Word: burma
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...Disaster After first announcing that the constitutional referendum would take place as scheduled, the junta did finally decide on May 6 to postpone the plebiscite until May 24 in the hardest-hit townships. Initially a state-run newspaper said there would be no delay because the people of Burma were eagerly looking forward to the chance to vote. But, says Aung Zaw, a Burmese in exile who edits the Thailand-based Irrawaddy newsmagazine, "what the people in Burma are eagerly looking forward to is the military government bringing them food and water and shelter...
...place that the cyclone spared was Burma's new administrative capital, Naypyidaw, which was carved out of the jungle by the ruling junta in 2005. Burmese civil servants who had to move from Rangoon to the new capital were given no explanation for the shift. But some local journalists in Rangoon speculated that junta leader Than Shwe had been swayed by soothsayers who predicted that civil unrest and a natural disaster would soon strike the city of roughly 5 million. In September, the monk-led protests made the first part of the prophecy come true; the cyclone fulfilled the second...
...people of Burma take omens seriously. For centuries, the vagaries of weather have been scrutinized by astrologers who divine a relationship between celestial irregularities and earthly mayhem. So when a tropical cyclone tore across the country on May 2 and 3, killing tens of thousands and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless in the Irrawaddy River delta and the city of Rangoon, Burmese couldn't help noting the curious timing: exactly a week later, on May 10, the thuggish ruling junta was set to hold a constitutional referendum, a step toward what the military has called a discipline-flourishing democracy. Then...
Cleaning up after a catastrophe is hard work anywhere. But few places are more vulnerable than Burma, also known as Myanmar, an isolated, desperately poor nation of 53 million. Diseases that fester in the wake of such natural disasters could prove as deadly as the storm. Most galling, a 450,000-strong military that had ruthlessly gunned down dozens of monk-led demonstrators last September was seen as doing little to address the country's worst weather calamity in living memory. Faced with such monumental devastation, the junta has said it would welcome foreign help. On May 6, President George...
...place the cyclone spared was Burma's new administrative capital, Naypyidaw, carved out of the jungle in 2005. No official reason was given for shifting the capital from Rangoon, but locals have speculated that the military had been swayed by soothsayers who predicted that civil unrest and a natural disaster would soon strike the city. Within eight months of each other, both prophecies had come true. "People in Burma are angry about two things," says Aung Zaw, a Burmese in exile who edits a Thailand-based magazine called the Irrawaddy. "They're angry at the military for reacting so slowly...