Word: junta
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...junta still plans to hold a referendum on its new constitution on May 10, a move that is expected to legally legitimize military rule. Authorities have even promised to expel cyclone victims sheltering in a school in northern Rangoon so that it can be used as a polling station, claims a Western aid agency. Meanwhile, foreign embassies have received formal invitations to observe the proceedings, "probably to distract us from the lack of a relief effort," observes the Western diplomat...
Although Burma's ruling military junta has been criticized for not adequately warning citizens about the approaching storm, locals conceded that government radio had announced that a cyclone was approaching. Rangoon's iconic Shwedagon pagoda, for example, was closed on the afternoon of May 2 because of the cyclone. But there has never been such a destructive storm in living memory in Burma. Nearly everyone ignored the government warning and went to sleep as usual in their flimsy shacks that night. By 9 p.m., delta residents realized this was no normal storm. Ei Phyu Aung, a 14-year-old girl...
...junta claims otherwise. State-controlled media show high-ranking soldiers in uniform overseeing the timely delivery of relief supplies to a grateful people. But a tour of the cyclone-ravaged communities along the Pyapon River reveals the military's efforts to be criminally inadequate. Deprived of food, water, shelter and medical supplies, and stalked by disease, those who survived the cyclone might yet perish in its aftermath. A natural disaster has come and gone. A new, man-made one has already begun...
...banks of the Pyapon River, survivors of Cyclone Nargis now lash together lengths of bamboo to make primitive shelters for families the junta is too incompetent or uncaring to help. Against the odds, without any domestic or foreign aid, new homes are rising on the sodden and shredded remains...
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, Gen. Thein Sein - the man nominally overseeing Burma's relief effort - toured the delta by helicopter on Thursday, reported the junta newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar. He urged cyclone victims to "show resilience...