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Rescue workers pile up relief goods to distribute among cyclone survivors in Hlaing Thayar township on the outskirts of Yangon. - AFP Photo
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12th May, 2008
YANGON: The pace of aid deliveries into Myanmar picked up Sunday, but as thousands of starving cyclone survivors turned out on the roads to beg for food and water, experts said far more was needed.
Myanmar’s ruling generals, who have refused to allow foreigners in to direct the relief effort, were also condemned for holding a national referendum on the weekend despite the devastation in the country’s south.
The regime said there had been a “massive turnout” in the vote to ratify a new constitution, even as aid groups warned the official toll of 60,000 dead or missing could rise unless it focused on helping survivors immediately.
An AFP journalist who travelled from Myanmar’s main city Yangon to the southern delta, which was ground zero in the disaster, reported there were at least 10,000 people lining the sides of the road, waiting for help.
Hungry and thirsty, their numbers are building fast—and the only help arriving was from religious groups and well-wishers who pulled up to unload packets of rice and noodles.
Elsewhere, corpses still lay rotting in waterways, jostling against the bloated carcasses of buffaloes and other livestock, as children scavenged for fish in polluted canals.
State television meanwhile continued to show pictures of the generals casting their ballots in a vote that critics said was intended only to strengthen their 46-year grip on power.
Despite the serious hurdles, including the impounding of tons of supplies at Yangon’s airport, aircraft laden with goods began thundering into the country.
“Some opening-up on the part of the (Myanmar) authorities is allowing us to get these materials to their destination,” said Stephan Goetghebuer, director of operations of medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres.
“But it’s no more than a drip-feed, really, given a serious response is more than required,” he said.
A cargo plane chartered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) carrying 35 tons of medical supplies—enough to provide three months of basic health care for 10,000 people—was one of the latest to arrive.
In a story that made no mention of the cyclone tragedy, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper—a mouthpiece for the junta—said the referendum was held “successfully … with massive turnout of the citizens.”
“The question that has to be asked is whether people turned out voluntarily or not, and whether they got to vote according to their minds,” said Sunai Phasuk of Human Rights Watch in neighbouring Thailand.
“In any authoritarian country, they try to legitimise themselves through the ballot box,” he said.
The poll—held in all but the areas worst-hit by the cyclone, which will vote later in the month—came amid stark warnings for the estimated 1.5 million people at grave risk following the disaster.
Many are still without food, clean water, shelter and medical supplies, and the regime’s insistence that it is “not ready” to let in foreign aid workers has infuriated the world. – AFP
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