Word: deltas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...keening for lost family members, the frantic jostling for relief supplies and mounting anger as diseases stalk refugee camps and medicine is in short supply. But Burma has been different. There are third-hand stories of food riots, but in four days of visiting villages in the affected Irrawaddy Delta, the dominant emotional themes are fear and resignation. It is a remarkable accomplishment by the junta to have set the bar so low for competence that weariness reigns; few people express any frustration at all at the prospect of slow starvation...
...Forcing victims of Burma's worst natural disaster in modern history to participate in a referendum of questionable validity underscores the callousness of the Burmese regime. But the determination to hold the plebiscite also points to an even darker irony. A week after the cyclone devastated the Irrawaddy Delta, precious little aid is reaching the storm's victims. On Friday, in village after village, residents told me no aid at all had arrived. Blackened, bloated corpses still bobbed in rivers. Many storm survivors had no idea when they would be eating their next meal. NGOs began reporting outbreaks of diarrheal...
...Friday morning, as I left Bogalay, one of the worst affected townships in the Irrawaddy Delta, I noticed that a new checkpoint had been placed at the bridge in to town. Foreign reporters were being turned away, as well as some trucks laden with international donations that didn't have the proper documentation to convince the soldiers patrolling the checkpoint. Within the town itself, where two-thirds of buildings were battered by the cyclone, some soldiers were tossing storm debris into military trucks. But other army men were busy questioning suspicious-looking outsiders. It struck me that almost as much...
...ordered me to give my name, nationality and passport number. The information was carefully recorded by six different officials in six different notebooks. Reports will surely be filed, perhaps six separate times. And as the information works its way up the chain of command, the people of the Irrawaddy Delta will still be waiting for the aid they need to begin rebuilding their lives...
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, Gen. Thein Sein - the man nominally overseeing Burma's relief effort - toured the delta by helicopter on Thursday, reported the junta newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar. He urged cyclone victims to "show resilience...