Giri victims have just 45pc of basic needs, UN aid office in Rangoon says

A resident of hard-hit Myebon Township’s Pyinone village clears debris as other villagers work to rebuild the nearly 100 per cent of the area’s homes destroyed by Cyclone Giri on October 28, 2010. Although government newspapers initially said the storm killed only 27 across Arakan State, more than 40 died in Pyinone alone, villagers said. The Category Four storm had hit Burma’s western coast bearing winds in excess of 120 miles per hour (193 km/h) four days earlier. Although the devastated region needed an estimated US$57 million, it had received just US$20.5 million, the UN Country Team in Burma said in a report on Monday. Photo: Mizzima
New Delhi (Mizzima) – Two months since Cyclone Giri ripped through Burma’s western Arakan State, residents affected have received just 45 per cent of their basic humanitarian needs, the Rangoon branch of a UN aid office said. People are in “dire need of more permanent shelter” and “livelihood support”, a UN official added.
Although the devastated region had needed an estimated US$57 million, it had received just US$20.5 million, the report compiled by the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) said on Monday.

Cyclone Giri hit the Arakanese coast on October 22, flattening villages in the worst-hit townships of Myebon, Pauktaw, Kyaukphyu and Manaung with winds gusting up to 160 mph (257 km/h), and killing at least 45 people. The Category Four storm affected 260,000 people and more than 100,000 were displaced, the report said.

Fifty-six per cent of schools, around 17,500 acres (7,000 hectares) of agricultural lands, nearly 50,000 acres of aquaculture ponds and more than 700 fishing boats were also destroyed in the cyclone, severely affecting residents’ livelihoods and causing problems with health care, education and other basic needs, it said.

The report also urged international donors to provide humanitarian relief for the cyclone victims.

Committee Representing People’s Parliament (CRPP) secretary and Arakan League for Democracy joint general secretary Aye Tha Aung arrived in the cyclone-affected area today to offer support and report on the situation.

“I went to many villages. Their houses don’t have roofs. Some villages have foods for just one or two days. Some villages have already run out of food,” he said.

A resident in Ngayapwakkyaing Village in the Pauktaw told Mizzima that although the UN and social organisations had given them humanitarian relief, they were without their main means of self-support.

“Currently, we are not worried about food as donors gave rice, oil and beans to us. But our fishing boats and gear were destroyed, so we can’t go fishing. The villagers have been jobless,” the resident said.

The World Food Programme (WFP), National League for Democracy (NLD) and CRPP donated food including rice to the cyclone victims in villages within Pauktaw, Myebon and Kyaukphyu townships. Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has also donated 10 million kyat (about US$10,000) to the victims.

“The WFP and CRPP came here to donate rice. If we need it, they will help to dig a well in our village,” the resident said.

The UN children’s welfare organisation, Unicef, supported the provision of 100 temporary learning spaces by the local Parents and Teachers Association in the four affected townships and provided school kits to 7,000 children, the Ocha report said.

The Ngayapwakkyaing resident said, “My village does not have a school so we paid teachers to teach our children just to be literate. But we are jobless so we can’t pay the teachers so our children can’t receive [a proper] education.”

According to a statement on Monday from the UN Country Team in Burma, UN officials, led by the UN Resident and Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Burma Bishow Parajuli, travelled last week to several villages in Sittwe and Myebon townships in Arakan State to witness relief and recovery efforts. The delegation briefed international donors on Monday about the visit.

“Humanitarian emergency assistance is forthcoming, and people are slowly starting to rebuild their communities with what little they have left and the aid they are receiving. The resilience of the affected people has been remarkable,” the statement said, quoting Parajuli after his return to Rangoon.

He was accompanied by the representative for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the WFP country director and the Rangoon Ocha chief.

The delegation met government officials and staff from UN agencies and international and local NGOs based in Sittwe, the state capital, and Myebon, where the most severe damage had occurred. The three-day mission also brought the delegation to the villages of Minchaung and Shintaung in Myebon and Byinethit in Pauktaw.

“The destruction in these villages has been massive. Up to 70-80 per cent of all houses were completely destroyed and schools and health facilities are severely damaged. People now rely on various emergency supplies, which are distributed widely to the worst-hit areas by the government, international and local NGOs and UN agencies,” Parajuli said in the statement.

“But people are in dire need of more permanent shelter structures and livelihood support,” he said.

The statement said the main gaps in funding were in “early recovery shelter and livelihood support”. It said on Monday, US$20.5 million had been allocated from donors in response to Giri damage, including US$6 million from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund.

The overall funding needs for all sectors for both emergency and early recovery were estimated at US$57 million and the humanitarian community in Burma welcomed continued international funding support, it said.

The European Commission (EC) told Voice of America yesterday it had allocated almost US$4 million in humanitarian relief for Giri victims. In the statement delivered in Thailand, the commission said another US$5 million had been allocated to help victims of recent storms in Vietnam and the Philippines.

Regional EC envoy David Lipman said the contribution showed Europe’s commitment to help those most vulnerable and needy in Burma.

Australia early last month donated US$3 million in assistance to help affected communities and families recover from this disaster and provide essential food, shelter, clean water and sanitation, Ocha said late last month.

Britain, Denmark, Japan and the United States have also made donations.
http://www.mizzima.com/news/inside-burma/4697-giri-victims-have-just-45pc-of-basic-needs-un-aid-office.html

More Land in Arakan State Confiscated for Railway

By KHIN OO THAR Thursday, December 23, 2010

More residents in Burma's western Arakan (Rakhine) State suffer as their farm land and plantations have been confiscated or damaged due to a railway project in the area, according to local sources.

“Apart from receiving no compensation, we weren't even informed that our lands were confiscated. Some rubber plantations located along the railway were also destroyed,” a resident in the construction area told The Irrawaddy. He said about two acres of his land were confiscated and part of his rubber plantation was destroyed.

Local residents said that the authorities had confiscated more than 1,000 acres of land between Mrauk U and Kyauk Taw townships, which are on the projected Sittwe-Ann-Minbu railway line.

Last month, several ancient temples and cultural heritage sites in Mrauk U Township were damaged or destroyed because they were located on the planned railway route, according to local residents.

“By building this railway, the military regime is launching a psychological offensive against local people, rather than developing our area. It has destroyed what the locals value one by one, and it does as it wants,” said a Mrauk U resident.

He said the construction of the railway on ancient cultural land in Mrauk U began on Nov. 7. Authorities later altered sections of the route because of repeated objections from local residents.

The route is now affecting land around the Arakan State's most ancient city of Dannyawaddy, he said.

A resident of Kyauk Taw told The Irrawaddy that a dispute broke out recently between the army and Myanma Railway officials after an earth excavator that was used in the railway construction work between Kyauk Taw and Mrauk U damaged underground cables connecting local army posts.

“A battalion commander ordered them to stop the construction work immediately after their property was damaged,” he said.

The order came from the commander of Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 377 on Dec. 17. LIBs 377, 378 and 540 are based in the area, he said.

According to residents of Sittwe, the capital of Arakan State, the regime has been working on the railway line in Arakan State since 2009. Several sections have been completed, they said, but some completed sections, especially in the Sittwe area, frequently need to be repaired.

The Sittwe-Ann-Minbu railway is scheduled to be part of the regime's nationwide railway network.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20389

Leaked memos highlight Burma fears

Washington has suspected for years that Burma has a secret nuclear program supported by North Korea, with witnesses reporting suspicious activity as far back as 2004, leaked memos show.

One cable from the US embassy in Rangoon, dated August of that year and released on Thursday by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, quoted an unidentified source as saying he saw about 300 North Koreans working at an underground site.

'The North Koreans, aided by Burmese workers, are constructing a concrete-reinforced underground facility that is 500 feet (152 metres) from the top of the cave to the top of the hill above',' according to the cable.

'The North Koreans are said to be assembling missiles of unknown origin,' it said, adding that the report alone should not been taken as definitive proof or evidence of sizeable North Korean military involvement with the Burmese regime.

Another memo, also dated 2004, quoted a foreign businessman as saying he had seen a reinforced steel bar, larger than for just a factory project, being unloaded from a barge in the same area in west-central Magway Division.

The cable said the source had volunteered to an US Embassy Officer that he had heard rumours that a nuclear reactor was being built near the town of Minbu.

It said that while there was no direct evidence of cooperation between Burma's generals and Pyongyang, there were increasing reports of alleged sightings of North Korean 'technicians' inside the Southeast Asian nation.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned in July 2009 about possible nuclear links between Burma and North Korea, and earlier this year she said a ship from Pyongyang had delivered military equipment to Burma.

Burma's junta -- which recently held a widely criticised election seen as prolonging military rule -- has dismissed reports of its nuclear intentions and brushed aside Western concerns about possible cooperation with North Korea.

A UN report released last month alleged North Korea is supplying banned nuclear and ballistic equipment to Burma as well as Iran and Syria.

And a June documentary by the Norwegian-based news group Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) said Burma was trying to develop nuclear weapons, citing a senior army defector and years of 'top secret material'.

The DVB documentary gathered thousands of photos and defector testimony, some regarding Burma's network of secret underground bunkers and tunnels, which were allegedly built with the help of North Korean expertise.

Robert Kelley, a former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who inspected the files smuggled out of Burma by Sai Thein Win, said in October evidence indicated 'a clandestine nuclear program' was under way.

'This is not a well-developed program. I don't think it's going very well,' he said at the time.

'But if another country steps in and has all of the knowledge, the materials, and maybe the key to some of the things that are plaguing them, including bad management, this program could really speed up.'

Kelley said North Korea was 'certainly the country I have in mind'.

According to another cable from 2009, a well-placed source in the Burmese government said General Thura Shwe Mann had visited North Korea in 2008.

But the source backtracked later, insisting the talks were only exploratory.

The leaked memos also suggest that key backer China was fed up with the 'foot-dragging' of Burma's military junta on reform and feared the ruling generals could no longer

protect its interests in the country.

'The Chinese can no longer rely on the generals to protect their interests here, and recognise the need to broker some solution that keeps the peace,' according to a US cable

dated January 2008.

http://bigpondnews.com/articles/Technology/2010/12/11/Leaked_memos_highlight_Burma_fears_550626.html

Myo Yan Naung Thein on Burma's Education & Future