Flags across Myanmar are flying at half-mast, at the start of three days of mourning for an estimated 134,000 people dead and missing from Cyclone Nargis. Diplomats are pressing the military government to speed up aid to some 2.4 million survivors. But while large parts of Myanmar lie devastated, the generals are doing their best to project a caring image. Our reporter has filed this story from the former capital Rangoon.
They're enormous trees, maybe 60-70 years old, and the force of their fall has smashed the concrete and metal fence ringing The People's Park in Yangon, formerly Rangoon. The trunks have toppled and roots as high as a man lie upended. All around them is the vast debris of broken concrete, ripped branches, dangling cables from nearby power lines and rotting foliage. Two men in chequered longyis squat by the wreckage which stretches some 20 square metres, and they're scraping mud out with their bare hands. It looks about as effective as trying to empty the Irrawaddy with a teaspoon. And its a fitting metaphor for the government's management of the relief effort in the Delta area.
"These trees were so old, and there were so many of them - and now 80 percent of them are gone", says one Rangoon resident, who adds sadly, "I'll never see my Rangoon again in my lifetime."
Feeding the fish
But the real damage isn't here - it's around the Irrawaddy Delta where the scale of the disaster is enormous. The death toll is estimated at 134,000 and for those who remain, the future looks even bleaker. More than a million people have no food, no shelter, no livelihood. The Delta is called Burma's Rice Bowl, because it supplies 60% of the country's rice. But now 4.5 million acres of rice paddies have been transformed into muddy salt water ponds. Forty-seven thousand cattle have drowned. Some villages that used to house up to 300 people have entirely vanished, leaving only a handful of traumatised survivors. Weeks after the disaster, corpses still float around, bloated and black.
One of the generals put in charge in the area was overheard, when asked about the clean-up of the floating bodies, as saying:
Posing refugees
It was not until last Sunday night, 18 May, more than two weeks after the disaster, that Burma's "top man" General Than Shwe was seen on television inspecting the camps. The government paper, "The New Light of Myanmar", has been featuring pictures of the senior generals inspecting their "model refugee camps" in South Dagon, near Rangoon. The photos depict a smart military group standing in front of a row of tents, and behind them pairs of refugees stand to attention. In other photos, the generals stand before tables piled with food and supplies.
One journalist told me that the refugees had been brought in to pose in front of the tents. After the pictures were taken, they were told to clear off. They had previously been sheltering in a nearby monastery, but when they tried to go back there, they discovered that the monks had been denied permission to take them in again.
Monks answer the call
In contrast to the efforts of the military, which have been inadequate by most local accounts, civic groups and monks quickly responded to the disaster. Senior monks came from all parts of the country, using their moral prestige to raise donations from individuals and businesses. These groups have brought convoys of supplies and teams of doctors who have set up makeshift clinics. They've stationed themselves in the towns of the area, and it's mainly their centres that survivors have been moving to - the only places to get any real help in terms of food, medicines and supplies.
Despite the wide-ranging dissastisfaction with the government's handling of the disaster, there are some who say its not all black and white. At least one local NGO told me the army is doing its best, but it's simply overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster.
And MSF, an organization that has an established long-term presence here, says it has not been stopped from sending in supplies and local staff. Juli Niebuhr from MSF said:
Local residents are surprisingly aware of the real nature of things despite the whitewash by most of the local media. There are several local journalists who have found methods of spreading information. People hear news from outside, via radio and Internet. They are aware of the situation, and the efforts of ordinary Burmese citizens to help their countrymen have been heroic. But I can't help but be reminded of the two men in longyis, scrabbling at a vast, immoveable wreckage with their bare hands.
Tags: Burma, cyclone, Generals, Myanmar, Nardis, Rangoon, Yangon