Cats of Rangoon to hold party, mice invited

An editorial in Bangkok's The Nation calls on the Myanmar junta to exercise transparency in accounting for aid money. The junta prepares to host an international donors' conference to raise money for victims of the cyclone on Sunday in Rangoon. As we all know, journalists play a critical role in helping to ensure transparency. But the Bangkok paper reports that journalists will not be welcome at the conference in Rangoon.

As the regime prepares for tomorrow's pledging conference, it is also obvious that foreign journalists based in Bangkok, who are not attached to any official delegation attending the conference, will not be granted visas. Several Bangkok-based foreign correspondents have been turned away.

By keeping the media from covering the conference and the cyclone's aftermath, the junta is trying to fool the world into believing that its version of what is going on inside the country is the only acceptable one. When Surin said he wanted to hold a press conference immediately after the meeting with Burmese leaders, authorities there said there was no precedent set for giving news this way. Even the UN's special envoy for Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, was not allowed to speak to the press. If this is what the Burmese junta plans to do in coming months and years, international donors must impress on the junta that this is not acceptable.

So it's kinda like this: in Burma, the cats are holding a party. All fat mice are invited.

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Photos: top MarthaStewart, bottom Mouse Party T-shirts

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice. . .

You may have noticed the headlines:

UN chief: Myanmar opening up to aid
Myanmar leader agrees to allow aid workers

Getting your aid workers into Myanmar is not even half the battle, as international relief teams have been telling us for over a week. Is this new supposed "deal" a genuine breakthrough? CNN reports:

Details of the decision were not immediately clear, though a government official familiar with the decision said Myanmar will not allow foreign boats or helicopters into the country.

Any deal that did not discuss "boats or helicopters" is a sham -- a complete and utter disgrace. Worse, it's a mere propaganda ploy by the junta. Because without boats or helicopters, you cannot reach the victims.

A report from the Irrawaddy Delta

The NY Times reports:

Mr. Thura and other volunteers have been lugging relief goods into remote villages in the Irrawaddy Delta over the past two weeks.

“Only a very small percentage of the victims get help at government-run camps,” he said in an interview. “Those fortunate enough to live near roads and rivers also get help. But people in remote villages that are hard to reach don’t get anything. To make it worse, the people in the Irrawaddy Delta have traditionally been antigovernment, so the junta doesn’t like them.”

“Even if they die,” he said, “the generals won’t feel sorry for them.”

For these outlying villagers in the delta, occasional visits by people like Mr. Thura have been virtually the only help they could get. But even people like the ones much closer to Yangon, like Ar Pyin Padan, do not appear to be faring much better.

“If they don’t get help soon, so many of them will die,” said a 36-year-old Yangon resident who has made four private aid runs into villages near Hpayapon, a delta town. “It’s hot when the sun shines and cold when it rains. When you see the villages, you just wonder how these people sleep at night in the rain. They have no shelter to speak of.”

“They are still so stunned by what had happened to them that they show no emotion,” he said. “They don’t even thank us when we give them food. They just accept the help with no expression in their faces.”

He said that during their aid runs he and his friends saw people with pneumonia, cholera and diarrhea. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the private aid deliveries that his group conducts are prohibited.

Mr. Thura and other aid runners said they were hampered by reinforced military checkpoints as well as by roads washed away and streams clogged with storm debris. Those who reach towns with aid are told that such goods must be distributed through the authorities. Many groups like Mr. Thura’s break away and head deeper into the delta on their own.

“We usually drive from Yangon in five hours, switch to a boat and travel four more hours and then we carry whatever we can — rice, noodles, energy drinks, medicine, gaslights — on our backs and walk,” he said. “You really need helicopters and boats to help these people.”

One of his recent trips took him to a village called Mangay. The village, whose name means “gaze at” in Burmese, was a sorry sight, he said. Once a prosperous community of 1,000 families who supplied dried fish throughout Myanmar, Mangay was virtually wiped out: 700 families were left homeless and 500 people were reportedly dead or missing.

Mr. Thura said more than 400 people were making donations for his aid runs as a way of helping the victims directly. Still, his five teams of renegade aid runners, who often use Buddhist monks as scouts, could only manage to deliver 6.5 million kyats, about $6,500, of relief a day into 32 villages.

The aid runners are coming under increasing pressure from the government.

Twenty of Mr. Thura’s team members have received calls from the police warning that they will be punished if they continue their work. On Sunday, he said, his photographer, U Kyaw Swar Aung, was arrested and has not been heard from since. He had been traveling around the delta making videos of dead bodies, crying children and villagers who went insane after the storm and distributing them as DVDs.

Meanwhile, Mr. Thura said the government seemed less focused on aid than on making sure there were no more scenes like those to film. In one place, he said he saw a pile of floating bodies clogging the narrow mouth of a stream after they were dumped into the water by soldiers on a cleanup operation.

“Then the soldiers used dynamite to blow up the bodies into shreds,” he said.

Why aren't special forces -- backed up by military helicopters -- making these kinds of aid runs? This is not an unfeasible proposition -- all that's lacking is some leadership. Until Friday, thousands of US, Thai, Japanese, Indonesian, and Singaporean soldiers were playing war games in Thailand as part of "Cobra Gold 2008."

Should the UN fire Ban Ki-moon?

Burma's top leader has agreed to let all foreign aid workers into the country for relief work in cyclone-hit areas, UN head Ban Ki-moon has said. . . .

Mr Ban said he thought Gen Than's decision was a breakthrough.(BBC)

Has this man learned nothing? When the junta announces it will be allowing aid workers into Burma, this does not necessarily mean that they will be given permits to travel to far flung regions of the Irrawaddy Delta.*

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* See for example, this post: ". . . the military government has banned foreign aid workers from traveling to the delta . . . ."
Update: The NY Times reports, "It was not immediately clear how much leeway international aid workers would have in visiting the most stricken areas of the Irrawaddy Delta, or, indeed, how the military authorities perceived the scope of their reported agreement to permit an expanded relief effort." That's really the whole question here.

UN Secretary General visits Myanmar junta's Potemkin Village

France will push for a United Nations resolution authorizing the delivery of aid to Myanmar's cyclone survivors "by all means necessary" if pressure from the U.N. chief and neighboring countries doesn't work, France's U.N. ambassador said Thursday. (NY Times)

Why should there be any further delay?

Because ASEAN is in the midst of putting on a big charade to appease Myanmar, that's why. And the Secretary General is putting on a show of visiting a Potemkin Village* on the Irrawaddy Delta. Here's a description of the mock camp the UN Sec General Ban Ki-moon toured. The above-quoted NY Times article continues:

The 68 blue tents are lined up in a row, with a brand-new water purifier and boxes of relief supplies, stacked neatly but as yet undelivered and not even opened. “If you don’t keep clean, you’ll be expelled from here,” a camp manager barked at families in some tents. . . .

He called the blue tents a short distance away beyond the rice paddies a “V.I.P. camp” — hastily constructed and occupied by villagers tutored to receive visiting junta generals or envoys from the United Nations.

BBC similarly reports:

On Thursday, Mr Ban flew over flooded rice fields and destroyed villages and visited a government relief camp in the Irrawaddy delta.

A UN official privately called it a "show camp", says the BBC's Laura Trevelyan, in Burma with the secretary general.

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* "Potemkin villages were purportedly fake settlements erected at the direction of Russian minister Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787." (Wiki)
Map: NY Times.

Response to the two disasters markedly different

Looking at this chart makes me angry.

Reactions to the disasters (Times Online)

CHINA

— Earthquake on May 12
— 74,000 dead or missing, 5 million homeless
— Foreign media given unfettered access
— Chinese Government has raised $500 million, Chinese Red Cross $400 million
— UN donated $8 million
— 250,000 temporary housing units under construction, 280,000 tents shipped and 5,000 epidemic prevention workers sent to 125 villages
— Hundreds of foreign aid workers
— US supplied spy satellite images for Chinese Government to examine dams, reservoirs, roads and bridges
— Investigation under way into whether public buildings were poorly constructed

BURMA

— Cyclone struck on May 2
— 134,000 dead or missing, 2.4 million destitute
— Foreign media banned
— Disasters Emergency Committee has raised £8 million, UK pledged $10m, UN $10m, Japan $10m, US $3m, France $3m, Australia $2.8m
— Burma says it has spent $2 million on relief work
— World Food Programme fed 212,000 of the 750,000 people most in need after regime relented and allowed in nine UN helicopter flights
— Red Cross has distrubuted 20 planeloads of aid and Save the Children six. Save the Children has reached more than 160,000 people
— Offer of aid from US warship in area turned down

The disparity in the international response to the two disasters may be easy to explain (since the aid isn't reaching most victims of the disaster in Burma, what's the point of donating?), but at a more fundamental level, it's unforgivable.

There is no excuse for the widespread conviction that a group of criminals in uniform, men who have the audacity to call themselves "a government," must first approve before the strong, rich, and free peoples of the world go to the aid of the cyclone victims. We should be in there now, saving Burmese lives with our ships and helicopters. At the very least, we ought to be forcing a vote on the "responsibility to protect" at the United Nations. But with every passing day it is getting harder to escape the truth that we are tremendous cowards, one and all.

The week Thai politics got paranoid

Whenever police officers issue warnings to political parties, and army generals think it is their place to comment on civil society issues, then you have pretty good indication that something is up. This week, the Bangkok Post reported that "At least 20 websites are being investigated for content deemed to be critical of or offensive to the monarchy." (In truth, several of these websites are simply pro-Thaksin). Thai police chiefs are sticking their noses into affairs that should be of no concern to the police in a democratic country:

Pol Col Yanpol Yangyuen, chief of the DSI's Information Technology Office, yesterday took to task individuals who made details of inappropriate websites public. He said they were causing divisiveness in society.

"Political party leaders should tell their members to be more careful, about what is appropriate and what is not. Don't bring down the institution to justify their cause," he said.

He warned politicians and academics not to discuss the institution, as it could become a game to generate publicity for certain individuals.

"Political parties, educational institutes and academics alike should stop giving false information and should not pick up the issue."

"Like terrorist activities, the more we discuss it the more we give them publicity," he said. He said the DSI, the Information and Communication Technology Ministry and private webmasters were monitoring those websites deemed to be a threat to national security.

The military also urged the media to refrain from publicizing remarks which could offend the monarchy or involve the revered institution in politics. Navy chief Adm Sathiraphan Keyanont said the military was gravely concerned about the current references to the monarchy and felt the media could help by not giving it space in the news.

'Supreme Commander Gen Boonsrang Niempradit said political groups should avoid implicating the monarchy altogether. "His Majesty has devoted himself to the people and the nation and it is inappropriate that some people or groups invoke him for their own benefit," he said.

Thai politicians have long used the laws against defaming the monarchy as a way to score points against their political opponents. But this week, with the naming of various websites, it got out of hand.

The underlying issue is that the elected government of PM Samak wants to amend the constitution which was written by a committee appointed by the previous coup-installed interim government. The constitution includes some provisions that favor the royalist faction, and those who plotted the coup of September 2006 do not want to see their hard work undone.

Some debate concerns how to amend the constitution. The public relations and legal offensive of the opposition is to discredit people associated with the elected government and portray them as disrespectful to the monarchy (more here).

Bangkok Pundit (BP) has posted a list of the 29 websites under police investigation that the Democratic Party wants banned.*

BP and another fellow Thailand-based blogger, Fonzi of TJS, have noted a precipitous decline in the intellectual quality of commentary in the country's leading English language newspapers this week. Fonzi compares The Nation to a Thai newspaper that was recently accused of inciting violence against people it considers disrespectful of the monarchy. BP sees both The Nation and The Bangkok Post as "having sunk to new lows this week not seen since August 2006." Needless to say, in the September that followed, there was a coup.
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* Update: I see that Fonzi also has a list of the 29 websites -- his list is clicakable, so easy to browse.

New biofuel crop species just like weeds

Some of the most commonly recommended species for biofuels production are also major invasive alien species," the paper says, adding that these crops should be studied more thoroughly before being cultivated in new areas.

Controlling the spread of such plants could prove difficult, the experts said, producing "greater financial losses than gains." The International Union for Conservation of Nature encapsulated the message like this: "Don't let invasive biofuel crops attack your country."

To reach their conclusions, the scientists compared the list of the most popular second-generation biofuels with the list of invasive species and found an alarming degree of overlap. They said little evaluation of risk had occurred before planting.  (NY Times)

How to prevent farmers in corruption-prone countries of Asia or Latin America from turning to these potentially dangerous crops?  First, the elimination of agricultural subsidies in the developed world ought to make biofuel crops less profitable than growing food.   Second,  government policies which provide incentives for farmers to grow biofuels need to be eliminated.  

Panda reserve hit by earthquake

James Fallows blogs, ". . . the world's total population of giant pandas, captive and wild, is well under 2,000. If the number of missing Chinese people were proportional to the number of missing pandas, some two million people would be unaccounted for."

This map shows the proximity of human population centers and wild panda habitat to the epicenter of the earthquake in central china.

Burma cyclone relief update

Although more assurances have been given by the Myanmar junta, the fact remains that cyclone relief effort is still not getting aid to the people who most desperately need it.

Following Monday's meeting of Southeast Asian leaders in Singapore, Myanmar apparently agreed that ASEAN countries should act as intermediaries, coordinating aid from the outside world. ASEAN will sponsor a "donor's conference" which will happen this weekend in Rangoon.

Apparently, the junta has agreed to allow the UN to use 10 helicopters to transport some of the food and supplies that have begun piling up in Rangoon. But a WSJ report suggests the helicopters may not be permitted to go where they are most needed:

The U.N.'s World Food Program welcomed the military's decision to allow ten helicopters -- which can each carry three tons of relief supplies -- to fly to Yangon, Myanmar's main city. Marcus Prior, a Bangkok-based spokesman for the WFP, cautioned that it wasn't clear whether the helicopters will be given unfettered access to remote areas of the low-lying Irrawaddy delta, which aid workers have had trouble reaching by truck and boat. "We're seeing considerable movement" from Myanmar's government, Mr. Prior said. "But the operating details still need to be worked out with the authorities."

One of the biggest problems is transporting the materials into the Irrawaddy Delta. Burma has been refusing entry into the Delta to foreign aid personnel. Also, the boats or helicopters needed to get the supplies to remote towns and away villages of the delta are in short supply. The above quoted WSJ report provides an update concerning this issue:

The WFP, which is coordinating the international aid response on the ground in Myanmar, has been allowed to set up two warehouses in the delta and has used boats and trucks to shuttle aid from Yangon.

But the military government has banned foreign aid workers from traveling to the delta, allowing only local employees of international non-governmental agencies to go there. It has also delayed the granting of visas to foreign disaster relief experts, many of whom are still waiting for approval in Bangkok. And it has so far blocked relief workers from using helicopters to reach the most remote areas of the delta, where many survivors are still without food, water and shelter almost three weeks after Cyclone Nargis struck land.

Meanwhile, an armada of vessels laden with food, water, tents, and emergency medical supplies waits just offshore Burma in international waters. In a previous post I wrote about the impressive French naval effort. An AP article describes the US naval response:

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar shunned a U.S. proposal for naval ships to deliver aid to cyclone victims on Wednesday, according to state-run media, dimming hopes that the vessels could provide a major boost to relief efforts.

The New Light of Myanmar, a mouthpiece for Myanmar's ruling junta, said that such assistance "comes with strings attached" that are "not acceptable to the people of Myanmar." It cited fears that Washington wants to overthrow the country's government and seize its oil.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is set to fly to Yangon Thursday, urged Myanmar to focus on saving lives — not politics.

"We must do our utmost for the people of Myanmar" the U.N. chief told reporters after arriving in Bangkok, Thailand ahead of his trip to Myanmar. "The issues of assistance and aid in Myanmar should not be politicized. Our focus now is on saving lives."

The United States, as well as France and Great Britain, have naval vessels loaded with humanitarian supplies off the Myanmar coast, and had been waiting for a green light to deliver them. The article did not say whether the French and British supplies would be allowed.

The state media report said that other U.S. aid airlifted into the country was welcome, an apparent reference to ongoing relief flights, which land in the country about five times a day. American officials are required to hand the aid to Myanmar authorities upon landing in Yangon, from which it is a difficult journey to the Irrawaddy delta.

The four U.S. warships were seen as a major potential boost for the relief effort with the capacity to deliver supplies to inaccessible areas of the delta, with 14 helicopters, two landing craft vessels, two high-tech amphibious hovercraft and about 1,000 U.S. Marines.

The report gave no explanation why the regime was willing to accept aid flown on U.S. planes, with U.S. military personnel on board, but would not allow the warships and helicopters to deliver relief supplies.

Bernard Kouchner - global citizen of the month

As the man-made Burma crisis enters its third week, only three nations possess large, well-equipped naval vessels positioned where they can bring urgently needed assistance to some two million cyclone victims of the Irrawaddy Delta region at a moment's notice. These three countries are the US, Britain, and France.

The first country, Britain is reluctant to move in due to some kind of post-imperialist complex. The second, the US, cannot think straight because everything looks like another Iraq. This leaves France.

Although the task of bringing humanitarian relief to Burma may be too large for France alone, it will be up to France to take the lead, to convince the US and Britain to bring assistance to Burmese victims. And France might well have to lead by example.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that the last best hope for hundreds of thousands of Burmese cyclone survivors is the Foreign Minister of France, Bernard Kouchner. The BBC has a profile on this heroic figure, co-founder of the world's most widely respected humanitarian relief organization:

A doctor by training, he co-founded the Nobel prize-winning Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in 1971 to put his beliefs into action, after working as a young doctor for the Red Cross in Biafra in 1968 during Nigeria's civil war.

Seeing children there starve to death fired in him a lifetime's commitment to the cause of preventing humanitarian crises and bearing witness.

By creating MSF, "we were establishing the moral right to interfere inside someone else's country", he once told an interviewer.

In 2004, Time Magazine published a profile of Kouchner by philosopher and political essayist Andre Glucksmann, who wrote:

No pacifist consensus. Forget pleasant sentiments. This humanitarian breaks taboos and reveals matters that render us sleepless. Faced with the globalized inhumanity that is burning the 21st century, Kouchner is introducing a new humanism without geographical or political borders. He does it not to open the gates of paradise, but to bolt the gates of hell.

I noted in a recent post: "On Saturday France moved one very impressive piece of rescue equipment offshore the Irrawaddy Delta. . . ." We may be witnessing the finest hour in the long and distinguished career of a most distinguished global citizen.

Photos: Wikipedia and the French Embassy, Washington DC

US and British ships ready to assist cyclone victims offshore Burma

In the previous post I described the mission of the French naval vessel FSS Mistral. An IHT refers to two other naval vessels waiting offshore Burma to assist victims of the cyclone:

Another ship, the USS Essex, is also waiting off the Myanmar coast for permission to deliver aid. The American amphibious assault ship is carrying supplies of drinking water as well as 23 helicopters — including 19 that are capable of lifting cargo from ship to shore and could prove vital in getting supplies to hard-to-reach areas.

A British frigate, the HMS Westminster, is also on standby off Myanmar and ready to help. British official said earlier this week that the vessel was sent from the nearby Bay of Bengal, where it had been on exercises with the French and Indian navies.

Photo: USS Essex, a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship (Wiki).

France sends FSS Mistral to Burma

Updated 2:00am Sunday 18 May

On Saturday France moved one very impressive piece of rescue equipment offshore the Irrawaddy Delta. CNN reports:

French defense and foreign ministry officials said the FSS Mistral, carrying 1,500 tons of food and medication, was expected reach Myanmar "sometime Saturday." They said the French government was "still in negotiations," even though the junta has so far refused to give authorization for it to dock, either in the delta or in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon.

. . . the Myanmar government asked the French to airlift the material through Yangon, "which of course is a nonsense," (France's U.N. ambassador) said. . .

"We have small boats which could allow us to go through the delta to most of the regions where no one has accessed yet," he said. "We have small helicopters to drop food, and we have doctors."

In Yangon, news of the approach of the French ship created an excited buzz among residents who were phoning each other to ask how far the ship was and when it would arrive.

The above CNN report, which has just been updated, provides more details about the mission:

The ship was conducting joint exercises with the Indian navy when it was diverted to deliver aid under so-called Operation Orcaella -- named after the Latin name of a dolphin that lives in the fresh waters of the Irrawaddy delta, he said.

Le Mistral, with some 360 crew on board -- including five doctors -- is carrying the equivalent of 30 planeloads of material, he said.

Ideally, Le Mistral would ferry the aid up the waterways of the flooded Irrawaddy delta using two smaller boats aboard the ship and hand it to humanitarian workers from international aid organizations, Hinden said.

As I have been blogging for the past week, the relief operation should be mounted from naval vessels. Yangoon airport has been found to have limited capacity anyway.

I found more information about the Mistral. She is an impressive ship, one that appears ideally suited to deliver aid to the region. The Mistral is an amphibious assault helicopter carrier and the lead ship of her class.

She is capable of deploying (between 16 and 35) helicopters (depending on type), four landing barges or two LCAC, and 70 vehicles . . . with up to 450 soldiers (900 for a short period). She also features important hospital capabilities, and is able to accommodate a general staff.*

The photo (left and right) show the LCAC. It is a heavy-duty hovercraft for to bringing supplies from ship to shore (apparently France does not actually have any LCACs, but presumably they have other landing craft).

The mistral is described in one article as "the swiss army knife" of the French fleet:

The ship's NATO level 3 hospital . . . has 69 beds (50 for intensive care), two operating theatres which can function simultaneously, a dental unit (doctor plays dentist on this ship) and can send X-rays, electro-cardiogrammes, etc. to land-based hospitals by internet.

But medicine is not its main mission. “This ship doesn't have one,” explains Humeau. “It's a juxtaposition of different platforms: the Swiss army knife of French naval forces,” he laughs. . . .

He takes us down to a vast 900m² empty space of which 850m² can be transformed with panels which slot into the floor to make whatever configuration of rooms the multinational joint force command and control centre needs. “There are 180 plug and play stations down here and we can communicate at a data rate of 10 Megabits/second, compared to 2 Mbps on the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier.”

Massive quantities of aid relief must be delivered to cyclone victims in the Irrawaddy Delta. France has equipped and positioned the ideal platform from which to seriously begin to accomplish this herculean task. Operation Orcaella needs to happen -- whether or not Myanmar grants approval. It's time to start saving lives.
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* Photo 1: Wikipedia.

Burmese monks' message to ASEAN leaders

Not long after the blood had been washed off the streets of Rangoon following the crackdown against the monks, the leaders of Southeast Asia attended an important meeting of ASEAN in Singapore. At that time, I happened to be visiting a safe house on the Thai-Burma border where I interviewed four escaped monks. I decided to ask the monks if they had a message for the leaders of ASEAN. I recorded their message and shortly thereafter posted it here.

This Monday, the foreign ministers of ASEAN will gather in Singapore for another meeting. Again, they meet in the aftermath of an atrocity -- this time, mass murder on an unimaginable scale -- perpetrated by an ASEAN member state. Burmese people have died -- and continue to die -- because after nearly two weeks, Myanmar's military junta has not permitted urgently needed assistance -- food, shelter, clean drinking water, and emergency medical care -- to reach 70-80% of cyclone survivors. On Monday the leaders of ASEAN confront a man-made tragedy of historic proportions.

As it happens, the message conveyed to me by the four escaped Burmese monks remains applicable as ASEAN foreign ministers -- including Myanmar's -- sit down for this meeting. May the words of these brave monks to be heard in Singapore on Monday. The original post follows.

* * * * *

Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Leaders of SE Asia, these Burmese monks have a message for you.

This is the first report of the escape of these monks to appear in the English language.

Four monks who escaped Burma have a message for leaders of Southeast Asia gathered in Singapore this week.

The monks fled the crackdown in Rangoon and arrived in Thailand on November 14th. I spoke with them at their hideout Monday.

The monks tell me they first met one another this summer at Yan Myo Aung, a small monastery-school in Rangoon. The occasion of their meeting was the start of rainy season when monks begin a three month long retreat.

But things did not go well. There was not enough food to go around. By September they were subsisting on a diet of rice and salt.

First they passed out leaflets, then they marched.

At 1:00 am one night -- while the four were having a late night bull-session -- troops invaded their monastery. Trashing the place, soldiers even beheaded Buddha statues. The fate of monks who had been sleeping at the hour of the attack is unknown. Hunted by the soldiers, the four monks fled for their lives. U Sandawara, aged 23, said:

We faced many difficulties, and saw great suffering; and then we became confused about what to do after the crackdown. Fortunately we reached the border areas where we were able to make contact with some people. And we got ideas. And plans for future movements.

At the start of our interview, there were four monks seated around the table with me. But the oldest monk soon got up and made his way to a lawn chair in the part of the large room used as the monk's sleeping area.

"He has a lung problem," the interpreter said of U Yewada, a fifty-one year old monk. I was assured that he had received medical treatment.

After telling me their story, I asked the monks if there was anything else they wanted to say. U Sandawara spoke up:

I would like to request that companies from different countries -- including Singapore, Thailand, Korea, and the West -- not continue doing business with Burma at this time. If possible, just a postponement -- or delay -- would be appreciated. Because this money supports the SPDC; it's used to buy arms and bullets and also even some -- how shall I put it? -- "strange" arms; these weapons get used in my land against my people, making them suffer.

I asked U Sandawara if there was anything he wanted to say to the leaders of ASEAN, meeting this week in Singapore:

Leaders of the Southeast Asian countries at the ASEAN meeting: We ask you not to focus on your "own benefits" from Burma; please understand the Burmese peoples' current problems and difficulties. We ask that you think of the suffering Burmese as a part of your own family. Do something for democratic change in Burma.

And we request social support for the people who joined the protest and now suffer. Some people have bad injuries. Families are grieving. The military government will not help these people. People are hiding in different areas; they cannot go back home. Please put pressure on the military regime to arrange for their amnesty.

"Picture Myanmar dictator Than Shwe seated at the conference table in Singapore," I said. "What should the other leaders say to him?"

Understand that Shwe robbed the power from the people. Before he and the SPDC succeed in delay, in stealing the peoples' time, put the strongest pressure on him for democratic change in the very near future. That's my request. For all the leaders of ASEAN to pressure this man. Force him to change the country.

Know that Shwe is only interested in pursuing his own interests, his own business. He doesn't care about the people. There is a lot of corruption in his military group. He is not interested in improving the society. He's that kind of person. He's useless.

So please put pressure on him, so as to peacefully bring about a democratic Burma.

Photo: Jotman

This post was the first of three in a series -- jots from my interview with U Sandawara, one of "the four escaped monks." For a list of my interviews with leaders of the monks' protest, the students' army, and to learn more about the plight of the Burmese people, click here.

Will the Asean meeting focus on the emergency?

BBC reports:

Many relief workers are awaiting visas and most of those who have been allowed into the country remain confined to Rangoon . . . .

According to the Red Cross, aid agencies have been able to reach only around 20% to 30% of cyclone victims and hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of diseases such as dysentery because of lack of clean water.

"If clean water isn't available, it's going to be the biggest killer in the post-disaster environment," Thomas Gurtner told the Associated Press news agency.

Speaking in Geneva, Mr Gurtner predicted "further destitution among an already very hard-hit population", noting that the harvest had already been lost.

The Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) is due to hold a high-level meeting in the coming days that is expected to lay the framework for a broader aid donors conference.

On Monday, the foreign ministers of all the countries of Southeast Asia -- including the foreign minister of Myanmar -- will sit around a big conference table in Singapore to discuss cyclone relief. Will the actual emergency -- no clean water, no food, the fact that as yet no contact has been made with most victims -- top the agenda, or does this organization just do conferences?

Thais accuse local news media company of inciting violence

Thai scholar Giles Ji Ungpakorn has posted a report about a petition circulated and signed by some leading figures in Thailand. "Over 130 trade unionists, social activists, students and academics have put their names to an open letter condemning the behaviour of The Manager media group" the report begins.

The letter is in response to the actions of Mr Sonti Limtongkul's Manager group in promoting violence against a young student activist Chotisak Oonsung, who is being accused of lèse majesté because he refused to stand up for the King's Anthem at the cinema. Both Manager group websites and its radio station, Metro Life, have encouraged Ultra-Rightwing Royalists to attack Mr Chotisak. Ms Jitra Kotchadej, Chairwoman of the Triumph workers union has also been made a target for violence by The Manager media. Ms Jitra was singled out because she wore a T-shirt supporting the right to different views in society, including not standing up at the cinema. Both Mr Chotisak and Ms Jitra's photographs and home addresses were published alongside urges to attack them. The Manager media also encouraged people to attack and break up a meeting on Human Rights at Thammasart University recently.

See this post for background and my own take on the controversy about the student who chose not to stand up in the movie theatre for the royal anthem. The report continues:

Those signing the open letter compare the behaviour of The Manager with the past behaviour of Rightwing media such as Dao Sayam newspaper and the Tank Corps radio station in inciting violence that led to the 6^th October 1976 blood bath.

I have blogged about the 6th October 1976 blood bath. The Thai Prime Minister, Samak, who was apparently an announcer at Tank Corps radio station back in '76, recently denied any massacre had taken place.

Concerning a related development, Bangkok Pundit (BP) reports that the source of this report, Prachatai, and another website Faw Diew Kan (Thai language), were blocked by some Thai ISP providers on 15 May. Why? Because these sites have published commentary on the story of the man who would not stand up for the royal anthem in the movie theatre. But as BP points out, the courts have yet to rule that Chotisak Oonsung even committed a crime by not standing.

UN says 2.5 million Burma cyclone victims at risk

. . . the UN is now warning that 2.5 million people are facing hunger and disease.

 

But instead of giving out aid, the government is dishing out eviction orders.

 

Hundreds of displaced villagers taking refuge at a sports hall in Yangon have been told they must go, an Al Jazeera correspondent on the ground reported.

Army officers told them they had 24 hours to leave, without explaining why or telling them where they could go.

Al Jazeera

"This is not the time to respect Burma's border controls"

"The real issue is that of movement restriction in to the delta. You can get the visas but you can't get in to the delta."

- Richard Horsey, a spokesman for UNOCHA

This is not the time to respect Burma's border controls. National restrictions that are causing further deaths, do not deserve any one's respect.

- Mae Tao Clinic Website

The Irrawaddy Delta. Lots of it is now under water. Thousands of villages have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of victims have yet to be reached. Many villages are only accessible by boat.

Meanwhile, aid relief organizations are complaining that they can't reach the parts of the delta impacted by the cyclone because they do not have authorization. A Thai newspaper reported:

(Horsey) noted many visas were of short duration and most experts were limited to staying in Rangoon, the former capital.

Of the few international relief workers who have been allowed into Burma, many don't have the paperwork to get into the Irrawaddy Delta region.

Three observations. First, you don't need paperwork to reach to these places. You need a boat or a helicopter. Second, these and copious supplies are available not in Rangoon, but on board foreign naval vessels presently situated offshore the Irrawaddy Delta. Third, if aid workers are not where they are most needed, my bet is that Myanmar government authorities are not hovering around the flooded and destitute villages either. That is, I can't imagine there is as yet any appreciable Myanmar military presence in many of the more devastated areas.

Which brings me to my question: why aren't all those the US, French, and British assets -- helicopters, supply ships, landing craft -- that have been floating offshore Burma for the past week, in there, actively saving lives now? Truly, what are they waiting for?

We need Myanmar's permission, Western leaders claim -- or else some kind of UN authorization -- goes the argument. And then what? Then we are right back to square one with two choices: either defy the regime or go back to playing the junta's waiting games. Either way, precious time passes for desperate victims of the cyclone.

Given the fact that relief teams are unlikely to face any opposition if they simply made their way into the more isolated regions of the Irrawaddy Delta to seek and assist survivors, I find this whole line of argument academic.

If Western naval assets offshore Burma have not already been ordered into action to save Burmese lives -- a possibility I would not entirely discount -- they ought to be.
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Photo 1: Wikipedia, images show Irrawaddy Delta before and after.
Photo 2: Wikipedia, shows the HMS Westminster which "was deployed offshore Burma in May 2008 to spearhead the British relief effort after Cyclone Nargis devastated the country."

Welcome to America! Go direclty to jail

In the previous post, I wrote about how hard the US makes things for Indonesians who want to -- or need to -- visit the US.

But Indonesia is hardly an exception. Only 27 countries have visa-waivers for the US -- Europe, Australia, Japan, etc. You would think the citizens of these countries have it easy.

In fact, US immigration has actually turned away over 2,000 people who arrived on America's shores from visa-waiver countries. That is, the lucky ones were turned away. Some visitors from the visa-waiver countries of Europe have been sent to prison on arrival.

The US immigration official at the airport has the right to throw you in jail for weeks -- no hearing first -- if he doesn't like the way you look. Or he had a fight with his wife last night. Or whatever.

That's what happened to one Italian man who arrived in the US to visit his American girlfriend. He spent 10 days in a prison because some immigration official thought he "looked the type" to overstay and work in the US. The NY Times reports on this case.
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More here about how the US government scares away tourists. In this post, I looked at how the US is scaring away talented workers. Here I described what happened to one unlucky Icelandic tourist last year at Kennedy Airport in New York City. Most ominously for the future of the US, American immigration policies continue to scare away bright foreign graduate students.

How the US government makes Indonesians hate America

It kept coming up in conversations during my trip to Indonesia: the fact that the United States is a difficult country for Indonesians to visit. First, the US requires Indonesians to undergo an interview before they can get a visa. And if your name is Mohammad, well, forget it -- or so I was told.

"I knew a Mohammed, great guy, an engineer, an employee at (name of big US company). He was denied a visa at the interview. So he couldn't visit headquarters. Of course, with a name like Mohammed, what did he expect?" said one Indonesian male in his late twenties.

"If I didn't have to go on business, I would never choose to travel to the US -- because of the way they treat visitors," said an Indonesian woman -- an executive at another US company in Jakarta. She told me that she had been made to wait for hours in the hot sun outside the US Embassy -- just to have her visa interview ("they don't even have the courtesy to provide a shelter for those waiting outside"). When this lady got to the front of the line, she was told she had to come back another day. The wait for a visa interview was over a month.

How does one do business with Americans if the US makes you wait so long for a visa? Why would any Indonesian choose to trade or do business with the United States?

Indonesia is hardly an exception. Only 27 countries have visa-waivers for the US -- Europe, Australia, Japan, etc. You would think the citizens of these countries have an easier time of it. Suprisingly, that's not necessarily the case.

How to help Burma cyclone victims

This is not you typical big money aid group that plays by the Myanmar regime's rules. A highly respected -- indeed legendary -- medical clinic on the Thai-Burma border is collecting money for something called The Emergency Assistance Team (EAT-BURMA).

What is EAT?

EAT is working at the grassroots level to provide aid and assistance to the people affected by Cyclone Nargis in the Irrawaddy and Rangoon division areas.

For the safety of our teams and the people inside, we cannot give out information regarding the exact location of our teams, nor their identities. But we are working with a team of about 40 people on the ground who are each working with their own networks of local organisations and people.

Basically, EAT is doing what big western governments with the aircraft carriers, cargo helicopters, and hospital ships don't have the guts to do. They are saying screw the regime, let's get relief aid into Burma and start helping people -- by whatever means. That's the approach I have been arguing for (see here and here).

The Mae Tao Clinic (Cynthia's clinic), located in the Thai-Burma border town of Mae Sot, urgently needs donations to support EAT-BURMA teams. The Mae Tao Clinic itself is ideally positioned to assist refugees of the cyclone who make it to Thailand.

Moreover, with respect to the overall crisis, the people running the Mae Tao Clinic and organizing EAT have the right attitude:

We are calling on all governments and UN bodies to provide aid immediately to our people who are dying in their thousands. International humanitarian organizations and local community organizations must do whatever they can to prevent further deaths and to assist in the restoration of life in Burma. This is not the time to respect Burma's border controls. National restrictions that are causing further deaths, do not deserve anyone's respect.

The global community has a responsibility to protect its citizens. The SPDC has time and again failed to protect the people of Burma, and this time the scale of their neglect is killing our people. The United Nations must invoke the Responsibility To Protect, even if it is necessary to coerce or force the regime to comply with providing protection and rehabilitation to its citizens.

You don't need an evil government's permission to start saving its the lives of its people. Of course this is just common sense, but it's something today's world leaders lack.
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Backrgound: "The Mae Tao Clinic (MTC), founded and directed by Dr. Cynthia Maung, provides free health care for refugees, migrant workers, and other individuals who cross the border from Burma to Thailand. People of all ethnicities and religions are welcome at the Clinic. Its origins go back to the student pro-democracy movement in Burma in 1988 and the brutal repression by the Burmese regime of that movement. The fleeing students who needed medical attention were attended in a small house in Mae Sot."
How to donate: "You can make a donation through the Mae Tao Clinic donation page. Please put “Cylcone Nargis Disaster Relief” in the ‘Purpose’ field."
Hat-tip: Rick at TenPercent.
Photo: shows Mae Tao Clinic founder Dr. Cynthia Maung -- from the clinic's website.

Bangkok: rumors of another coup persist

"You might think it is nonsense. But I can smell a coup," says Wassana Nanuam, a Bangkok Post journalist. . .

"When you cover closely the key men (who are essential to stage a coup), you can see in their eyes, words and behavior that they are thinking seriously of staging a coup," explains the 39-year-old author in an interview on Tuesday at the army headquarters in Bangkok.

Coincidentally, that morning, Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej visited the army headquarters, giving rise to speculation that his visit had something to do with a coup.

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Star, via Philip Golingai

Myanmar referendum on new consitution passes

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar announced Thursday that a constitution critics say will cement nearly four decades of military rule was overwhelmingly approved in a referendum held while the country reeled from a devastating cyclone.

The document was approved by 92.4 percent of the 22 million eligible voters last Saturday, said Aung Toe, head of the Referendum Holding Committee on state radio. He put voter turnout at more than 99 percent.

. . . a constitution critics say will cement nearly four decades of military rule. What nonsense! Who are these so-called experts? Why does a constitution written by a dictatorship mean anything?

Although I blog about Burma extensively, this is only my third post concerning the vote on the new constitution -- not without reason. The outcome seemed so much a foregone conclusion that it did not seem worthwhile to dignify such a bogus referendum by discussing it. I have long thought the so-called "no" campaign against the draft constitution a big waste of time.

The greedy American farm lobby

Ignoring a veto threat from President Bush, who says he wants to sharply limit government subsidies to farmers at a time of near-record commodity prices and soaring global demand for grain, the House on Wednesday approved a five-year, $307 billion farm bill with a solid bipartisan majority. (NYT)

This represents just one more turn of the screw by the rich world against farm producers in the third world.   With record prices for grains, this was the year to cut subsidies to American farmers.  "A historic opportunity to end this country's most wasteful and economically ruinous corporate welfare system has been lost" laments the LA Times.  Bush was right to threaten to veto any farm bill that did not cut US farm subsidies -- much of which goes to large agricultural conglomerates.   With record food prices, US farmers don't need subsidies.  The LA Times writes:

Farm subsidies have survived for this long by holding the good hostage to the bad. The run-up in food prices, in some cases worsened by our agricultural policies, created a chance to break out of this rut. So did a growing awareness of the economic damage wrought by subsidies, which destroy livelihoods of farmers overseas who can't compete with government-backed American grain.

US agricultural subsidies -- including subsidies to the corn biofuel industry -- directly contribute to malnutrition in the developing world.