Word: myanmar
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...Some observers, including former USAID director Andrew Natsios, have called on the U.S. to unilaterally begin air drops to the Burmese people regardless of what the junta says. The Bush Administration has so far rejected the idea - "I can't imagine us going in without the permission of the Myanmar government," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday - but it's not without precedent: as Natsios pointed out to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. has facilitated the delivery of humanitarian aid without the host government's consent in places like Bosnia and Sudan...
Apparently, the country's top brass disagreed. Although certain districts ravaged by the storm had their polls postponed until May 24, Too Chaung was declared one of the cyclone-struck regions that had already "returned to normalcy," as the government-run newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar, put it. That would be news to Too Chaung's residents, who were still tying together bamboo poles and palm fronds to build crude temporary shelters the day of the referendum. Villagers who voted in a nearby school filed out quietly afterward, hardly looking pleased about participating in what the junta has touted...
...with us. Accompanied by two officers, a police lieutenant copies our passport details into his notebook, shakes our hands,and leaves. At the monastery, we are told "no photos, no interviews" by a fourth officer. The relief effort isn?t working-the UN and other agencies have complained that Myanmar is dragging its feet on the issuing of visas for its personnel they say are badly needed to cope with the crisis-but the apparatus of state control, which watches Burmese and foreigners alike, is apparently doing just fine...
...like him await basic supplies. Yet the day before, Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein, who is overseeing Burma's relief effort, "presented 20 sets of TV, 10 DVD players, and 10 satellite receivers" to entertain storm victims elsewhere in the delta, reported the junta newspaper The New Light of Myanmar. "The government is not coming," summarizes Kyaw Mya. "Foreign countries are not coming...
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...