Gordon Brown hints at aid drops
As millions face starvation and fears of cholera grow, Britain's Prime Minister rules nothing out
Gordon Brown has raised the prospect of Britain carrying out unauthorized emergency aid drops into Burma as a last resort if its government continues to exclude foreign help.
Amid evidence that cholera is already taking hold in parts of the stricken country and UN warnings that a 'second catastrophe' of disease and starvation could be worse than the initial cyclone, the British Prime Minister made clear that he would rule nothing out.
Brown used an address to Church of Scotland leaders yesterday (17MAY) to accuse the Burmese junta of being an 'unnatural dictatorship' that cares more about its survival than its own people's.
Privately diplomats see aid drops as a desperate last resort. One Whitehall source said there were 'huge problems' with such tactics. Experience shows that barely a fifth of aid dropped in such a way reaches the people who most need it, much of it rotting where it falls.
The option will remain on the table in the hope of increasing pressure on the Burmese military government. It emerged last night that France is in talks about a possible delivery of aid. The French government said its Mistral navy helicopter carrier was in waters south of the storm-ravaged Irrawaddy delta, with supplies to feed 100,000 people over 15 days and shelter at least 60,000 people.
Yet in this devastated land there remains little evidence of any government help. This weekend hundreds of people were lining the roads which run south of Rangoon, peering expectantly into passing cars and begging for help.
'We walked a long way to get here - our men are home trying to rebuild the house,' an exhausted-looking woman said, sitting among the debris of former homes. 'In the past five days we have received just a little rice and some condensed milk from the government. We wait here all day, hoping someone may bring some help.'
All across the delta, carrying their few salvaged possessions in bundles, the new homeless travel by foot and by boat, navigating around the bodies that still clog the waterways of the Irrawaday, unclaimed and left to rot.
The regime has sought to seal off the delta, setting up a grid of police and military checkpoints and turning back foreigners, including those seeking to help. The military leaders are determined to prevent the outside world from knowing the scale of the tragedy - or to discover that because of its own neglect this has become a man-made disaster, where starvation is now facing more than two million affected by the cyclone.
Disease is also a growing possibility and doctors believe that cholera could take hold if the water supplies become very badly contaminated. Some doctors in Rangoon have already begun to try to treat children for it in case it does take hold.
In an area near Kungyangon, south of Rangoon, where uncollected bodies are washed up in a paddy field, the stench of putrid flesh assaults the senses. One witness told The Observer they had received only a few bags of rice. 'Forty dead here,' he said. 'Most of them children.'
Junta arrests 13 opposition youth
The Burmese military junta in a bid to keep the opposition in disarray on Thursday arrested 13 prominent youth leaders of the country's main opposition political party – the National League for Democracy - a senior party member said. Thirteen important leaders of the NLD were rounded up by Rangoon's police of the Special Branch and officials from the Ministry of Home Affairs early on Thursday from their homes, a NLD senior member Aung Thein told Mizzima.A relative of Ohn Mar, one of the arrested youth leader's said, a group of officials including the police from the Ministry of Home Affairs and the SB came to their house at about 3:15 a.m. and took her away. "They said they wanted to talk to her and took her away. They clarified that they were not arresting her but she has not returned till now," a family member of Ohn Mar told Mizzima over telephone. The family member, who declined to be named, said she saw several other NLD youth members including Ma Pah Pah, Ma Cho, and Ko Lay Lwin on a Hylux light-truck that the officials came in. The NLD youth leaders including Tun Zaw Zaw, Khin Tun, Ohn Mar, Ma Pah Pah, Ma Cho, and Ko Pauk have been playing a pro-active role in trying to help cyclone victims in Rangoon and Irrawaddy division and were planning to leave for Dae Da Ye town for relief work, the family member said. "We are terribly worried and her mother could not even eat," the family member said. The NLD youth leaders including Tun Zaw Zaw, Khin Tun, Ohn Mar, Ma Pah Pah, Ma Cho, and Ko Pauk were also playing a pro-active role in trying to expose the regime's unfair practices in the May 10, referendum. While the reason for the arrest of the NLD youth leaders is still not clear, Aung Thein said it may be connected to the visit of the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the country today. The world body chief on Thursday arrived in Rangoon on a mission to persuade the ruling junta to allow relief supplies and aid workers access to the cyclone affected regions of Irrawaddy delta and Rangoon division. A young NLD party member in Rangoon, speaking to Mizzima on condition of anonymity said the arrested youth leaders have been secretly working to expose the junta's unfair practices in the referendum. "These people are key members of the NLD youth and they have been also working undercover to expose the junta's unfair means to win supporting votes in the constitutional referendum," the NLD youth said. The junta on May 15, five days after the nation-wide referendum, declared that the constitution had been supported by 92.4 percent of voters. However, due to the killer Cyclone Nargis' lashing the country on May 2 and 3, the junta postponed the referendum date in 47 townships in the affected areas to May 24.
MIZZIMA NEWS
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