Myanmar's junta yesterday came under renewed international pressure from rights groups and the US defense chief, who said its slow response to the cyclone disaster had cost "tens of thousands of lives."
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates criticized the military regime’s delay in allowing in foreign aid, saying US ships and aircraft could have swiftly brought much-needed relief to the cyclone-hit nation.
“Our ships and aircraft awaited country approval so they could act promptly to save thousands of lives — approval of the kind granted by Indonesia immediately after the 2004 tsunami and by Bangladesh after a fierce cyclone just last November,” Gates told a top-level security forum in Singapore. “With Burma, the situation has been very different — at a cost of tens of thousands of lives.”
Rights groups also accused the junta of forcing victims out of emergency shelters and back to their devastated villages — even if they have no homes left after the May 2 storm.
With tens of thousands of people now living in schools, Buddhist monasteries and tented camps, advocacy groups said they had received reports the regime was forcing people to leave the shelters.
A reporter traveling into the delta said security had been tightened, with armed riot police stationed along the road linking the devastated towns of Kungyangon and Dedaye.
The UN says it so far has not been able to verify whether people are being forced out, but the charges added to international frustration at the difficulties faced in delivering aid to the 2.4 million victims.
Cyclone Nargis left 133,000 people dead or missing when it pounded into Myanmar, destroying entire villages and laying waste to the country’s most important rice-growing region.
Nearly one month after the storm, only 40 percent of people in need had received any help, the UN said.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited one week ago, announcing that the junta had agreed to allow foreign aid workers into the hardest-hit regions. Since then, relief workers have had some success in delivering assistance.
The UN said all the visas for foreign workers it requested have been granted, and the head of the World Food Programme, Josette Sheeran, visited Myanmar yesterday to assess the relief operation.
The regime announced in state media yesterday that a new coordinating body — comprising officials from the regime, the UN and neighboring countries in Southeast Asia — had officially begun working.
But Human Rights Watch and Refugees International said they had received alarming reports of people being forced out of government-run emergency camps and left to fend for themselves amid the storm’s rubble.
“It’s unconscionable for Burma’s generals to force cyclone victims back to their devastated homes,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
“Without shelter, food and clean water, the government’s suggestion amounts to sending people to their deaths and is courting a greater disaster,” he said.
The junta has flatly refused to accept US, British and French naval ships laden with relief supplies.
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