Word: aided
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...junta excels at fear. Twenty minutes before meeting San San Khing, I was stopped at one of several checkpoints that have been set up in disaster-struck areas to keep foreign journalists and aid workers without the proper government permits out. A polite immigration officer took down my passport details, as well as the name and address of my local driver. His colleague told me that the cyclone had blown down his house. They didn't say it, but their demeanor was apologetic - a slight sense of embarrassment that their orders were to keep their wounded country closed...
...Burma's worst natural disaster in modern history to participate in a referendum of questionable validity underscores the callousness of the Burmese regime. But the determination to hold the plebiscite also points to an even darker irony. A week after the cyclone devastated the Irrawaddy Delta, precious little aid is reaching the storm's victims. On Friday, in village after village, residents told me no aid at all had arrived. Blackened, bloated corpses still bobbed in rivers. Many storm survivors had no idea when they would be eating their next meal. NGOs began reporting outbreaks of diarrheal disease. By contrast...
...well: free transportation in trucks would be provided to villagers who didn't live within walking distance of the nearest polling station. Imagine if those trucks had been redeployed instead for the cyclone relief effort. Or if foreign NGOs were given permission to enter the country and coordinate aid work-something that is happening at a glacial pace. One of the few foreign shipments allowed in was quickly relabeled to say that the goods had been donated courtesy of the junta. "With each passing day, we come closer to a massive health disaster and a second wave of deaths that...
...Within the town itself, where two-thirds of buildings were battered by the cyclone, some soldiers were tossing storm debris into military trucks. But other army men were busy questioning suspicious-looking outsiders. It struck me that almost as much effort was being expended keeping foreigners out as bringing aid...
...passport number. The information was carefully recorded by six different officials in six different notebooks. Reports will surely be filed, perhaps six separate times. And as the information works its way up the chain of command, the people of the Irrawaddy Delta will still be waiting for the aid they need to begin rebuilding their lives...