ေခြးသူခိုးအစိုးရ အေမစုဆို ေၾကာက္မွေၾကာက္ ..
AFP
Myanmar junta rejects Suu Kyi's detention appeal AFP/File – Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi speaks at a press conference in 2002. Myanmar's military …
YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar's military government has rejected an appeal by pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi against her detention, a party spokesman said Tuesday.
National League for Democracy (NLD) party spokesman Nyan Win told AFP that Aung San Suu Kyi's lawyer had received a letter confirming the failed bid last Friday, less than a month before her current sentence expires.
The 63-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate has spent most of the past 19 years under house arrest in Yangon where she lives with her two maids and is allowed only occasional visits, mostly from her lawyer and doctor.
She lodged her appeal in October last year.
"According to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's lawyer U Kyi Win, the appeal against her detention was rejected," Nyan Win said, although he himself had not read the letter.
"It should not be like this as they haven't allowed her any court hearing for her appeal."
He said the assistant to Aung San Suu Kyi's lawyer, Hla Myo Myint, went to the remote administrative capital Naypyidaw on Friday to receive the rejection letter after being summoned by authorities.
Her lawyer Kyi Win has now requested a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, Nyan Win said.
The appeal was lodged after Aung San Suu Kyi was given an intravenous drip by her doctor because of malnourishment after refusing food deliveries for a month.
In August last year she refused a visit from United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari, apparently in protest at the lack of progress he was making on reform in Myanmar.
Aung San Suu Kyi's latest period of incarceration expires at the end of May and authorities have not said yet if they intend to extend her sentence.
The military, which has ruled impoverished Myanmar with an iron rod since 1962, is preparing for elections next year under a "road map to democracy" -- which critics have derided as a sham meant to entrench the generals' power.
The NLD won a landslide victory in elections in 1990, but the junta never allowed them to take office.
Last week the NLD set conditions on taking part in the election, saying it would participate only if all political prisoners including NLD leaders were unconditionally released.
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Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Burma terrorist government known as Myanmar junta rejects Suu Kyi's detention appeal
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
က်မတို ့့ကျမန္မာျပည္ကပါ ေနျပည္ေတာ္က ဟုတ္ပါဘူး
A Myanmar family has a meal under the plastic tent that serves as their home in Twantay, Myanmar, April 30, 2009. Many Myanmar resident are still struggling to meet basic daily needs a year after Cyclone Nargis struck the area. Twantay is about 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Yangon
Monday, May 4, 2009
မုန္တိုင္းေဒသ သတင္းမွန္ စစ္အၾကမ္းဖက္အစိုးရ ဖုံးထားဆဲ
03 May 2009
တႏွစ္ျပည့္သြားတဲ့ နာဂစ္မုန္တိုင္းေဘးဒဏ္နဲ႔ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအစိုးရထုတ္ သတင္းစာေတြက အေျခအေနေတြ တိုးတက္ေကာင္းမြန္လာၿပီလို႔ ေဖာ္ျပထားပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ တကယ့္လက္ရွိအေျခအေနမွာကေတာ့ မုန္တိုင္းဒဏ္သင့္ ျပည္သူလူထုေတြဟာ နလန္မထူႏိုင္ၾကဘဲ ရွိေနတုန္းပါ။ ဒါကို ျမန္မာအစိုးရသတင္းစာေတြက သတင္းအခ်က္အလက္ေတြ စံုစံုလင္လင္ မွန္မွန္ကန္ကန္ မေဖာ္ျပတဲ့တြက္ ဒုကၡေရာက္ေနရတဲ့ျပည္သူေတြမွာ အမ်ားႀကီး ထိခိုက္နစ္နာေနၾကရတယ္လုိ႔ ကိုယ္တုိင္ကူညီကယ္ဆယ္ေရး လုပ္ေနၾကတဲ့သူေတြက ေျပာပါတယ္။ အျပည့္စံုကို ေဒၚေမၿငိမ္းက တင္ျပထားပါတယ္။
အစိုးရပိုင္သတင္းစာတရပ္က သတင္းအခ်က္အလက္ေတြကို ထိမ္ခ်န္တဲ့အတြက္ တကယ္တမ္းဒုကၡေရာက္ၾကရတဲ့ မုန္တိုင္း သင့္ျပည္သူေတြမွာ ဘယ္လိုမ်ိဳး ဆိုးက်ိဳးေတြ ခံစားရသလဲ ဆိုတာကို မုန္တိုင္းသင့္ေဒသေတြမွာ သြားၿပီးေတာ့ ကိုယ္တိုင္ ကိုယ္က် အကူအညီေတြေပးခဲ့ဖူးၿပီး အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုကို ေရာက္ရွိေနတဲ့ မခိုင္မြန္ဦး က အခုလို ေျပာျပပါတယ္။
“မုန္တိုင္းဒုကၡသည္ေတြမွာ အကုန္လံုး အဆင္ေျပေနတယ္ဆိုတာကေတာ့ မဟုတ္ဘူး။ တခ်ိဳ႕ဟာေတြ အဆင္ေျပေနၿပီ။ အကုန္လံုးအဆင္ေျပသြားတယ္ ဆိုတာကေတာ့ လံုး၀မဟုတ္ဘူး။ လူတေယာက္အတြက္က မိသားစုေရာ အိမ္ေရာ လုပ္ငန္း ေတြေရာ မုန္တိုင္းတိုက္လုိက္လို႔ ပါသြားတဲ့အခါမွာ တႏွစ္အတြင္း အကုန္လံုးျပန္ၿပီးေတာ့ မူလအတိုင္း ျပန္ျဖစ္သြားၿပီ ဆိုတာ ကေတာ့ မျဖစ္ႏိုင္ဘူးေပါ့ေနာ္။ ဒီလိုကိစၥေတြမွာ အစုိးရကေနၿပီးေတာ့ အဆင္မေျပေသးတာေတြကို သတင္းအေမွာင္ခ်ၿပီး ေတာ့ အဆင္ေျပေနပါၿပီ ဆိုၿပီးေျပာေတာ့ ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္းက ကူညီခ်င္တဲ့သူေတြကလည္း၊ ဒီဟာေတြက အကုန္အဆင္ေျပ သြားၿပီဆိုၿပီး မကူညီလိုက္ေတာ့ ဒုကၡသည္ေတြမွာ အကူအညီရမယ့္ဟာ မရေတာ့ဘဲနဲ႔ ပိုၿပီးေတာ့ ဒုကၡေရာက္လာတာေတြ အမ်ားႀကီးေပါ့ေနာ္။ သိသိသာသာ လိုအပ္ေနတာေတြကို ေဖာ္ျပမွပဲ ျပည္သူေတြအခ်င္းခ်င္း ကူညီႏိုင္မယ္၊ ကူညီဖို႔လည္း သိလာမယ္။ ဒါမွလည္း ဒုကၡသည္ေတြလည္း လိုအပ္ေနတဲ့ အကူအညီေတြကို ျမန္ျမန္ရၿပီးေတာ့ သူတို႔ဘ၀အတြက္ နဂို အတိုင္း ျပန္ျဖစ္ဖို႔အတြက္ ျမန္ျမန္လုပ္ႏိုင္မယ္လို႔ ထင္ပါတယ္။”
မုန္တိုင္းသင့္ေဒသေတြကို အေခါက္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာသြားၿပီး ကူညီကယ္ဆယ္ေရး လုပ္ငန္းေတြ လုပ္ကိုင္ခဲ့တဲ့ စာေရးဆရာမ ခက္မာ ကေတာ့ ျမန္မာအစိုးရသတင္းစာေတြမွာ သတင္းမွန္ေတြ မေဖာ္ျပတာဟာ အံ့ၾသစရာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူးလို႔ အခုလို ေျပာပါတယ္။
“က်မတို႔က နာဂစ္တုန္းက ေဒးဒရဲ ကို အဓိကထားၿပီး သြားၾကတာ။ သူတို႔က အမ်ားေသာအားျဖင့္ လယ္သမားေတြေလ။ စပါး ျပန္မစိုက္ႏုိင္ေသးဘူး။ ေနာက္ စိုက္ႏိုင္ျပန္ေတာ့လည္း မ်ိဳးေတြက သူတို႔သံုးေနက် စပါးမ်ိဳးေတြ မဟုတ္တဲ့အတြက္ မေပါက္ဘူးေပါ့။ အစိုးရက တကယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ လက္လမ္းမမီဘူးလို႔ပဲ ေျပာရမလားပဲ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ လက္လွမ္းမမီဘူးလို႔ ေျပာရေအာင္လည္း က်မေျပာတဲ့ ေဒးဒရဲတို႔ မအူပင္တို႔ဆိုတာ ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕နဲ႔အနီးဆံုး ၿမိဳ႕၀ကၽြန္းေပၚ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ေတြပဲေလ။ အဲဒီေတာ့ ဘာျဖစ္လို႔ ကြာဟေနသလဲ ဆိုတာကို ေျပာရမယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ ဒါကေတာ့ အားလံုးသိၿပီးသားပဲ။ ဒါ ထံုးစံပဲဟာ။ ဘယ္တုန္းကမွ အမွန္ကုိ မသိရဘူးေလ။”
ေနာ္ေ၀ႏိုင္ငံမွာေရာက္ရွိေနထိုင္ေနတဲ့ အေနာ္မာ သတင္းဌာနရဲ႕ အယ္ဒီတာ ျမေၾကးမံုကေတာ့ သတင္းစာေတြမွာ တကယ့္ လိုအပ္ခ်က္ေတြကို ေဖာ္ျပမွ မုန္တိုင္းဒဏ္သင့္ ဒုကၡေရာက္ေနသူေတြကို ကူညီကယ္ဆယ္ႏိုင္မွာျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ ေျပာသြားပါ တယ္။
“မုန္တိုင္းတိုက္သြားတယ္ဆိုတာ သဘာ၀ ေဘးအႏၱရာယ္ပါ။ အစိုးရတိုက္ခုိင္းလို႔ တိုက္တာလဲ မဟုတ္ေတာ့ သူတို႔ အျပစ္ လို႔လည္း မေျပာတဲ့ကိစၥမွာေတာ့ သတင္းအေမွာင္ခ်တာ မလုပ္သင့္ဘူးလို႔ ျမင္ပါတယ္။ ဘာေၾကာင့္လဲဆိုေတာ့ အခု တႏွစ္ ဆိုတာ ဘာမွၾကာေသးတာလည္းမဟုတ္ေတာ့ ဘာေတြျဖစ္သြားတယ္၊ အဲဒီေနရာမွာ အခုထိ ဘာျပႆနာေတြ တက္ခဲ့ တယ္၊ လူေတြ စား၀တ္ေနေရးေတြ က်န္းမာေရးေတြ ဘယ္လိုအခက္အခဲေတြ ရွိတယ္ဆိုတာကို အမွန္အတုိင္း သတင္းဖြင့္ ေပးလိုက္လို႔ရွိရင္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာကေရာ ျပည္တြင္းကေရာ အကူအညီေတြ အမ်ားႀကီး ရႏုိင္ပါတယ္။ အခု သတင္းေတြကို အေမွာင္ခ်ထားေတာ့ ရစရာရွိတဲ့အကူအညီေတြ အမ်ားႀကီး ေလ်ာ့နည္းသြားရတယ္။ ဆံုးရံႈးသြားရတယ္။ ကာယကံရွင္ေတြ အမ်ားႀကီး နစ္နာပါတယ္။ အခုလက္ရွိ အေျခအေနမွာေတာ့ ရွိေနတဲ့ျပႆနာေတြ အမ်ားႀကီးပါ။ ကေလးေတြ ေစာေစာ စီးစီး ေက်ာင္းထြက္လုိက္ရတယ္။ ဒီႏွစ္ဆိုလည္း ကေလး ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ား ေက်ာင္းျပန္မအပ္ႏိုင္ဘူး။ ဒီလိုပဲ အိမ္ေထာင္ က်တဲ့ကေလးေတြက အိမ္ေထာင္စုမွာ ဦးစီးေခါင္းေဆာင္ ျဖစ္ကုန္တယ္။ သူတို႔ေက်ာင္းထဲမွာ မေနႏိုင္ဘူး။ ဒါေတြကို အမွန္ အတိုင္း သတင္းဖြင့္ေပးလိုက္ရင္ ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးဟာ အင္မတန္ စာနာတတ္တဲ့လူမ်ိဳးပါ။ သိရင္ အမ်ားႀကီး အကူအညီ ေပးၾက မွာပါ။ ဒီကေလးေတြကိုေရာ၊ သူတို႔ရဲ႕ နီးစပ္ရာ ေဆြးမ်ိဳးသားခ်င္းေတြကိုေရာ။ သတင္းေတြ အကုန္အုပ္ထားၿပီး အားလံုး ေကာင္းသြားၿပီ၊ ၿပီးသြားၿပီ၊ အဆင္ေျပပါၿပီ လုပ္ေနေတာ့ တကယ့္လက္ေတြ႔ အဲဒီမွာ စား၀တ္ေနေရး ဒုကၡ ေရာက္ေနတဲ့သူ ေတြ မွာ ဒုကၡကို ဘယ္သူမွလည္း မသိဘူး။ သူတို႔ဘာသာ ျဖစ္သလို ရုန္းေနရတယ္။ ဒါေတြ မျဖစ္ေစခ်င္ပါဘူး။”
ႏိုင္ငံပိုင္သတင္းစာမ်က္ႏွာေတြေပၚမွာ မုန္တိုင္းသင့္ေဒသရဲ႕ အေျခအေနမွန္ေတြကို အခု တႏွစ္ၾကာတဲ့အထိ ျပည္သူေတြ ကို အသိမေပးဘဲထားတဲ့အေပၚမွာ အသီးသီးတံု႔ျပန္ခဲ့ၾကတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
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နာဂစ္ အျဖစ္မွန္ အေတြ ့အၾကံဳ (ဘီဘီစီမွ)
((သစ္တံုးမွတ္လို ့ဖက္ျပီး လိုက္လာတာကုန္းေပၚတင္မွ မိေက်ာင္းမွန္းသိတယ္ အျမီးကလုပ္စိလုပ္စိနဲ ့)).......ကိုရင္ေလး
Confirmed cases of H1N1 Swine Flu virus approach 1,000
(CNN) -- The World Health Organization cautioned that the swine flu outbreak could gain momentum in the months ahead, despite claims by the health secretary of Mexico -- the epicenter of the outbreak -- that the virus "is in its declining phase."
The number of confimed cases of the H1N1 virus continue to multiply.
As of early Monday, Mexican health officials reported 568 cases and 22 fatalities linked to the flu. WHO says it has confirmed 506 cases and 19 deaths in Mexico.
The world has 985 confirmed cases of the virus, known to scientists H1N1 virus, in a total of 20 countries, WHO said Monday.
The United States has reported 226 confirmed cases in 30 states. The U.S. cases include one death -- a Mexican toddler visiting relatives in the United States.
According to WHO, Canada has 85 confirmed cases; Spain has 40; the United Kingdom has 15; Germany has 8; New Zealand has 4; Israel has 3; El Salvador has 2; France has 2; and Austria, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, Italy, South Korea and Switzerland each have one.
The outbreak is only about 10 days old, and even if the illness is declining, it could return, said Gregory Hartl, the WHO spokesman for epidemic and pandemic diseases, at a briefing Sunday.
"I ... would like to remind people that in 1918 the Spanish flu showed a surge in the spring, and then disappeared in the summer months, only to return in the autumn of 1918 with a vengeance," Hartl said. "And we know that that eventually killed 40 million to 50 million people."
Mexican authorities believe the most active period of the virus in Mexico was between April 23 and April 28, and Mexican Health Secretary Jose Cordova described the outbreak as being in decline in his country.
In China, officials have quarantined 68 people, including 13 crew members, who were passengers of a Mexico City to Shanghai flight, which carried a passenger who tested positive for the virus, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported Sunday. None of the other passengers has exhibited any flu-like symptoms, one health official said.
About another 110 people who were on the Aeromexico plane went on to other destinations, and may face quarantines elsewhere, the news agency said. Fifteen have been quarantined at a Beijing hotel.
Shanghai's airport is now barring other Aeromexico planes from landing there, a representative of the airline told CNN. Aeromexico is suspending flights to Shanghai until May 15, the representative said. The airline does not fly to Hong Kong or Beijing.
In the United States, New York has the most confirmed cases, with 63, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Texas has 40; California has 26; Arizona 18; South Carolina 15; Delaware 10; Massachusetts and New Jersey each have seven; Colorado has four; Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin each have three; Connecticut, Kansas and Michigan each have two; Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Utah each have one.
California officials suspended visitation and other "nonessential activities" at Centinela State Prison in Imperial County after an inmate was suspected of having swine flu. The case has yet to be confirmed with lab testing.
On Sunday, health officials in North Carolina and Pennsylvania announced the first confirmed cases in those states, and Louisiana's governor said his state had seven confirmed cases. The cases from those three states were not immediately included in the CDC tally.
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelius, appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," warned that even if the flu outbreak wanes, "it could come back with greater force in the winter and fall, when we get into flu season."
"So, this is no time for complacency," she said. "We want to stay out ahead of this."
Dr. Anne Schuchat, the CDC's interim deputy director for public health, told reporters Sunday that she was "heartened" by Mexican authorities' reports but still is "very cautious."
"I know that influenza can be surprising, and the time course here in the United States is later. We believe we're just on the upswing here, and in several parts of Mexico, cases began quite a while ago," Schuchat said.
"From what I know about influenza, I do expect more cases, more severe cases and I do expect more deaths," she added. "And I'm particularly concerned about what will happen in the fall."
Acting CDC Director Richard Besser, also speaking on "State of the Union," said U.S. health officials are examining whether people who received flu shots for the swine flu in 1976 may have some level of protection from the current swine flu.
"That's going to play in very, very big as we move forward with our plans around vaccines, because that may help guide some of the issues around who is most at risk at getting this in the future," Besser said.
Offering a general picture of the state of U.S. efforts to combat the virus, Besser said "there are encouraging signs."
"We're not out of the woods yet," he said. "But what we've learned about the virus itself -- it doesn't contain the factors that we know are seen in much more severe flu strains."
While the new virus strain in the recent outbreak has affected humans, Canadian officials said it has shown up at a pig farm in Alberta, Canada.
Officials said the pigs may have been infected by a Canadian farmer who recently returned from a trip to Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak. The pigs have since been quarantined.
"We have determined that the virus H1N1, found in these pigs, is the virus which is being tracked in the human population," said Dr. Brian Evans of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. iReport.com: How should H1N1 be handled?
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Evans and other officials said it is not uncommon for flu viruses to jump from humans to animals, and that it does not pose a risk for consuming pork. The number of pigs infected was not disclosed.
The infected farmer had flu-like symptoms, but he is recovering, Evans said.
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Myanmar survivors mark cyclone anniversary နာဂစ္မုန္တိုင္းလြတ္ေျမက္သူတဦးရဲ ့ႏွစ္ပါတ္လည္
နာဂစ္မုန္တိုင္းလြတ္ေျမက္သူတဦးရဲ ့ႏွစ္ပါတ္လည္ မျပီးႏိုင္ေသးေသာ ခိုလံုရာ အရိပ္
THA KYAR HIN O, Myanmar (AFP) – Emotional survivors gathered in Myanmar to remember the 138,000 people left dead or missing by Cyclone Nargis, despite authorities largely ignoring the storm's first anniversary.
No official ceremonies were planned and state media made no mention of the deadly storm, which lay waste to large swathes of the country on May 2-3 last year and drew worldwide criticism for Myanmar's military rulers.
Only the Myanmar language daily newspaper Myanma Ahlin made any reference to the 2.4 million people affected by the cyclone, with photographs of the new houses authorities have built for some of the survivors.
Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar on May 2 and 3 with wind speeds reaching 240 kilometres (150 miles) an hour and storm surges up to four metres high.
Thousands of homes were swept away, rice fields were flooded with saltwater and schools and hospitals were ravaged in the storm.
A year later aid agencies say half a million people remain without adequate homes, while at least 250,000 people will require food handouts until the end of 2009 at the earliest.
But many survivors were more concerned with the dead as they marked the cyclone's anniversary Sunday, with those who could afford to paying about 100,000 Kyats (100 dollars) in donations for a monk-led ceremony at home.
Win Khaing, 22, from Tha Kyar Hin O, hosted his own memorial before visiting the unveiling a new cyclone shelter in his village.
"We did a memorial for my mum and two-year-old niece by donating to Buddhist monks this morning. I think they are in peace now," he said.
Most people in this predominantly Buddhist country believe that donations to monasteries can lead to a more peaceful afterlife for dead souls.
But many of those still reliant on handouts of aid to survive said they could not afford to pay for their own ceremony.
"I want to hold a memorial for my parents. But I can't help as we are also relying on donations," said 38-year-old Aye Tint, from Shwe Magyikan village that neighbours Tha Kyar Hin O.
Aye Tint lost both her parents and two sisters to the cyclone, while nearly 60 residents from her village were killed.
She and her sister Thaung believe they have been possessed with the restless spirits of their dead relatives, who they said would not find peace until a monk-led memorial is held.
"I feel so sorry for my mum as she came into my body. I have never faced anything like this in my life before," Aye Tint's sister Thaung, 50, told AFP.
Myanmar's military government faced international criticism for its immediate response to the storm, accused of stymieing emergency aid and initially refusing to grant access to humanitarian workers and supplies.
In late May UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon brokered a deal that allowed a group of officials from the UN, Myanmar's government and regional bloc ASEAN to coordinate aid deliveries to the delta.
But long-term shelter, cash to replenish lost assets and further food supplies are all still critically needed, aid workers said, as they sought 691 million dollars in fresh donations for the next three years.
"Continued support and engagement by the international community must be ensured for years to come," said UN Resident Coordinator Bishow Parajuli.
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Sunday, May 3, 2009
တခါတေလလည္းလူ ့ဘ၀ဆိုတာ Culture Unplugged Video
ဒီဗီြဒီယိုကေတာ့ ဂ်ာမနီ ဘာလင္ျမိဳ ့မွာ ပထမ ရခဲ ့တဲ ့အတို ဆံုးဗြီဒီယိုေလးပါ။
This film is about the hunger and poverty brought about by Globalization. There are 10,000 people dying everyday due to hunger and malnutrition. This short film shows a forgotten portion of the society. The people who live on the refuse of men to survive. What is inspiring is the hope and spirituality that never left this people
Burma worst for blogger bans ကမၻာတြင္ ဘေလာ့ခ္အမ်ားဆံုးအထိုးနက္ခံရသည္ ့ဗမာစစ္အၾကမ္းဖက္ အစိုးရ
* Tracy McVeigh
* The Observer, Sunday 3 May 2009
* Article history
Burma has been judged the worst country in the world for online restrictions in a report looking at the repression faced by bloggers.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which has compiled a list of the 10 worst countries to be a blogger, says it wants to shame those governments which are most aggressively attempting to curtail and censor web activity.
Bloggers inside Burma proved invaluable in passing out information during the September 2007 uprisings, leading to the ruling military junta blocking the internet completely for a period.
Iran, where a young blogger died in prison last month, was named as the second-worst country. Omid Mir Sayafi died in Tehran's Evin jail, which is known to hold political prisoners, after being arrested for allegedly insulting Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a blog he posted.
The "roll of dishonour" goes on to name Syria, where internet cafe owners were ordered to report on customers; Cuba, where 21 bloggers are in jail; Saudi Arabia, where an estimated 400,00 sites are blocked; Vietnam; Tunisia; China, where the most comprehensive online controls are in place; Turkmenistan, where the nation's first internet cafe was guarded by troops; and Egypt where more than 100 bloggers were detained last year alone.
All of the countries have burgeoning blogging cultures despite extensive monitoring, censorship and repression by the authorities
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UN still waiting on Burma cyclone aid
ABC news
Updated Sat May 2, 2009 3:56pm AEST
Two million people lost their homes and about 140,000 lost their lives after the cyclone tore through the region.
Two million people lost their homes and about 140,000 lost their lives after the cyclone tore through the region. (User submitted: file photo: Kyaw Kyaw)
Two million people lost their homes and about 140,000 lost their lives after the cyclone tore through the region on May 4, 2008.
The UN says it has received only about $136 million of nearly $1 billion that it appealed for.
Yet the amounts of aid being requested are just a fraction of what was spent on countries like Indonesia after the tsunami, and not much is forthcoming yet.
Reconstruction as opposed to emergency relief has barely begun.
The World Food Program's director in Burma, Chris Kay, says many survivors are still living in flimsy shelters and food supplies are contaminated by salt.
"Over 130,000 families we estimate are currently still living in shacks," he said.
"The other problem that we've got is because we haven't received the money required for the reconstitution of the agricultural production, we've got people who are in massive levels of debt. They don't have the way to be able to put the land to work."
Dan Collison, of Save the Children in Burma, says many survivors remain in flimsy shelters.
"Lots of people are still living in really terrible housing, up to half a million people still sheltering under the plastic sheeting that was distributed to them a year ago," he said.
"The second big problem is that livelihoods for many people still haven't recovered.
"The third big problem has been very very serious and widespread water shortages across the delta during this dry season."
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နာဂစ္ မုန္တိုင္းဒုကၡသည္မ်ားအား အတင္းအဓမၼ တံတားေဆာက္ခိုင္း
Cyclone tragedy forces Burma junta to build bridges
Published Date: 03 May 2009
By Special Report from Pathein, Burma
THE grass, one year on, has finally taken hold in the salty soil of the cemeteries. The bodies, nearly 85,000 of them, have been fished from the rivers, dug from the mud, cleared from the ponds and put to rest.
In addition, about 54,000 people are still listed as missing, but everyone in the Burmese delta who survived Cyclone Nargis knows full well that "missing", by now, means "dead".
The cyclone, which struck on the night of May 2 last year, was one of the deadliest storms in recorded history. It blew away 700,000 homes in the delta. It killed three-quarters of the livestock, sank half the fishing fleet and salted more than a million acres of rice paddies with its seawater surges.
In many ways, just a year beyond these horrors, life in the Irrawaddy Delta has settled back into some of its familiar rhythms: the push of the planting and the pull of the harvest.
But something unexpected has happened too, according to UN officials, aid workers and foreign diplomats in Burma. The storm – and the increase in humanitarian aid that followed – may have opened a breach in the hard political wall around Burma.
In the days after the cyclone, the hard-line generals who run Burma did not know what, quite literally, had hit them. French and American naval ships carrying aid supplies waited just offshore for more than two weeks while the generals dithered. Finally, lacking permission to deliver the aid, the ships withdrew – to international condemnation of the junta.
"The generals thought it was just another typical cyclone, where the army would hand out some rice and a few tarps and that would be it," said a senior UN programme director who spoke anonymously for fear of angering the government.
"The regime made some shocking mistakes early on, really horrible, when they blocked the aid. But these were decisions driven by national pride. They thought, 'We can handle this on our own.'
"With all the international furore, they finally realised 'This is way, way too big for us.' And after that, they did a lot. A huge national response occurred."
The secretive and xenophobic junta – still fearing a seaborne invasion by western powers – now readily accepts air shipments of foreign aid, even from the West. Although foreigners still cannot enter the delta without official permission, the number of international aid groups allowed to work in Burma has doubled in the past year.
Burma's neighbours in the Association of South-east Asian Nations, especially Indonesia and Singapore, have been widely credited with helping the junta to assume a somewhat more relaxed posture.
Healthcare experts also cite the government's efforts to actively address a range of public health issues, especially avian flu, HIV and Aids.
"You can work here very well, and to say that you can't is a lie," said Dr Frank Smithuis, a country director for Doctors Without Borders. "Look, the human rights record is shaky, yes, and it's politically nice to beat up Burma, but the military at times has actually been quite helpful to us."
The junta is widely vilified. It has imprisoned political opponents, Buddhist monks and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate without apology. When the country's most famous comedian, Zarganar, also known as The Tweezers, rebuked the government over its slow response to Cyclone Nargis, he was arrested and sentenced to 59 years in prison; the term was later reduced to 35.
And though short-term aid is getting to the delta, major donors have stayed away, including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
According to a new recovery plan, the delta will need £460m in aid over the next three years, although it could be hard to raise. A yearlong UN appeal has just ended, underfinanced by £108m, or one-third of its goal.
"The people in the delta aren't defeated, but they are lost," said a western diplomat who recently visited the area but was not authorised to speak on the record.
"They're desperate. They didn't have much before, and now they have next to nothing. They just don't see how to climb out."
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