photos: Burma Before and After Cyclone Nagris
YANGON (AFP) - Myanmar said Friday that more than 133,000 people were dead or missing in the cyclone disaster, nearly doubling the toll from the worst disaster in the country's history, which hit two weeks ago.
Even as the regime again rejected calls for international aid workers to help direct the massive relief effort, state media acknowledged that the scope of the disaster had prevented confirmation of the figures.
State television said 77,738 were dead and 55,917 missing -- with 19,359 people injured -- according to the latest figures confirmed on Thursday.
It said 159 government staff were among the dead, with 58 missing and another four who were injured. No other details were given.
The stunning new toll nearly doubled the roughly 71,000 dead or missing given by state media the previous day, and comes amid mounting foreign pressure on the country's secretive military rulers to allow a full-scale aid effort.
Aid agencies believe 2.5 million people who survived the powerful storm are still in dire need of food, water, shelter or medical care, and have warned that the death toll will rise unless they get help immediately.
But the European Union's aid chief, who held two days of talks with the ruling generals, said earlier that they would not budge on the issue of foreign disaster experts -- angering the international community.
Heavy rains on Friday again pounded the devastated southern Irrawaddy Delta region, compounding the misery for one of the poorest and most isolated countries in the world.
Louis Michel, the EU's humanitarian aid commissioner, was due to leave the secretive nation later in the day after failing to get permission to visit the delta, which has been all but sealed off to journalists and outsiders.
He said the regime, which has long been suspicious of the outside world and any influence that could weaken its control on power here, would not explain why they continued to refuse visas for most foreign disaster emergency experts.
"They didn't answer the question, and they did not give any reason," Michel told AFP.
But Western diplomats who declined to be named said the regime was taking them to the delta on Saturday, but have no further details about where they would be going.
Michel said he had been taken to "a rather perfect, organised camp" outside the main city of Yangon, far from the flooded and devastated delta region where aid groups say many survivors have still not received help.
Myanmar's southeast Asian neighbours meanwhile were gearing up for talks in Singapore on Monday aimed at convening a high-level donors meeting.
A UN source said a donor meeting would likely take place in southeast Asia, probably Bangkok, with May 24 suggested as a possible date.
The junta has said that the country will welcome aid shipments but has steadfastly refused to bow to international pressure to let in most outside workers, saying it can manage the disaster on its own.
Michel has warned that the impoverished country, once a rich British colony known as Burma, is at risk of famine after Cyclone Nargis wiped out vast swathes of the country's rice-growing delta region.
Despite the humanitarian emergency, the government announced victory in a national referendum on a new constitution, held last Saturday with parts of the country still underwater and tens of thousands of people unaccounted for.
It said the vote, the first here since 1990, was a step on the road to democracy, but critics say it will only tighten the military's grip on power. Another round of voting is scheduled for May 24.
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=92212
MYANMAR: Government denies foreign journalists' entry
Military junta limits foreign aid and news coverage of post-Cyclone Nargis devastation
By Debory Li
AsiaMedia Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
BBC journalist Andrew Harding was deported from Myanmar last week after attempting to report about the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis.
According to an Agence France-Presse report, state-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar first covered the story, saying Harding was deported due to visa violations. He attempted to enter Myanmar with a tourist visa rather than an official journalist visa. Harding had done this twice before and was blacklisted from entering the country.
New Light of Myanmar accused Western journalists of illegally entering Myanmar and writing falsehoods with the aid of anti-government groups within the country. Foreign journalists have been denied access to the country, and in the case of CNN reporter Dan Rivers, have resorted to sneaking inside it -- only to be hunted by the government. Local journalists face harassment and imprisonment for reporting on stories that may offend the ruling junta.
"The military regime wants to conceal the extent of the damage. And they don't want the Burmese people telling foreigners the true story," said Irrawaddy editor Aung Zaw, according to an Associated Press report.
Nonetheless, images and reports of the post-cyclone devastation have reached the rest of the world. Myanmar's state-run television station said the death toll has reached more than 34,000 after Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar on May 3, 2008 and estimated that nearly 28,000 people are missing. The U.S. charge d'affaires in Yangon, Shari Villarosa, however, estimated the death toll is over 100,000.
U.N. officials said that at least two-thirds of the 1.5 million people in need of aid have not received it, according to a Bloomberg report. Recovery efforts remained stalled while the military government delays accepting foreign aid and imposes stringent restrictions.
Estimates by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization revealed that the five states hit hardest by Cyclone Nargis account for 65 percent of the country's rice production. "There is likely going to be incredible shortages in the next 18 to 24 months," economist Sean Turnell told the Associated Press.
Date Posted: 5/13/2008
Bangkok Post Breaking News
http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/breakingnews.php?id=127591
Aid from Thailand reaches Burma, but not victims
May 10, 2008
Geneva (dpa) - The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said its first trucks had arrived in Burma Saturday from Mae Sot without a problem, carrying 20 tonnes of emergency aid for survivors of the cyclone.
But the Mae Sot area is far from the actual disaster area, and the aid had not reached victims of the storm, nine days ago.
The trucks, with enough emergency material to provide shelter for up to 10,000 people, had crossed over from Thailand at the Friendship Bridge border at Mae Sot. They bore plastic sheets and tents.
"This convoy marks a positive step in an aid effort so far marked by challenges and constraints," said Raymond Hall, UNHCR's Representative in Thailand.
"We hope it opens up a possible corridor to allow more international aid to reach the cyclone victims."
Hall added: "What we are sending in by road is in addition to the supplies we have already procured locally in Yangon and the 100 tons of supplies we started airlifting today from Dubai."
UNHCR has also started airlifting 100 tons of shelter supplies, including 4,500 plastic sheets and 17,000 blankets, from its Dubai stockpile to Yangon early Saturday.
The first 33 tons left on a World Food Programme aircraft with two other flights scheduled for early next week.
The refugee agency is focusing on providing emergency shelter for the cyclone victims in the Irrawaddy delta and parts of Yangon, which were among the worst hit. More than one million people are estimated to have lost their homes after Cyclone Nargis hit last Friday.
UNHCR has already distributed $50,000 worth of shelter items bought locally in the aftermath of the storm.
The lorry convoy is expected to take around two days from the border to Yangon in the south. The supplies, raided by UNHCR from its existing stockpiles normally intended for refugee camps scattered along the Thai-Burmese border, will be distributed by UNHCR staff.
UNHCR negotiated a concession for the border posts to stay open at the weekend to allow the convoys through.
UNHCR launched a $187 million appeal for Burmese Friday which included six million to provide 250,000 cyclone victims with shelter.
In depth: Cyclone Nagris
US Campaign for Burma » News
Cyclone Nargis - Breaking News - The New York Times
Maps: The Aftermath of Cyclone Nargis - The New York Times
Slide Show: Junta Allowing Little Aid After Cyclone - The New York Times
Other links re Cyclone Nagris ...
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F8259015-8BAC-42F0-ADF5-F3F4A5A9526C.htm
WEDNESDAY, MAY 07, 2008
10:37 MECCA TIME, 7:37 GMT
Cyclone smashes Myanmar 'rice bowl'
The destruction wrought by Cyclone Nargis also threatens to have devastated Myanmar's agricultural heartland, posing concerns over long-term food shortages across an already desperately poor country.
The Irrawaddy delta region, which bore the brunt of the storm, has long been known as the rice-bowl of Myanmar.
But the features that made it so fertile – its low lying geography and its proximity to water - also made it vulnerable to disaster.
In the wake of the storm UN relief officials have reported distribution networks in the region in tatters and large tracts of rice-growing land still under water. Rice plants generally die if they remain submerged for about four days.
"The cyclone certainly complicates matters," said Paul Risley, a spokesman with the UN's World Food Programme in Bangkok.
"It blew through the critical rice-growing areas of the country and it seems the harvest was only partially completed. This could represent a substantial loss to the country's rice output," he said.
According estimated by the Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organization the five states hit hardest by the cyclone on Saturday produce 65 per cent of the country's rice.
The region also is home to 80 per cent of its aquaculture, 50 per cent of its poultry and 40 per cent of its pig production, the FAO said.
With as many as a million people directly affected by the catastrophe, rice shortages and possible accompanying public resentment present a major challenge to the country's military government.
With food shortages and rising prices already triggering riots in poor countries, the cyclone's disruption of the harvest in one of Asia's richest rice-growing areas could also have global implications.
Until last weekend, Myanmar had been expected to export a portion of its rice harvest.
Shortfalls could hit Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and other regional neighbours that had been counting on importing Myanmar's rice.
Traders suggest that in the cyclone's wake, world rice prices, already soaring, could be sent higher.
Globally the cost of rice has already nearly tripled since the beginning of the year, busting the budgets of humanitarian agencies that provide emergency food aid to disaster-struck countries.
In depth: Cyclone Nagris
Eyewitness: 'Utter devastation'
Relief work hampered by red tape
Cyclone threatens military's grip
Map: The deadly path of Cyclone Nargis
Satellite photos: Before and after the cyclone
Timeline: Asia's deadliest storms
Video: Toll soars