BURMA: In Burma (also known as Myanmar) the junta started evicting destitute families from government-run cyclone relief centres yesterday, apparently out of concern that the "tented villages" might become permanent.
"It is better that they move to their homes where they are more stable," a government official said at one camp where people have been told to clear out by 4pm. "Here they are relying on donations, and it is not stable."
Locals and aid workers said 39 camps in the immediate vicinity of Kyauktan, 30km south of Rangoon (also known as Yangon), were being cleared as part of a general eviction plan. "We knew we had to go at some point but we had hoped for more support," 21-year-old trishaw driver Kyaw Moe Thu said, as he trudged out of the camp with his five brothers and sisters. The youngest, a 2½-year-old girl named Moe Win Kyah, was sheltered by the others under a pair of black umbrellas.
They had been given 20 bamboo poles and some tarpaulins to help rebuild their lives in the Irrawaddy delta, where 134,000 people were left dead or missing by Cyclone Nargis on May 2nd.
"Right now, we are disappointed," Kyaw Moe Thu said. "We were promised 30 poles by the government. They told us we will get rice each month, but right now we have nothing." Four weeks after the disaster, the United Nations says fewer than one in two of the 2.4 million people affected by the cyclone have received any form of help from either the government, or international or local aid groups.
The UN, which has local and foreign aid workers in the delta, said it did not know if that was the case. "We certainly don't endorse premature return to where there are no services, and any forced or coerced movement is completely unacceptable," UN spokeswoman Amanda Pitt said in Bangkok.
The UN children's agency, Unicef, said more than 4,000 basic schools were either damaged or destroyed, affecting 1.1 million students, according to government figures. "I would put recovery and restoration of education services as a priority while relief activities are intensifying," Unicef regional director Anupama Rao Singh told reporters in Bangkok after visiting the delta.
"I think we are dealing with a humanitarian disaster of pretty much the same magnitude" as the 2004 tsunami which killed about 168,000 in Indonesia's Aceh.
However, the level of aid to isolated army-ruled Burma stands in stark contrast to the tsunami, when governments around the world promised $2 billion (€1.28 billion) within the first week.
The New Light of Myanmar newspaper accused donors of being stingy, noting the UN's "flash appeal" was still short of its $201 million target, nearly four weeks after the disaster. The tone of the editorial is at odds with praise of the UN relief, but follows criticism of the junta's extension this week of the five-year house arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
- (Reuters)