Myanmar Reels as Cyclone Toll Hits Thousands

Displaced residents who lost their homes in a powerful cyclone took shelter on Monday in a Buddhist temple. (Hla Hla Htay/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)
May 6th. (NY Times) - Myanmar struggled Monday to recover from a cyclone that killed more than 3,900 people and perhaps as many as 15,000. Foreign Minister Noppadol Pattama of Thailand met with Myanmar's ambassador on Tuesday, according to Reuters. After the meeting, Mr. Noppadol said that 15,000 people had been killed and another 30,000 were missing. If those numbers are accurate, the death toll would be the highest from a natural disaster in Asia since the tsunami of December 2004, which devastated coastlines in South Asia and claimed 181,000 lives. On Monday, three cabinet ministers told diplomats the death toll could reach 10,000 people in the delta region, an area that is home to nearly half of Myanmar’s 48 million people, according to Richard Horsey, a spokesman for the UN disaster response office in Bangkok. State radio reported that Saturday's vote on a draft constitution would be delayed until May 24 in 40 townships around Yangon and seven in the Irrawaddy delta, which bore the brunt of the killer storm, according to The Associated Press. It indicated that in other areas the balloting would proceed as scheduled. Tens of thousands of people were homeless after the cyclone, and food and water were running short. “Stories get worse by the hour,” one Yangon resident, who did not want to be identified for fear of government retribution, said in an e-mail message. “No drinking water in many areas, still no power. Houses completely disappeared. Refugees scavenging for food in poorer areas. Roofing, building supplies, tools — all are scarce and prices skyrocketing on everything.” Officials said they would open the doors of their closed and tightly controlled nation to international relief groups. So far, most foreigners and all foreign journalists have been barred from entering the country. They also said the referendum would proceed. “It’s only a few days left before the coming referendum and people are eager to cast their vote,” an official statement said Monday.

But witnesses and residents said the military had been slow to respond to the devastation of the cyclone, and some suggested that the government’s performance could affect the vote. Residents of the country, formerly known as Burma, said that they were being pressured to vote “yes” and that riot police officers had been patrolling the streets before the cyclone in a show of force that was more visible than their relief efforts afterward. Nine months ago, security forces had fired into crowds, killing dozens of people, to disperse huge pro-democracy demonstrations led by monks, and in the months since, the government has carried out a campaign of arrests and intimidation. State-owned television had reported early Monday that 3,934 people died in the cyclone, called Nargis, which swept through the Irrawaddy Delta and the country’s main city, Yangon, formerly Rangoon, early Saturday. The broadcast said nearly 3,000 were missing, all of them from a single town, Bogale. “What is clear,” Mr. Horsey said Monday, “is that we are dealing with a major emergency situation, and the priority needs now are shelter and clean drinking water.”

A spokesman for the World Food Program said the government of Myanmar, which severely restricts the movements and activities of foreign groups, had given the United Nations permission to send in emergency aid. At the United Nations, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he had mobilized a disaster assessment team to determine Myanmar’s most urgent needs. A human rights group based in Thailand, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), which has provided reliable information from Myanmar in the past, said soldiers and police officers had killed 36 prisoners in Insein prison to quell a riot that started after the cyclone tore roof sheets off cell blocks, Reuters reported. The report could not be independently confirmed. The junta that rules Myanmar has closed the country off from the outside world and maintained its grip on power through force, while its economic mismanagement has driven the country deeper into poverty. Some government-run enterprises or businesses with links to the government have already required their employees to vote in advance. Exile groups said some residents had told them they were angry about the weak response of the military, which had seemed strong enough when the task was to crack down on citizens. “This is what people I have contacted complain about,” said Aung Zaw, editor of the magazine Irrawaddy, based in Thailand. “These people were so active in September killing the monks, but where are they now?”

Residents of Yangon complained that the government had failed to adequately warn them of the approaching storm. “The government misled people,” Thin Thin, a grocery store owner, told The Associated Press. “They could have warned us about the severity of the coming cyclone so we could be better prepared.” On Sunday, the government’s initial estimate was that the cyclone had killed 351 people. Estimates of the toll soared on Monday, and on Tuesday the state-run Myanmar TV, monitored by Reuters from outside the country, reported that the cyclone had killed about 10,000 people in Bogale alone. The basis of the figure was not clear. In Washington, the first lady, Laura Bush, took Myanmar’s government to task on Monday for failing to notify its citizens in time, and pressed the military junta to accept American aid. “Although they were aware of the threat, Burma’s state-run media failed to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm’s path,” Mrs. Bush said in a rare news conference at the White House. “It’s troubling that many of the Burmese people learned of this impending disaster only when foreign outlets, such as Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, sounded the alarm.” Asked whether she was concerned that American aid might not reach Burma’s people, Mrs. Bush said, “I’m worried that they won’t even accept U.S. aid.”

The American Embassy in Myanmar has authorized the release of $250,000 in immediate emergency aid, and Mrs. Bush promised, “More aid will be forthcoming.” The immediate problem in affected areas now is survival, with water and electricity cut off, roads blocked by fallen trees, roofs torn off homes and prices for transportation and food rising quickly. “People are starving,” an unidentified resident was quoted as saying by the Democratic Voice of Burma, a dissident radio station based in Norway. Mr. Horsey, of the United Nations, said teams representing various aid groups were trying to assess the damage. Some aid had already been stockpiled in anticipation of natural disasters, he said. “It will take a few days until a complete and accurate picture of the impact and of the numbers of people affected comes out,” he said. Even without the destruction from the cyclone, travel and communications can be difficult in the country because of its weak infrastructure, said David Mathieson, an expert on Myanmar with Human Rights Watch, a private organization. In Yangon, he said, people usually get only five or six hours of electricity a day, and some remote areas have no access to electricity. “So the fact that electricity is down is not really that important,” he said. Jens Orback, a former minister for integration and democracy in Sweden, was in Yangon when the cyclone hit. “Trees that were standing there hundreds of years fell easily,” he said, “and things from roofs fell down and the electricity went down and there were only flashlights. In the first day, you couldn’t go anywhere by car. No telephones worked. The Internet was out, and there was a lack of information. “What struck us also,” he continued, “was that in the first daylight, nobody from the police, military or firemen was out working with the devastation, but people privately were there with knives and machetes and hand saws.
by SETH MYDANS
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Myanmar Plans Secret Trials for Democracy Activists, U.S. Says

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Myanmar's regime is planning secret trials of U Gambira, a Buddhist monk who helped lead opposition protests last year, and 10 other pro-democracy activists, the Bush administration said today. The trials are an example of actions by the regime that are "unacceptable to all those who value freedom,'' White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in a statement. She offered no details on where or when the trials would take place. What Perino described as Myanmar General Than Shwe's "defiance'' of international demands for democracy prompted President George W. Bush to expand financial sanctions today against Myanmar businesses and individuals accused of aiding military rule. Bush "has made clear that we will continue to take action against the military junta and those who prop it up so long as human rights violations continue and democracy is suppressed,'' Adam Szubin, head of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in a statement. The steps announced today target Htoo Group of Companies, "which carries out key projects'' for Myanmar's junta, such as the buying of military equipment and aircraft, Treasury said in a statement. Treasury lists Tay Za, identified as an arms dealer, as Htoo's leader. The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets held by the designated individuals and companies and bar all financial and commercial transactions with them in the U.S. The action widens penalties the U.S. has imposed to protest rights violations in the Asian nation.

The military of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, crushed the biggest opposition protests in almost 20 years in September. The United Nations says at least 31 people died in the clashes. Za allegedly used his connections with Aung Thet Mann, director of Htoo Group and son of a senior official in Myanmar's government, to win favorable contracts from the country's junta, Treasury said. Mann is also named as a target of today's sanctions. Neither Za nor a representative for him could be located immediately to respond to the U.S. penalties. Treasury said it has had no contact with anyone who represents Za. Designated companies include Myanmar Avia Export Company Ltd.; Ayer Shwe Wah Company Ltd. and Pavo Aircraft Leasing Pte. Ltd. in Singapore, Treasury said. Four spouses of senior Myanmar government officials also were named. Other actions that prompted the U.S. decision include Myanmar's continued defiance of a UN Security Council resolution calling on the regime to release pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and its refusal to allow UN Special Adviser Ibrahim Gambari to return, the White House said today. Min Ko Niang and Ko Ko Kyi are among the activists for whom the regime is planning secret trials, according to the White House.
By Nadine Elsibai
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Myanmar Junta Names Liaison to Aung San Suu Kyi

BANGKOK Oct 8th: The military junta in Myanmar has named its deputy labor minister to act as a liaison with the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the government announced Monday. It said Deputy Labor Minister Aung Kyi, a retired general, would act as "liaison minister" but did not elaborate on what this liaison would involve. State television said the appointment followed a recommendation by a United Nations envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, during a visit to Myanmar last week.

Analysts have voiced concern that the junta would take cosmetic steps to try to deflect international concern over its violent suppression of huge pro-democracy protests. An unknown number of Burmese were killed during the peaceful uprising and hundreds were arrested. Since the demonstrations were crushed late last month, the government has been carrying out night-time searches and arrests, and state media said Monday that arrests were continuing. In an earlier concession to international demands, the junta's leader, Senior General Than Shwe, said last week that he would meet with Aung San Suu Kyi, but only if she renounced some of her demands, including her support for international sanctions against the regime.

It remained unclear whether the junta would open any real dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years. A commentary Monday in the government's English-language mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar, indicated that the government was not planning to release her from house arrest anytime soon, despite widespread demands from abroad. "The three demands of the protesters - lowering consumer prices, release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and political prisoners, and national reconciliation - cannot be satisfied through protest," the paper said, using an honorific it has avoided in commentaries over the years. "Now, those responsible are making arrangements to draft the state constitution and collect the list of voters," it added. "When the state constitution is approved, the fulfillment of the three demands will be within reach." "The drafting of a new constitution is one of the steps on a "road map" that the junta says will lead to a form of "disciplined democracy," but the constitutional guidelines it adopted in August assured that the military would play the dominant role in any future government. The completion of a constitution and its approval in a referendum could still take many months or years, analysts said.
International Herald Tribune
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The Despotism Formerly Known as Burma

New York: Sept 26, 2007: By dispatching troops into the streets and imposing a curfew, Myanmar’s cruel military junta has set the stage for a serious clash with pro-democracy activists. A firm and united international response along the lines outlined by President Bush and the European Union at the United Nations yesterday offers the best hope of encouraging peaceful change in a nation that has endured a 19-year reign of fear. The question is whether the countries with the greatest influence on Myanmar’s generals — China, Russia and India, which all sell weapons to the army, as well as the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that are Myanmar’s immediate neighbors — have the good sense to condemn the repression and exert the pressures only they can wield with any hope of positive effect. It is essential that they step up to the plate, and fast, before blood is spilled.

Peaceful protests that began last month over dramatically increased fuel prices became seriously threatening to the junta when Myanmar’s highly revered Buddhist monks joined in. The growing crowds gave voice to pent-up grievances — and the junta responded in a predictable, entirely wrongheaded way. It sent troops into the streets, and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the iconic democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was reported to have been moved to prison from house arrest.

The United States, which has long had sanctions on Myanmar, including an import ban, will now expand a visa ban against regime leaders and tighten financial penalties, Mr. Bush told the United Nations. Although not spelled out, the plan is believed to include going after regime bank accounts in Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries, a tactic used by Washington with some effect against North Korea. The European Union also warned the junta that it faced tougher sanctions if it used force to crush the pro-democracy movement. These were good and necessary moves, but the greatest leverage to forestall disaster lies with China, Russia and India, who are making money off the junta and enabling it to stay in power. China, Myanmar’s chief trade partner and the host of the 2008 Olympic Games, has beefed up arms sales to Yangon, formerly Rangoon, prompting Russia and India to do likewise as a way of offsetting Beijing’s influence.

Moscow has discussed providing the junta with a nuclear research reactor, and India — the democracy on which the United States hopes to build a key security and economic relationship for the 21st century — had a senior minister in Myanmar for energy talks, even as the democracy protests were under way. There are some signs that China has urged restraint, but more must be done, including supporting U.N. sanctions on Myanmar that Beijing and Moscow have so far blocked. The U.N. envoy dealing with Myanmar, Ibrahmim Gambari, must aggressively rally these major countries, as well as the Asean nations, to persuade the generals to stand down.
The New York Times
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Myanmar Junta's Secretive Supremo

Five facts about the Burmese military junta's most powerful figure, Than Shwe:

Born in British-controlled central Burma in February 1933. Than Shwe joined the army in 1953 and rose through the ranks to become military supremo with the official title "Senior General" in 1992.

On taking power, he said the junta that seized power in a 1962 coup would "not hold onto power for long," sparking hopes of civilian government. Since then, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has spent most of her time either in prison or under house arrest.

Than Shwe is rarely seen in public or out of uniform. One notable exception was his appearance at a secretly leaked video of his daughter's wedding in 2006. The ceremony's lavishness sparked outrage among Burma's 53 million people, among the poorest in Asia.

He is known to have an intense personal dislike of Suu Kyi and is alleged to have walked out of a meeting with a foreign envoy when her name was mentioned.

Rumours about his failing health and imminent demise are common.
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Myanmar Officials Threaten Clerics

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) Sept. 24th. — Myanmar's religious affairs minister warns the Buddhist clergy to restrain demonstrating monks, or else the government will act against protesting clerics. As many as 100,000 anti-government protesters led by a phalanx of Buddhist monks marched Monday through Yangon, the largest crowd to demonstrate in Myanmar's biggest city since a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that was brutally crushed by the military. From the front of the march, witnesses could see a 11/2 -kilometre stretch of eight-lane road was filled with people. Some participants said there were several hundred thousand marchers in their ranks, but an international aid agency official with employees monitoring the crowd estimated said the size was well over 50,000 and approaching 100,000.

It was the latest in a series of protests that began Aug. 19 as a movement against economic hardship in the Southeast Asian country after the government sharply raised fuel prices. But arrests and intimidation kept demonstrations small and scattered until the monks entered the fray. The usually iron-fisted junta has so far kept minimal security at the protests, and diplomats and analysts said Myanmar's military rulers were showing the unexpected restraint because of pressure from the country's key trading partner and diplomatic ally, China. The march kicked off, like the previous ones, at the Shwedagon pagoda, a historical centre for political movements as well as the country's most sacred religious shrine. Some 20,000 monks took the lead, with onlookers joining in on what had been billed as a day of general protest.

In the central city of Mandalay, meanwhile, 500 to 600 monks set off shortly after noon on their own protest march. The monks, who took over a faltering protest movement from political activists, already had managed to bring people into the streets in numbers not seen since the 1988 pro-democracy uprising snuffed out by the army at a cost of thousands of lives. On Sunday, about 20,000 people including thousands of monks filled the streets in Yangon, stepping up their confrontation with authorities by chanting support for detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The increasingly confrontational tone of the anti-government protesters has raised both expectations of possible political change and fear that the military might forcefully stamp out the demonstrations, as it did in 1988. A Southeast Asian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity as a matter of protocol, said the regime is under pressure from China to avoid a crackdown just as its larger neighbour has pressured it to speed up other democratic changes. "The Myanmar government is tolerating the protesters and not taking any action against the monks because of pressure from China," the diplomat told the Associated Press. "Beijing is to host the next summer's Olympic Games. Everyone knows that China is the major supporter of the junta so if government takes any action it will affect the image of China." China, which is counting on Myanmar's vast oil and gas reserves to help fuel its booming economy, earlier this year blocked a UN Security Council criticizing Myanmar's rights record saying it was not the right forum. But at the same time, it has employed quiet diplomacy and subtle public pressure on the regime, urging it to move toward inclusive democracy and speed up the process of dialogue and reform.

Josef Silverstein, a political scientist and author of several books on Myanmar, said it would not be in China's interest to have civil unrest in Myanmar, also known as Burma. "China is very eager to have a peaceful Burma in order to complete roads and railroads, to develop mines and finish assimilating the country under its economic control," Mr. Silverstein said. The movement seemed to gain momentum Saturday, when more than 500 monks and sympathizers went past barricades to walk to the house where Suu Kyi is under house arrest. She greeted them from her gate in her first public appearance in more than four years. But access to her home was barred Sunday. The meeting symbolically linked the current protests to Nobel laureate's Suu Kyi's struggle for democracy, which has seen her detained for about 12 of the last 18 years.
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First Lady Calls for U.N. Resolution over Ongoing Strife in Burma

Washington, Sept. 6th. During her recent vacation at the family ranch near Crawford, Texas, first lady Laura Bush was reading news articles about the ongoing strife in Burma, where the military government has been arresting dissidents and protesters in large numbers in recent weeks. When she returned to Washington last week, she did something unusual: She called the secretary-general to register her dismay and urged him to condemn "the brutal crackdown." Yesterday, the first lady invited a small group of reporters to her office in the East Wing to explain her passion for the cause of Burmese freedom and called for a U.N. resolution expressing the world's concern over the deteriorating situation in one of the world's most isolated and repressive governments. "So far as we can tell, they thumb their nose at the rest of the world," Bush said in the interview. "But that doesn't mean the rest of the world shouldn't continue to speak out about these issues."

Bush said her long-standing concern about Burma began several years ago when she learned the compelling story of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has spent much of her time in detention since her party won elections in 1990. The Burmese military rejected the electoral result. But Bush's engagement has grown more pronounced in the past year or two, as she has consulted with numerous experts and human rights officials, met with the nation's ethnic minorities and hosted a forum about Burma at the United Nations last September. "I think this is sort of one of those myths that I was baking cookies, and then they fell off the cookie sheet and I called Ban Ki Moon," she joked, referring to the U.N. secretary-general. Even so, Bush seems to be playing a more confident and expansive role in the past year: Along with her focus on Burma, she has stepped in to help the lobby lawmakers on the president's education law and has traveled to highlight the administration's initiatives on curbing AIDS. She is careful not to raise too much of a ruckus. Asked yesterday whether her call to Ban was a sign of administration frustration with the United Nations, Bush quickly cut off the question, saying, "No, no, no. I wouldn't say that at all." But Bush also made clear her willingness to eschew normal diplomatic language, acknowledging that China and Russia stand in the way of the kind of tough resolution that the United States might seek at the Security Council. She said she has a "small amount of optimism that China will work with us on this issue," noting that Beijing helped facilitate a recent meeting between U.S. and Burmese diplomats and has an interest in stability in the country. "I don't know about Russia," she added. "You know, they seem that whatever we're for, they're against."

Yesterday's interview was part of an accelerating campaign among Western leaders to raise consciousness about the strife in Burma, also known as Myanmar, where dissidents have been arrested amid scattered protests against recent increases in the price of fuel and other consumer goods. Yesterday, there were reports from Rangoon that hundreds of Buddhist monks in the town of Pakokku were met by warning shots from soldiers when they staged an anti-government protest. President Bush issued his own condemnation of the Burmese government last week, and administration officials said they expect the president to make Burma an issue as he meets with Asian leaders at a Pacific Rim summit this week in Sydney. The first lady's campaign seems to be having some impact on the U.N. bureaucracy, which has been on the defensive somewhat since Ban issued what was seen inside the U.S. government as a weak statement last month. It called on the Burmese government to exercise "restraint" but also urged "all parties to avoid any provocative action."

In an interview, the top U.N. envoy on Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, said he was caught off guard by what he saw as a critical statement last week from the first lady, whom he said he has briefed three times. "The tone was surprising," he said. "We share the same end result, which is a democratic Myanmar with greater respect for human rights." Gambari said the United Nations is pursuing a strategy of "patient diplomacy" by painstakingly rallying support for its policies from key regional and international powers -- including the United States, China and Russia. "We don't condone what has happened recently," he added. "We have issued a strong statement that this is unacceptable." Laura Bush said she was hoping "for as much pressure as we can possibly put" on Burma's ruling generals "to get them to move." "These are all peaceful protesters," she added. "None of them are calling for a violent overthrow of the government. They're only asking the government to be responsive
By Michael Abramowitz
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