‘Unimaginable tragedy’ if Myanmar delays aid

Reuters

YANGON - Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta on Sunday in search of food, water and medicine but aid workers said thousands of them would die if emergency supplies do not get through soon.

Buddhist temples and schools in towns on the outskirts of the storm's trail of destruction are now makeshift refugee centers for women, children and the elderly -- some of the 1.5 million people left clinging to survival.

The reclusive military government is accepting aid from the outside world, including the United Nations, but has made it very clear it will not let in the foreign logistics teams needed to transport the aid as fast as possible into the inundated delta.

"Unless there is a massive and fast infusion of aid, experts and supplies into the hardest-hit areas, there's going to be a tragedy on an unimaginable scale," said Greg Beck of the International Rescue Committee.

In the delta town of Labutta, where 80 percent of homes were destroyed, the authorities were providing just one cup of rice per family per day, a European Commission aid official told Reuters.

The scenes are the same across the delta, the former "Rice Bowl of Asia where as many as 100,000 people are feared dead in the worst cyclone to hit the continent since 1991, when 143,000 people died in neighboring Bangladesh.

"We have 900 people here but we only have 300 lunch boxes. We gave it to the women and children first. The men still have not had any food," one woman said at a relief center in the town of Myaung Mya, 100 km (60 miles) west of Yangon.

"More are coming every day," she said.

The World Food Program said on Sunday it is now moving aid down to its field headquarters in Labutta using trucks provided by its long-time partners in Myanmar, including the Red Cross.

The WFP has flown in seven shipments of aid, and an eighth was due to land on Sunday, WFP spokesman in Bangkok Marcus Prior told Reuters.

"Patriotic duty"

Despite the devastation, the junta has kept its focus firmly on a seven-step "roadmap to democracy" that is meant to culminate in multi-party elections in 2010 and bring an end to nearly five decades of military rule in the former Burma.

The New Light of Myanmar, the junta's main mouthpiece, carried a front-page photograph of military supremo Than Shwe and his wife casting their ballots in Saturday's constitutional referendum in Naypyidaw, the remote new capital he built in 2005.

The paper said election officials were "systematically and accurately" counting the ballots, but said nothing about when the results would be released.

The referendum, the first exercise in democracy in nearly 20 years, has been delayed by two weeks in the worst-hit areas, including Yangon, the former capital and city of five million.

There is little doubt about the final result.

The generals spurned offers of United Nations monitors, and in the run-up to the vote army-run media pumped out a relentless barrage of propaganda, telling the country's 53 million people it was their "patriotic duty" to approve the charter, which enshrines the army's grip on power.

"I voted yes. It was what I was asked to do," 57-year-old U Hlaing told Reuters in the town of Hlegu, northwest of Yangon.

Protests against referendum

Even before Cyclone Nargis hit on the night of May 2, groups opposed to military rule, and foreign governments led by the United States, had denounced the vote as an attempt by the military to legitimize its 46-year grip on power.

Washington regards Myanmar as an "outpost of tyranny" but sidestepped direct criticism of the constitutional vote, saying only that the junta's focus should be on relief efforts.

The first US military aid flight is expected to leave Thailand on Monday, although nothing is for certain when dealing with a regime that is deeply suspicious of outside -- and in particular Western -- interference.

"Our position on the referendum is well-known," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters. "Our focus now is on getting assistance to the people of Burma and we would certainly hope that is the focus of the Burmese government as well."

The UN has appealed for $187 million in aid, even though it is still not confident the food, water and tents flown in will make it to those most in need because of the junta's reluctance to admit international relief workers.

The government's official death toll stands at 23,350 dead and 37,019 missing from the May 2 disaster, although foreign aid officials say the number of dead could exceed 100,000.

Most of the victims were killed by the 12-foot (3.5 meter) wall of sea-water that slammed into the delta.