Children Starve as Aid Is Blocked
“We haven’t eaten rice for the past few days,” Dowla Shwe says, sitting forlornly by the roadside in southern Burma, begging for food from every passer-by.
Since Cyclone Nargis struck last week, her five children have had only bananas and coconut.
“We have nothing,” she says, nodding towards her starving children. “They are getting weak, and I fear they will fall sick and die.”
She has heard the reports of how her leaders - military generals who run one of the most controlled and isolated nations on the planet - will not let in foreign aid workers to help distribute food.
“I am angry with the Government,” Dowla Shwe says. “If they can’t help, why not allow foreigners to come and help us?”
Yesterday came news the United Nations would resume aid deliveries which had been suspended after a tussle with the junta.
But across Burma’s ruined Irrawaddy delta, suffering, frustration and fear continue. Countless thousands are without food or fresh water or shelter - and, increasingly, without hope.
Some children in rags beg by the road, waiting for deliveries of supplies that never come.
Others try to catch fish and crabs in muddy canals, surrounded by the bloated bodies of the dead, decomposing in the burning tropical sun. The smell is terrible.
U Pandita, a 24-year-old Buddhist monk, said: “All the villages have been wiped out. I saw at least 600 bodies. I myself lost 21 family members … I feel so sad.”
The delta is ground zero for Cyclone Nargis, which slammed ashore last Saturday, wiping out entire villages in virtually the blink of an eye.
The survivors may have first felt they were the lucky ones, escaping the toll of 65,000 who are dead or missing. But now they face a second tragedy - fighting hunger and disease.
© 2008 The Sydney Morning Herald
Perhaps the junta has hired Harold Brown as a consultant?
And tornadoes in the mid-west, and hurricanes in the Caribbean, and earthquakes, and droughts, and melting permafrost, and disappearing glaciers, and increasing oceanic dead zones…and…and…
I think Mother Nature is coming, and BOY is she pissed!
Wow, yet another regime proving themselves worse than Saddam’s ever was.
It’s not clear to me how starving their own citizens even benefits these fools. Sickening.
Reminds you of Catrina and New Orleans a bit, doesn’t it!
VAUDREE
yes, just a bit…………….
vaudree - Exactly. On half the tv screen is a scene of screaming need, and on the other half there’s GWB fiddling with a guitar or mugging for the camera at his daughter’s dillitante wedding in Crawford. Of course Bush understands how, like the Burmese junta, a handful of resolute idiots can successfully obstruct the press of common decency. You just hunker down and wait for the outrage to blow over.
“Tax evasion ‘costs lives of 5.6m children’
The lives of more than five million children could be saved in the developing world – if the super-rich and the world’s largest companies paid their fair share in taxes, according to a leading British charity.”
Tax cuts for the rich are throat cuts for the poor.
The illegitimate rulers have shown their incompetence and inhumanity by holding captive to their governing ambitions aid assistance, food, clean water, medical care and shelter.
Military junta, or Bush Administration? Both!
One word:
Genocide.
According to Christian Children’s Fund statistics, over 30,000 kids die worldwide EVERY DAY due to hunger and hunger-related disease. These statistics do not include hunger caused by natural disasters like floods and earthquakes.
I agree with previous posts that the rich do not pay their fair share, causing suffering to the poor. And the buffoon in the White House is happy to invade a country for their oil but not intervene in a country that is willing to allow their people to starve. Why? Nothing in it for rich of the US. Like Scrooge said, If the poor are to die, let them do it quickly and decrease the surplus population.
Not to excuse Burma’s pathetic response to their unfortunate catastrophe, but I fell out of my chair when Laura Bush berated the Burmese government for their failed response to the cyclone. Pardon me, but hey Laura, when my beloved city of New Orleans drowned, your hubby was partying out in the Southwest. Eh Laura, about those people in glass houses, they shouldn’t throw stones now should they? America can’t fix New Orleans but tells Burma how to respond to a natural disaster. Hypocrites!