One Week On and "Preventing an Outbreak of Foreigners"

It is over a week since Cyclone Nargis struck and this is the first
official briefing by the government to the aid workers hoping to help
with the emergency relief.
"No one has died of anything except the tidal surge – there has been
no loss of life from hunger or disease," the Myanmar Minister of
Social Welfare declares to the 200 non-governmental organisation
personnel and the state-run MRTV television cameras.

He continues, "we have everything under control… in fact some places
are not actually as bad as has been reported." There is a gritting of
teeth, as the room in the National Archive in Yangon waits for some
hint of a compromise.
"We do not need international volunteers, though we welcome aid from
everywhere" he goes on and a restrained murmur runs through the
audience.



Less than 30 miles from this NGO Briefing, on that same day, a Myanmar
friend takes a photo of a dead human corpse still lying, now bloated
and rotting in a river. "No one will move it" he says, "No one wants
to touch it now". He flicks through his camera and the carcases of
dead livestock flash onto the screen, "just beyond here there were
another four human bodies," he says.

As the miles extend southeast from Yangon into the Delta the picture
looks even bleaker. Bogalay, one of the now infamous townships
directly hit by the storm of May 2, is, as one resident described it
"now a ruined city".



When I visited last week, every battered public building was filled
with refugees. These were survivors from the nearby villages.
Speaking to them was like peering into an abyss. There were single
remaining survivors from families of 13 or more, a woman from a
village that had lost all its children, a man scarred from holding
onto a mangrove tree all night. Those who couldn't swim or hold onto
the branches of trees died. One man was forced to abandon his
6-year-old son when he could no longer swim with the boy grasping
round his neck.

Now, the tide of refugees is scattering. The town of Bogalay has
reached capacity and the military is issuing orders. People have three
days to leave, either back to their ruined villages or on to refugee
camps closer to Yangon. Roughly half of the refugees remain.

The disorder of the relocation of refugees concerns one man, who has
been volunteering with the refugees since May 4. "There is no
systematic order to the government's management" he says, "so people
are scattering and disappearing – they are unmonitored. The NGO's have
to give their donations to the government, who then re-distribute it.
But even so they don't have enough food to help the people".

Meanwhile international donations of food and aid are pilling up
outside of the country. Though it has become easier to bring aid into
the country, the real concern is over monitoring where that aid is
going and the government's failure to recognise the expertise and
skills that emergency relief specialists can bring.



International NGO workers need permission to enter the Delta region,
so even those lucky enough to have got a visa for the country are not
necessarily able to enter the worst affected areas. Those that are
working in the Delta are restricted by the government's insistence
that the military should be present and involved, if not running the
distribution of aid. Rumours of corruption abound.

Worse still is the wave of waterborne disease likely any day now. As
monsoon season approaches and tens of thousands remain living in the
wrecks of their destroyed homes, vulnerability to disease is likely to
increase.

Since I visited the Delta the authorities have tightened their noose
on those leaving Yangon. In stark contrast to their relief efforts, in
their clampdown on access they are frighteningly efficient. Roadblocks
are functioning again, the Secret Police are interviewing those it
suspects of helping the international media, in the last 24 hours
twelve people have been deported from the country, while foreign
doctors without permits have been forced to leave refugee camps.

Back at the NGO Briefing, a government official stumbles on his words
and mutters something about wanting to prevent an "outbreak of
foreigners in the region".

This last slip of the tongue seems to say it all. For the military, an
outbreak of foreigners in the Delta must be prevented, at all costs.
Even if the cost is a "second humanitarian disaster" as NGO's like
Oxfam fear.