Burma Cyclone

This just in, from the unnamed New York Times writer in Yangon: Some Myanmar aid reportedly stolen

The lede:

<The directors of several relief organizations in Myanmar said Wednesday that some of the international aid arriving into the country for the victims of Cyclone Nargis was being stolen, diverted or warehoused by the country’s military.>

The torrential rains of the monsoon season have begun to pelt Burma, complicating aid efforts and compounding human misery.

From today’s Washington Post:
Foul Weather Adds to Burma Misery; 2 U.S. Planes Deliver Much-Needed Supplies, but Additional Flights Have Not Been Approved

The lede:

BANGKOK, May 13 — As yet more drenching rain battered survivors of Burma’s deadly cyclone, foreign relief supplies continued to arrive Tuesday at a pace aid workers said was still far too slow to help most of the suffering.

In an informative article written for Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service, which just got filed a few minutes ago, the UN’s World Meteorological Center sent out a message saying another cyclone is forming in the Burma area. The article states “it is not clear yet where the landfall will be or when it will become a full-fledged cyclone.”

Here’s a list of other informative bits from the article:

• Relief effort is only delivering an estimated one-tenth of the supplies needed in the delta area.
• Burma’s State Television said the death toll has risen from 32,000 to 34,273 and the number of missing is 27,838. (The UN estimates over 100,000 dead).
  
• Heavy tropical rains are making matters worse.
• World Food Programme said it was able to move less than 20 percent of the 375 tonnes of food into the devastated Delta.
• The military junta says it has allowed ‘aid from any nation’ to reach inside Burma but does not want foreigners distributing it.
• The UN principle of “responsibility to protect” is underutilized - ‘the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) doctrine out­lines the conditions in which the international com­munity is obligated to intervene in another country, militarily if necessary, to prevent genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other atrocities.’
• Burma called an “outpost of tyranny” by Washington - a phrase originally used by Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, in 2005 to describe “certain countries where she believes the government is oppressive and shows contempt for human rights and democracy.”
• The Dalai Lama, who has traditionally refrained from making comments about the majority Buddhist-populated Burma, broke his silence on the issue. “I am shocked by the destruction, especially by the high number of people who have perished and as a result this catastrophe has compounded the problems of poverty that already exists in Burma,” he said.

Read this full article here.

–Divya

From AFP:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House said Monday it was extending an extra 13 million dollars in aid for cyclone-hit Myanmar as the first US flight of emergency supplies landed in the country.

“We are prepared to provide an additional 13 million dollars in food and logistical assistance to the United Nations World Food Program for the relief operations in Burma,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Read the entire article here.

- Lam

Interesting piece in the NYT Freakonomics blog by Stephen J. Dubner about donations after natural disasters. Notes that international donations for Myanmar cyclone relief are still quite low– and that media coverage, not surprisingly, causes big jumps in the amount of money raised.

Update:Dubner discussed the piece this morning on the new NPR show The Takeaway.

–Karen