Official: UN plane lands in Myanmar with aid after cyclone
YANGON, Myanmar - Relief supplies from the United Nations began arriving in Myanmar Thursday, but U.S. military planes loaded with aid were still denied access by the country’s isolationist regime five days after a devastating cyclone.
The military junta also continued to stall on visas for U.N. teams seeking entry to ensure the aid is delivered to the victims amid fears that lack of safe food and drinking water could push the death toll above 100,000.
Two airplanes carrying high-energy biscuits, medicine and other supplies arrived in Yangon, and two others were to follow, U.N. officials said. The planes had waited for the last two days while the world body negotiated with the military regime to allow the material into the Southeast Asian nation.
In Yangon, the cyclone blew off the roof of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and snapped the electricity connection to her dilapidated lakeside bungalow, where she is under house arrest, a neighbor said.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has no generator and is using candles at night, said the neighbor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Eric John told reporters that U.S. and Thai authorities earlier believe they had permission from Myanmar to land U.S. military C-130s. But Myanmar officials later made it clear that this was not the case.
John said it was not clear if they had reversed an earlier decision or if there was a misunderstanding.
Thailand Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej offered to negotiate on Washington’s behalf to persuade the junta to accept U.S. aid.
The U.S. military, meanwhile, sent more humanitarian supplies and equipment to a staging area in Thailand. A C-17 transport plane with water and food landed Thursday, joining the two C-130s in place, Air Force spokeswoman Megan Orton said at the Pentagon. Another C-130 loaded with supplies was on its way, she said.
The Navy also has three ships participating in an exercise in the Gulf of Thailand that could help in any relief effort, including an amphibious assault ship with 23 helicopters aboard.
The Navy was sending helicopters from the USS Essex to the staging area in Thailand, a defense official said Thursday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
After they finish off-loading the helicopters, the Essex and the USS Juneau were expected to steam around the Malay Peninsula to be in a position closer to Myanmar.
The USS Harpers Ferry and a destroyer, the USS Mustin, were expected to head toward Myanmar on Friday, the official said.
Within days of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, the U.S. military sent dozens of Navy ships and some 15,000 military personnel to deliver food, tents and medical care to victims. It was the biggest U.S. military operation in Southeast Asia since the Vietnam war.
The government and the U.S. private sector also committed over $1.5 billion in aid.
Myanmar’s generals, traditionally paranoid about foreign influence, issued an appeal for international assistance after the storm struck Saturday. They have since dragged their feet on issuing visas to relief workers even as survivors faced hunger, disease and flooding.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband asked Myanmar’s junta to “lift all restrictions on the distribution of aid.” The U.N. also called the government to let aid and aid workers in.
“It is imperative at this point that they do open up and allow a major international relief effort to get under way,” Richard Horsey, who coordinates U.N. humanitarian aid out of Bangkok, told AP Television News.
The Association of Southeast Nations appealed to the international community to keep sending aid through Thailand.
“Please keep the help coming, keep the contributions coming, and if you have to, go to Thailand, park there and wait for redistribution from there,” said ASEAN secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan.
China, Myanmar’s closest ally, urged the military junta to work with the international community. Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said China would give $4.3 million in aid in addition to an initial pledge of $1 million.
The U.N. said Thursday it has released $10 million from its emergency relief fund to help the cyclone victims. But between 30 and 40 visas requested by various U.N. agencies and private relief groups are pending with the Myanmar government, Horsey said.
The London-based human rights group Amnesty International said some donors were delaying aid for fear it would be siphoned off to the army.
The World Food Program’s regional director, Anthony Banbury, indicated the United Nations had similar concerns.
“We will not just bring our supplies to an airport, dump it and take off,” he said.
Myanmar’s state media said Cyclone Nargis killed at least 22,997 people and left 42,019 missing, mostly in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta. Shari Villarosa, who heads the U.S. Embassy in Yangon, said the number of dead could eventually exceed 100,000 because safe food and water were scarce and unsanitary conditions widespread.
U.N. officials estimated as many as 1 million people were left homeless in Myanmar, which also is known as Burma.
Entire villages in the delta were still submerged from the storm, and bloated corpses could be seen stuck in the mangroves. Some survivors stripped clothes off the dead. People wailed as they described the horror of the torrent swept ashore by the cyclone.
“I don’t know what happened to my wife and young children,” said Phan Maung, 55, who held onto a coconut tree until the water level dropped. By then his family was gone.
The World Health Organization has received reports of malaria outbreaks in the worst-affected area, and fears of waterborne illnesses surfacing due to dirty water and poor sanitation also remained a concern, said Poonam Khetrapal Singh, deputy director of WHO’s Southeast Asia office in New Delhi.
“Safe water, sanitation, safe food. These are things that we feel are priorities at the moment,” she said.
Even near Yangon, the country’s largest city, stricken villagers complained that they had received no government assistance and were relying on aid from Buddhist monasteries.
“The government is not helping us. No aid is coming. There is no money, no rice,” said Mu Sanda, one of some 50 people huddled in a monastery dining room converted into an evacuation center in Kyauktan, 15 miles southeast of Yangon.
Myanmar’s state television Thursday showed Prime Minister Lt. Gen. Thein Sein distributing food packages to the sick and injured in the delta and soldiers dropping food over villages. The date of the distribution was not given.
Navy vessels from India and planes from Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Laos and Bangladesh had arrived in recent days with medicine, candles, instant noodles, raincoats and other relief supplies, it said.
Although most Yangon residents were preoccupied with trying to restore their lives, activists wrote fresh graffiti on overpasses, including “X” marks — a symbol for voting “no” in a referendum Saturday on a new military-backed constitution. Voting has been postponed until May 24 in Yangon, some outlying areas and parts of the delta heavily damaged by the storm.