World fears for plight of Burma cyclone victims
Source: 15-MAY-2008 Intellasia | Reuters
May 15, 2008 - 7:03:00 AM

A Myanmar boy feeds a banana to his younger brother at a temple being used a temporary shelter for cyclone survivors on the outskirts of Yangon, Myanmar, Tuesday, May 13, 2008. (AP Photo)

Desperation among Burma's 1.5 million cyclone survivors mounted on Wednesday as the international aid flow remained a trickle and police barred foreign aid workers from worst-hit areas.

The United Nations and Western powers piled more pressure on the military regime to speed up its slow and disorganised response to the disaster by suggesting that helpless victims could have been robbed of food and other urgent supplies.

The reports were unconfirmed, but the relief effort—further complicated by heavy rains—is only delivering one tenth of the supplies needed in the devastated delta region, where up to 100,000 people are dead or missing.

"It's just awful, people are in just desperate need, begging as vehicles go past," Gordon Bacon, an emergency coordinator for International Rescue Committee, told Reuters by phone from Yangon.

The international community has flown in tonnes of medicine, food and shelter materials, but getting it to low-lying delta area has been complicated by poor equipment, bad weather and government intransigence.

Burma's reclusive junta has also made it very clear it does not want outsiders distributing aid.

Foreign experts in sanitation, nutrition and medicine have either been prevented from entering the country formerly known as Burma or are restricted to the main city of Yangon.

Armed police send back foreigners who attempt to pass through checkpoints surrounding the former capital.

The United Nations says more than 1.5 million people are struggling to survive and up to 100,000 are dead or missing after cyclone Nargis hit.

UN spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva it was also vital to secure the means to deliver aid.

"We need a kind of air bridge or sea bridge, and huge means (just) as the aid delivery we did in the tsunami, it is the same kind of logistical operation," said Byrs, of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The junta has accepted aid from the outside world but the help has only trickled in as the rulers have made it clear they do not want outsiders distributing it.

Children stay inside their hut waiting for relief aid in cyclone-hit Kyauktan, south-east of Yangon. The United Nations have warned that Myanmar faced a "second catastrophe" after its devastating cyclone, unless the junta immediately allows massive air and sea deliveries of aid. (AFP/Khin Maung Win)

FREE AND UNFETTERED ACCESS

In a statement after emergency talks on Burma in Brussels, EU development ministers called on Yangon "to offer free and unfettered access to international humanitarian experts, including the expeditious delivery of visa and travel permits."

The EU ministers stopped short of endorsing a French call to deliver aid if necessary without the junta's permission.

France's junior minister for human rights said it had the backing of Britain and Germany to call on the UN Security Council for aid to be taken into Burma without the government's green light if necessary.

"We have called for the 'responsibility to protect' to be applied in the case of Burma," Rama Yade told reporters.

Tens of thousands of people throughout the delta are crammed into monasteries, schools and other buildings after arriving in towns that were on the breadline even before the disaster.

Lacking food, water and sanitation, they face the threat of killer diseases such as cholera and in some parts are waiting in vain for help to arrive.