Authorities extort money from cyclone victims

Aug 25, 2008 (DVB)–Villagers in Irrawaddy division have complained that local authorities have continued to extort money from cyclone victims under various pretexts, despite a letter of complaint they sent to SPDC leaders to report the practice.

U Than Zin, chairman of Mangay Kalay village Peace and Development Council in Dadaye township, PDC members and U Khin Kyaw (also known as U Htin Kyaw) of the township land survey department extorted money from villagers for receiving aid from donors.

U Ba Kyi, a farmer from Mangay Kalay, said locals had been forced to pay for diesel fuel that had been donated to them.

“There were 1383 gallons of diesel, and they collected 500 kyat a gallon from us – so 919,000 kyat,” U Ba Kyi said.

“But these were actually given to us as donations.”

U Ba Kyi said each household was also told to pay money to help cyclone victims.

“They collected 500 kyat each from 432 families on the pretext of helping the storm victims,” he said.

“We had to pay 216,000 each time and we had to pay four times, totaling around 864,000.”

The authorities reportedly told villagers they needed to collect money to fund the accommodation and hospitality for donors.

“Not satisfied with that, they collected 8000 kyat each from 212 farmers in order to buy fertiliser from the state agricultural organisation – 742 bags of fertilizers – amounting to exactly 1,696,000,” U Ba Kyi said.

“They have been misappropriating the money they have collected.”

The villagers sent their letter of complaint, which they had each signed and given their national identity card number, to junta leader senior general Than Shwe, prime minister general Thein Sein, the social and relocation minister and hotel and tourism minister, and the commander of Western Command, but no action has so far been taken by the authorities.

Similarly in Talokehtaw village in Rangoon division’s Twante township, the village authority chairman and members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association and the Women’s Affairs Federation have been profiting from aid, a villager told DVB.

“In Twante’s Talokehtaw village, when they’re distributing rice or medicine, there have been incidents when they have failed to give out the aid or extorted money,” the villager said.

The villager said that goods had mainly been distributed to people who supported the authorities, while others had to pay to receive materials.

“One day, they gave things out using a raffle ticket system, but each house had to pay 300 kyat to enter the raffle,” the villager said.

“Even if you won something you had to pay 1500 kyat [to receive it],” he said.

“U Maung Thaung, U Aye Thaung and Daw Cho are the main people involved in that.”

Reporting by Aye Nai

Cyclone Victims Turn to Towns for Handouts

A woman walks amongst the debris of homes still being occupied in the Irrawaddy Delta. (Photo: AFP)

By AUNG THET WINE
The Irrawaddy News

RANGOON — Economic hardships have forced a growing number of survivors of Cyclone Nargis to leave their homes in rural parts of the Irrawaddy delta to seek assistance in Rangoon and other urban centers, according to local sources.

“I came to Rangoon to look for donors,” said a 50-year-old man from Kyone Chin, a village in Dedaye Township. “We don’t have enough food in our village, and our farming and fishing businesses have still not recovered. We need assistance badly.”

Kyone Chin village lost 50 of its 1,400 inhabitants and ninety percent of its structures in the deadly cyclone, according to the man. He added that food supplies and other assistance from UN agencies and the government have been dwindling over time.

“The whole village was terribly destroyed. The worst thing is that now we are facing hunger,” he said, explaining why he had come to Rangoon to find support for his village.

Private donors played an important role in the early stages of the relief effort, but nearly four months later, their numbers have fallen. Due in part to government efforts to control movements in the cyclone-stricken region, few trucks carrying privately donated relief supplies are now reaching remote villages, say local people.

Other cyclone-hit villages in Dedaye Township, including Leik Kyun, Hmae Bi, Lay Ywa, Mae Kanan, Taw Pone and Yae Pu Wa, are also facing severe shortages of foodstuffs and other basic supplies, according to local residents.

They are not alone in waiting for aid. A volunteer from Rangoon who has been involved in relief and rebuilding efforts in the delta said that many villages in Kungyangone Township, including Taw Kha Yan Gyi, Taw Kha Yan Kalay, Mayan, Maezali and Hti Pha, are also desperate for additional assistance.

“The situation is hard to say,” said the volunteer. “They do get a little assistance from the government and they have received some from UN agencies. But it’s not enough.

“There are still many people living under make-shift temporary shelters constructed with bamboo posts and tarpaulins sheets. Some can’t get rice to eat, so they are just surviving on what little food is available to them,” the volunteer added.

A local journalist who recently returned from Laputta Township said that farmers there were also struggling, as seeds planted late in the season have not been growing well. Fishermen are also worried about their future food security, as poor-quality nets and boats provided by the government have proven to be almost useless.

“In Laputta, there is no immediate concern about rice, since it is mainly provided by the UN,” said the journalist. “The problem is with rebuilding livelihoods. The farmers are not doing well because the tillers provided by the government are often broken, and seeds are not growing properly. Fishermen also have trouble because the boats they received after the cyclone often need fixing, and the nets are useless for fishing.”

The journalist added that much of the aid that does reach some of the more remote villages soon ends up in the hands of village officials, as little effort has been made to rein in widespread corruption.

Meanwhile, in Mawlamyainggyun Township, there are also reports of severe food shortages in the villages of Yae Twin Kone, Pet Pyae, Ta Zaung, Alae Yae Kyaw, Myit Kyi Toe and Pya Leik.

According to a resident of Alae Yae Kyaw, some local villages have sent small groups to Laputta to appeal for aid from local relief organizations based there. The results of their efforts have been disappointing, however.

“When we asked an NGO in Laputta for assistance, they provided just 3 pyi (about 750 ml) of rice per person for the whole month.”

Little aid ever reaches the villages of Mawlamyainggyun Township because of their inaccessibility. Villages located on the boundary of Mawlamyainggyun and Laputta townships, such as Yae Twin Kone, Pet Pyae, Ta Zaung, Alae Yae Kyaw, Myit Kyi Toe and Pya Leik, are especially deprived because they can only be reached by chartered boats and are reportedly not on the government’s list of villages eligible for support.

If villagers in these areas do not receive aid to rebuild their lives soon, the hunger and destitution they face now could result in more severe problems in the future, said a local volunteer who has witnessed the situation.

“Unless they receive some means of surviving, the hunger of these villagers could lead to killings and robbing. If we can’t heal a small sore now, we may face more serious harm in the long run,” said the volunteer.

Ghosts amid the wreckage in Myanmar

By Seth Mydans
August 25, 2008

BANGKOK (IHT): Nearly four months after the cyclone, the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar is a flat, dark expanse of ruin populated by dazed survivors, unburied bodies and visions of wandering, moaning ghosts.

The region seems to have avoided mass starvation and epidemic, and people are rebuilding their precarious lives in this vast and often flooded marshland where the margin between survival and death has always been thin.

Within that thin margin, recent visitors say, many of the survivors seem to have lost their spark of life, and some of the dead seem not yet to have disappeared as they haunt the minds of those they left behind.

"There is a weariness in people's eyes here," said a photographer who has been chronicling the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, which struck on May 3. He spoke on condition of anonymity because access to the region is forbidden to foreign journalists.

"There's a lost feeling that you get," he said. "People are physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. Some of them don't have the strength to start over."

After an international furor over the government's refusal to admit foreign relief workers, a tightly controlled system has been put in place, and aid is reaching much of the area, where the United Nations says 2.4 million people were affected.

The cyclone left 138,000 people dead or missing and 800,000 homeless, according to UN figures, after tremendous winds and a storm surge that resembled a tsunami.

It leveled most of the fragile thatch homes in its path, uprooted trees, swept away the livestock and fishing boats that provided a livelihood and polluted many rice fields with salt.

For those fields that survived, this year's planting season has now passed, and experts say it may be more than a year before many people see their next decent harvest.

Although some houses are being rebuilt and some fields are being worked, the delta remains a vista of ruin and debris, where human and animal bones and the last decomposing bodies still cluster at the edges of waterways.

Fantastical tales circulate among the survivors, the photographer said, weaving a tapestry of stories from this world and the next.

There is the tale of the boy who survived by clinging to the back of a crocodile, and the story of the boatload of people stranded at low tide who sat waiting on the silt for the water to rise, surrounded by stranded corpses.

There is the story of the mother who was reunited with her baby after it was swept away in a washtub, and the story of the woman who gave birth as the cyclone hit and pulled her baby from the water by its umbilical cord.

And there are the stories of wandering ghosts, whose cries for help can be heard at night in haunted places that no villager dares to enter.

Among these phantoms and traumas, international relief workers have become the survivors' lifeline, delivering aid to all but the most remote parts of the delta.

More than 1,800 visas have been issued to these workers, aid officials say, though access to the hard-hit delta is slowed by an ever-more-complicated process of permissions and paperwork.

By now, most survivors have received aid, said Andrew Kirkwood, country director for the aid group Save the Children. "But very few people have received enough assistance to get them through the next three months, and almost no one has received enough assistance to enable them to rebuild their lives."

He said the reconstruction of schools, clinics and other infrastructure, which should be well under way by now, still lagged because of delays in delivering basic emergency assistance.

The xenophobic military junta that holds Myanmar in its grip prevented large-scale foreign aid deliveries for the first three crucial weeks after the cyclone, then loosened its controls only gradually and partially. It never did allow U.S. and French naval vessels to bring in tons of aid and equipment.

But despite the early demands from around the world that the government permit open deliveries of aid, the United Nations says that nearly half the assistance pledged by foreign donors has yet to appear. Recently it said it had received $339 million in international donations, a shortfall of $300 million.

But life has always been bitter for the people of the Irrawaddy Delta, with 8 out of 10 families living in poverty even before the cyclone, according to Save the Children.

For many people, the harshness of life today may not be so very different from the harshness of the life they have always known.

"They live on a thin line, every day of every year of every decade," the photographer said. "And that is what they are doing now. They just keep going, day by day by day."

Bogalay authorities demand construction tax

Aug 4, 2008 (DVB)–Residents of Irrawaddy's cyclone-devastated Bogalay township have complained that local authorities have been pressuring them to pay a construction tax for repair work on their houses.

A Bogalay resident said municipal officials had told locals to apply for construction permits to repair damage caused by the cyclone and charged them between 100,000 and 200,000 kyat depending on the size of the house.

"Whenever they see a pile of bricks and sand in front of someone's house, they think they can make some money," she said.

"Our houses were damaged by the cyclone and they should not charge us for repairing them."

The resident said those who paid the tax were not given receipts by the officials.

Reporting by Naw Say Phaw

Will corruption hurt relief effort?

"The misuse of aid remains a concern," Amnesty International's Southeast Asia researcher, Benjamin Zawacki told me. "Indeed, the problem with much aid distribution to date is not so much that it has fallen into the 'wrong hands', but that it has not reached the right ones. There are still people who have not received aid, and much of it remains simply unaccounted for."

--Read More: here

Amid prayers for Myanmar's cyclone dead, complaints of corruption

YANGON (AFP) - Rajagopal, one of many volunteers in Myanmar bringing food to cyclone victims, said he was shocked by the desperation of the survivors in the Irrawaddy delta, where he saw corpses still hanging in trees.

But even more appalling, he said, was that local officials demanded that he and his friends pay cash bribes to win permission to bring food into the devastated southern region.

"The survivors are in a dire situation," he said, "and we had to pay bribes to get aid goods into the area."

"It is terrible what this government is doing," Rajagopal added, as he offered prayers at Yangon's Shwedagon Pagoda for the 133,000 dead or missing.

He was among about 10,000 Buddhists at the pagoda Monday to observe a normally joyous holiday commemorating the birth, enlightenment and passing of Buddha.

This year, the mood at the pagoda was grim, with residents in Yangon still coming to grips with the tragedy that has left 2.4 million people in desperate need of help, more than two weeks after the storm.

The government has declared three days of official mourning, a rare public acknowledgement of the grief hanging over the nation.

"People are sad. Look at their faces. They are all worried about what's in store in the future," Rajagopal said.

He lost a niece when the storm pounded Yangon, knocking over a tree that killed the girl inside her home.

But he said the suffering in the city paled in comparison to the grisly scenes that still fill the Irrawaddy delta.

"I returned from there three days ago. I saw bodies up on the tree branches," he said.

"We have to help them. This government is not helping," he added.

Myanmar's military regime agreed Monday to allow its neighbours in Southeast Asia to coordinate an international relief effort, but so far shows no sign of relenting in its refusal to allow in foreign aid workers needed to oversee the disaster response.

Many private donors from Yangon and other cities have taken matters into their own hands, delivering food and clothing to victims in the delta, where roadblocks dot the highways in a bid to keep out foreigners.

Other devotees at Shwedagon had stories like Rajagopal's, telling of corrupt local officials trying to profit off the tragedy.

"My friend wanted to give rice to victims in the delta. But the authorities manning the roadblocks demanded money before allowing him to deliver the food," said Zin Khin, a 25-year-old volunteer at the pagoda.

"Myanmar people are angry with the regime's attitude. But there is nothing much we can do," he said.

"We can't take to the streets. They are afraid. This government has killed people before to stay in power. They will not hesitate to kill to remain in power," he said.

Last September, Buddhist monks led marches of more than 100,000 people through the streets of Yangon. It was the biggest protest against military rule in nearly two decades, and the military was unyielding in its reaction.

Security forces shot and beat protesters in the streets, including revered Buddhist monks.

After the crackdown, many monks fled the city. Shwedagon, the country's holiest shrine, was surrounded with barbed wire and closed to the public for days.

Many devotees are still reluctant to return to the pagoda. Zin Khin said only half the normal number of people turned up for the holiday this year.

They slowly circled the golden spires, splashing water at statues of Buddha and at the banyan trees that shade them. Laying flowers, bananas and coconuts as offering to the temple, they recited mantras that also carried prayers for the dead.

"I hope those who died will be reborn with lots of happiness and wealth," Zin Khin said. "For the survivors, I hope aid comes to them quickly."

--Source: AFP

With the Junta or Without It

THE STORY of Cyclone Nargis, which devastated much of Burma more than two weeks ago, long ago moved from the tragic to the criminal. It is now becoming grotesque.

Diplomats from the United Nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have announced they will hold a "donor conference" in Burma's capital on Sunday. This will allow foreign ministers from around the world to preen and promise millions in loans and grants for "reconstruction" that, if delivered, will enrich and empower the corrupt rulers of that unhappy nation. Meanwhile -- thanks to those same rulers -- as many as 3 million people affected by the cyclone will still be suffering, and in many cases dying, because the regime refuses to allow delivery of humanitarian aid on anything close to the scale that's needed.

--Read More: here