Told to go back to their shattered homes

Nearly 2,000 cyclone survivors still sheltering in monasteries, religious buildings and schools in one Rangoon township have been told by the authorities to return to what is left of their homes by May 20.

The order was confirmed by one resident of the affected township, South Dagon Myothit, who asked: “Where will the survivors live?” Angered by the official order, Ko Pauk said: “Their homes were destroyed by the cyclone. The authorities are really stupid.”

Children reach their hands out to receive a free banana from a local donor on the outskirts of Rangoon on Wednesday. (Photo: AP)Some survivors were being assigned to a relief camp of some 50 tents, but Ko Pauk pointed out that it couldn’t accommodate all.

In the devastated Irrawaddy delta town of Laputta, meanwhile, survivors are being moved from a local temple and a religious building to a camp set up on a football ground. The survivors had sought refuge at the Suu Taung Pyi temple and a township dhamma building.Aye Kyu, a member of the opposition National League for Democracy’s disaster relief committee in the township, said the camp had about 60 tents with accommodation for some 1,000 people. “The authorities are now trying to relocate about 10,000 people.

How are so many people going to live in a camp intended for 1,000?” he asked.Meanwhile, a medical worker in Laputta Township, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that the authorities had stopped a local relief group of young people and private donors from distributing aid. “While the group was preparing to distribute rice and curry for people, a military officer came and ordered to them stop their work,” he said. “The reason isn’t clear.”

Local staffers from two international medical organizations, Medicins Sans Frontieres and Merlin are operating two clinics in Laputta. Children who survived the cyclone may have to continue their schooling in relief camps and tents when the new term begins on June 1 because 85 percent of the schools in the region had been destroyed or damaged, the UN said Wednesday, according to The Associated Press.

UNICEF said there is no time to rebuild the estimated 2,700 severely damaged primary schools attended by 350,000 students or to replace the unknown numbers of teachers killed or missing in the cyclone. Voting in the national referendum that had been postponed in 40 townships in Rangoon Division and seven townships in Irrawaddy Division will be held on May 24, but will have little effect on the final outcome, which the junta says gives it overwhelming approval of its proposed constitution.

State media announced on Thursday that 20,786,596, or 92.4 percent of the enfranchised electorate, had voted in favor of the constitution, while 1,375,480 voted against.

The referendum was held amid charges of massive vote-rigging, bribery and intimidation of voters.

taken from : asia one

*no time to rebuild?? so where are the children going to study?

News

A tropical depression in the Bay of Bengal added new worries, but late in the day forecasters said it was weakening and unlikely to grow into a cyclone.

Lucky!!!

So worried that a second cyclone will come, and the outcome will be unimaginable.

Lucky that it is weakening in the ocean.

A little good news.

Thai doctors get OK

Thai doctors get OKThe junta did grant approval Wednesday for a Thai medical team to visit the delta, said Dr. Thawat Sutharacha of Thailand’s Public Health Ministry.

If the team goes as scheduled Friday, it will be the first foreign aid group to work in the ravaged delta.

Myanmar has limited the few international aid workers in the country to Yangon, the country’s biggest city, and used police to keep foreigners from going to the delta.

The government gave a little ground to demands that it let in more experts. It announced it would allow in 160 relief workers from neighboring countries — India, China, Bangladesh and Thailand. It was not clear whether they would be permitted to go to the delta.

Myanmar

Myanmar has a timeless beauty, it feels like something out of a dream. It's one of the last remaining places where you can catch a glimpse of Old Asia. This is what they wrote in the web.

I agree.

But what has it become now?

Will it still remain a beauty after so many people had died?
or will it become a land of the dead.

Why do they have to suffer a faith like this?
Will praying to god help to improve the situation? I think its really lying if you said praying to god will help.
Don't try to comfort yourself by saying, god will help god will help.

The fact is already there.

Nothing can change that.


Praying to god won't really help unless the Myanmar government do something about the aid.

You know, there is a saying in Chinese. If you don't have such a big head, don't wear such a big hat.

Its really sad to watch the news, read the news every single day to know that the government delay the aid, un-approve the visa of aid workers.
What are they trying to prove?
Powerful military strength?

Sadly to say, NO.
It only shows the world. How the country became when crisis came.
How incorporate everybody is.
How divided a country can become.

Its the country, Its the people you are talking about.

If you can't feed your child, why don't you give others a chance. At least your child can survive.
A mother will never want to see her child die in her own hands right?

Compare to china,can't you see how efficient they work?
Immediately after the disaster, aid workers dispatch to all areas.
Ambulance stand by at all areas.
This is what we call fast and efficient.
This is what we call, TEAM WORK.
A COUNTRY WORKING TOGETHER.


.
.
.
.
I don't see that happening in Myanmar. Do you?

Even without UN helping, without US helping. China is coping really fine with the rescuing process.

What about Myanmar?
How many days have the cyclone come and go?
How many days does it take to approve one bloody bloody aid ship to go inside Myanmar to deliver things to the survivor.

You are talking about 1.5Million people now.
It could be many more, they are not releasing the actually figure.

Its almost half of Singapore.
Once again, can i say that, you don't really know your maths well.

Its sad to see people without home roaming around the streets looking for scraps of food that they can get.
Its more sad to see 1.5 million people without home!!!!!!!!
Without food, without clean water, without every single shit that they need to survive.

and
nobody is helping.


Is your heart not functioning well enough to provide blood to circulate to your whole body?


And burma famous proverb,

The rain always pours wherever the desperate people go.
This proverb is really meaningful.
And for real.

Report said that, Another cyclone is forming near Myanmar. SHIT IT!
But the Meteorological Center wouldn't know when it will turn to a full fledged.

A second cyclone was forming Wednesday near Burma, less than two weeks after the country was devastated by a killer storm, according to the UN's World Meteorological Center.

The UN's weather center is tracking a nascent tropical storm that is likely to become a cyclone

The center said on its Web site that "the potential for the development of a significant tropical cyclone within the next 24 hours is good."

It said, “the circulation center (of the storm) is currently transiting generally northwestward across the Yangon [Rangoon] delta region of Myanmar [Burma],” which refers to the Irrawaddy delta.

The same area was pulverized by Cyclone Nargis on May 2-3, leaving more than 60,000 people dead or missing.

This is really terrible, I hope it doesn't come true.

Pitt said if the cyclone warnings come true, the inadequate relief efforts for survivors of Nargis will be jeopardized.

I really hope this is not true. Another cyclone.

We can only hope and wait.


Survivors of the previous cyclone also faces metal problem.

Everywhere around them are dead bodies, injured people. It’s a miserable environment.People there look depressed and traumatized. They do not know what to say when people ask them questions. Young children seem afraid of water and the things around them.

According to the UN Children’s Fund, children are among the most vulnerable and are at a higher risk of protracted trauma and psychological problems, especially the ones who are now alone because family members are dead or missing.

An eldery survivor said : "I am so afraid to see the sky turn grey as I worry that it is going to rain and the strong waves from the ocean will hit the land again,” he said. “I cry every time I think about what happened, and I can not sleep"

He lost seven grandchildren, one niece, one sister-in-law and many cousins. “I tried to hold my grandchildren’s hands tight when the water first hit us, but the waves were strong and big, and we could not hold on to each other—all my grandchildren disappeared in the waves.

“I had never expected that I would face a horrible situation like this,” he said.
“I really feel pain because I could not help my grandchildren and other family members. I could not do anything.”

Even when you are not related. After reading this, do you feel sad?

i do.
Imagining losing all your family members in 1 night.

Anger mounts at Myanmar aid visa delays

BANGKOK -
FURIOUS rescue worker accused Myanmar's military junta on Monday of crimes against humanity for refusing to give visas to aid officials desperate to enter the country to help the 1.5 million survivors of Cyclone Nargis.


'They say they will call, but it's always wait, wait, wait,' Mr Pierre Fouillant of the Comite de Secours Internationaux, a French disaster rescue agency, told Reuters after being turned away from the former Burma's embassy in the Thai capital.

'I've never seen delays like this, never,' said Mr Fouillant, a veteran of 10 humanitarian disasters.



'It's a crime against humanity. It should be against the law. It's like they are taking a gun and shooting their own people.'

I TOTALLY AGREE!!!!

Like dozens of others, Mr Fouillant applied on Thursday for a business visa, his only option since the military-ruled and isolated southeast Asian nation has no such thing as an 'emergency aid worker' visa.

The embassy was closed on Friday for a Thai holiday, and on Saturday and Sunday. It opened as normal on Monday morning.
At least 100,000 people are thought to have died in the May 2 cyclone and storm surge in the Irrawaddy delta, a death toll that could rise dramatically if survivors do not get access to food, clean water and medicine in the next few days, experts say.


Reuters witnesses on the edges of the disaster zone say towns and villages are being swamped by huge numbers of cyclone refugees and cannot cope.
There is virtually no government assistance and food is running out. Some residents say they are afraid the desperate evacuees will be forced to turn to looting.

FrustrationAgainst this backdrop, small groups of rescue workers are having to wait outside the iron-spiked, grey walls of the embassy compound in Bangkok while their leaders and local visa agents try to see if their applications have got anywhere.
'It is very frustrating,' said Australian firefighter Craig Allan, who dropped everything at home to get to Bangkok and apply for a visa on Thursday.

His agency, part of Baptist World Aid, is called 'Rescue 24' as it is meant to be able to put a team on the ground within 24 hours of any disaster anywhere in the world. In this case, it might be 24 days, he joked bleakly.

The UN said its top representative in Myanmar had flown to Naypyidaw, the generals' new capital, on Monday to hand over in person a list of 60 'critical' UN and relief agency staff.
Despite this, UN officials said none of its staff in Bangkok had received any visas on Monday. They also said foreign staff inside the country were prevented from leaving Yangon.
'There are limits, if not bans, on staff going to the delta,' Mr Terje Skavdal of the UN's humanitarian arm told reporters.

Mr Patrick Michaudel, a French employee of medical services firm International SOS, with clinics in Yangon, was almost in tears as he left the embassy after a fruitless week-long visa wait.
When he got to the front of the queue, he was elated to see his passport open on the desk with a visa inside.

He could only watch in horror as a female official then carefully peeled the visa sticker out of his passport and crudely covered up the partial stamp on the passport page with liquid paper.
'No reason, no reason. She just peeled it out,' he said, with a shrug of the shoulders. 'I've had enough of this. I'm going home.

taken from : asia one

*Still delaying. The death toll is still rasing and everybody is delaying and delaying.
Visa still not allow??
Really, what is Myanmar government thinking about?
HELLO??? DOES HE REALLY WANT TO SEE THE WHOLE COUNTRY DIE UNDER HIS HANDS??
F.

40% of Myanmar dead are children

BANGKOK, THAILAND - AT LEAST 40 per cent of those killed in Myanmar's cyclone were children and hundreds more have lost their parents, a leading charity said Tuesday, as the UN warned young victims now face further trauma.

Part of the reason for the cyclone's devastating toll on young people is simple demographics, with 40 per cent of Myanmar's population younger than 18, according to Save the Children spokesman Dan Collinson.

But children are also the least able to survive powerful winds and towering tidal waves sparked by Cyclone Nargis, Mr Collinson said.


'To be honest it's highly likely to be more than 40 per cent, because children are less likely to withstand these kinds of storm surges,' Mr Collinson said.
'Children are that much more vulnerable.'

Survivors of the cyclone, which left at least 62,000 dead or missing, have said horrific stories of clinging to tree branches as the storm surge swept away their villages, sending waves crashing over the tops of trees.

Parents saw their children ripped from their arms by the powerful currents.
Among the children who survived, hundreds have been separated from their parents or become orphans, Mr Collinson said.

'We've heard reports of 300 children living in a camp that have been separated' from their parents, said Ms Kathryn Rowe, also of Save the Children.

'So they may have extended families there but they have been separated from their parents.'
In the hardest-hit regions of the Irrawaddy delta, hungry and barefoot children dressed in rags have been left begging on roadsides.

AFP reporters have seen children trying to catch fish and crabs in muddy canals, surrounded by the bloated corpses of the dead.

Many anguished parents there said that they have nothing but coconuts and bananas to feed their children. With no substantial meals, young survivors are beginning to weaken and fall ill.
The United Nations estimates that one fifth of children living in the disaster zone are now suffering from diarrhoea. Without access to clean drinking water, diarrhoea can prove lethal in emergencies such as this.

Thousands of children have found shelter in temporary relief camps with access to only scant supplies of rice and just a few toilets between them.

In addition to the displacement caused by the storm, the latest UN report on the crisis said officials had received reports of entire families being forcibly moved from their villages to other parts of the country unaffected by the cyclone.

The UN children's fund Unicef says 3,000 schools were wiped out by the cyclone, leaving 500,000 children without classrooms as holidays are set to end early next month.
The agency said it was working to create makeshift schools in relief camps, in the hope of giving children a semblance of normal life.

'In any situation where you have children living under extremely stressful conditions, both physically and emotionally, it is important that they are provided with a space where they feel safe and provided for,' said Mr Ramesh Shrestha, Unicef representative in Myanmar.
In just one township in the delta, Unicef said it is trying to identify the parents of 24 children sheltering with strangers.

Now the greatest risk to children is infectious diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, dengue fever and malaria caused by flooding and a lack of clean water, the agency said

Article taken from : asia one

Angels are all dying, somebody please help.

PLEASE READ IRRAWADDY

As many as 25 Burmese naval ships may have been sunk in the storm caused by Cyclone Nargis last week while an unknown number of naval personnel and their family members were killed or are listed as missing, said a source from the Burmese navy.
------------------------------------------

Everything is really going so slow in Myanmar. All the aid, all the aid workers. All the medication.
Everything is delaying and delaying.
By the time the survivors manage to get help, i think the city will become the land of dead.
Children are suffering from Cholera.
Because they drink from the dirty waters that the dead died in.
Causing them to fall sick, stomach ache
No medication = seriously ill
seriously ill = die
Bodies of children floating around everywhere.
Sad case.
China yesterday's earthquake was also another natural disaster that cause massive death.
But the government manage to immobilise 500,000 soldiers within a day. -_-"
See how fast and different in terms where country cope with the natural disaster.

500,000 soldiers is already 1/8 of singaporean.
Within a day.
Can myanmar do that?
Yet they say they wanted to help out the victims on their own.
No comments.
I am not government, i am not junta, i am nothing.
So its up to the people to see for their own.

It was also mention that the voting went on in Mandalay,(mt, your town!! all the handsome guys right) and that not all the citizens there knew about the voting rights.
Some were even not concern at all because of the Cyclone.
Busy finding relatives and love ones where got time to vote vote vote

*In this world, money is power. When you have big money and when you are rich. You can talk big.If not nobody even bother what you speak.

While other mention that no matter they put a yes or a no, the votes may not be counted.
A villager mention that even if he put a yes when the government count the vote, they will change it to a no, or maybe they will just discard the vote.
So what is the voting for, may i ask?
Myanmar is a government base country so whats the voting for if we all know the results?

Silly isn't it.

Very Very indeed.

Nothing is fair in the world. So we have to fight for our own chance, own opportunity.

Don't regret what you have done,
Regret what you never did.

Bogalay was the hardest-hit township with the highest death toll, believed to be around 50,000 people. The military officer said the second largest death toll was in Laputta, with Pyapon third in the number of fatalities.

“Laputta had nearly 20,000 deaths,” he said.

An army officer with Light Infantry 66 who has been involved in relief efforts said: “A total of 142 villages went under water in Bogalay Township. The majority of the people in these villages have died. Only a few survived. For instance, Khaing Shwe Wa village in Kyun Thaya Dai Nel (village tract) had about 400 people before the cyclone; now they have only four people left.

So you can say that the whole village was wiped out.”


All 50 villages in Kyun Thaya Dai Nel located between Meinmahla Kyun and Kadonkana islands southwest of Boglay are submerged.
(The villages include Mi Laung Gwin, Kapanan, Yei Kyaw Gyi, Chaung Phye, Gway Chaung, Khaing Shwe Wa, Danyinphyu, inner and outer parts of Khaung Gyi Island, Buyakyaung, Hmon Tine Gyi, Hmon Tine Lay, Tayaw Chaung, Pulonetaing, Ashe-mae, Kantmalar, Chachee Island village, Thakinma Gyi, Thitpoke village, Letwel Gyi, Kyat Pyay and Thamadi).


Thirty-three villages located in the Kyein Chaung Gyi village tract about 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of Bogalay were wiped out, including
Shwe Htoo, Lamu Oat Gyi, Lamu Oat Lay, Ma Kyin Myaing, Hlay Lone Kwe, Arr-makhan, Japan Island and Lay Gwa.