Worldwide anger at Myanmar response

• Last Updated: May 18. 2008 3:18PM UAE / May 18. 2008 11:18AM GMT

A woman affected by the cyclone Nargis feeds a child in a building where she found shelter in Dala on the outskirts of Yangon. AFP

YANGON, MYANMAR // Thousands of children are at risk of death from starvation in two to three weeks unless food is rushed to them, an aid agency warned today as an increasingly angry international community pleaded for approval to mount an all-out effort to help cyclone survivors.

The United Nations said Myanmar’s isolationist ruling generals had even forbidden the import of communications equipment, which has made contact among relief agencies even more difficult.

A UN situation report said yesterday that emergency relief from the international community had reached an estimated 500,000 people.

But the regime insisted it would handle distribution to victims of Cyclone Nargis. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has been unable to sway Myanmar’s leaders by telephone, said he was sending the UN humanitarian chief John Holmes to Myanmar this weekend.

Mr Holmes was expected to arrive this evening in the country’s largest city, Yangon, said Amanda Pitt, a UN spokesman in Bangkok.

“He’s going at the request of the secretary-general to find out what’s really going on the ground, to get a much better picture of how the response is going and to see how much we can help them scale up this response,” Ms Pitt said.

Details of the visit, she said, were still being worked out.

The UN report said all communications equipment used by foreign agencies must be purchased through Myanmar’s Ministry of Posts and Communications – with a maximum of 10 telephones per agency – for US$1,500 (Dh5,500) each. Importing equipment is not allowed.

State-run radio said the government has so far spent 20 billion kyat (about $2 million) for relief work and has received millions of dollars worth of relief supplies from local and international donors. It said the government was distributing assistance promptly and efficiently to the affected areas.

Aid agencies were not convinced. Save the Children, a global aid agency, said today that thousands of young children face starvation without quick food aid.

“We are extremely worried that many children in the affected areas are now suffering from severe acute malnourishment, the most serious level of hunger,” said Jasmine Whitbread, who heads the agency’s operation in Britain. “When people reach this stage, they can die in a matter of days.”

International outrage mounted over Myanmar’s handling of the disaster. The British prime minister Gordon Brown accused authorities in the country, also known as Burma, of preventing foreign aid from reaching victims and said the military regime cares more about its own survival than it’s people’s welfare.

“This is inhuman,”, Mr Brown told the BBC.

In one town near Yangon, tired and hungry refugees stood in the baking sun beside flooded rice paddies, demolished monasteries and thatched huts. With the arrival of each vehicle carrying precious food and water, they jumped with excitement and surged ahead to get a share.

“The further you go, the worse the situation,” said an overwhelmed doctor in the town of Twante, just southwest of Yangon.

“Near Yangon, people are getting a lot of help and it’s still bad. In the remote delta villages, we don’t even want to imagine.”

The doctor declined to give her name, fearing government reprisal. The government flew 60 diplomats and US officials in helicopters to three places in the Irrawaddy delta, the hardest-hit area, yesterday to show them progress in the relief effort.

The diplomats were not all swayed.

“It was a show,” Shari Villarosa, the top US diplomat in Myanmar, said. “That’s what they wanted us to see.”

- AP