Word: storm
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...After this episode, my driver thought it prudent to avoid coming on a visit to several storm-ravaged villages. A boat was arranged and in my notebook, he wrote out basic questions in Burmese that I could at least point to when meeting cyclone victims: what is your village name, what is the death toll, have you gotten any government...
...thing on Min Soe's mind was casting a vote. Cyclone Nargis had just razed his house and ravaged the rice paddies that were to provide half of his yearly income. Nearly all the other wooden shacks in his village of Too Chaung had also been annihilated by the storm. Then, on May 10, representatives from Burma's repressive military junta descended on the village. Were they coming to bring badly needed food, water and building materials to the people of Too Chaung? Hardly. Instead, the government men forced villagers to participate in a constitutional referendum that critics have labeled...
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...
...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, in other disaster...
...town. Foreign reporters were being turned away, as well as some trucks laden with international donations that didn't have the proper documentation to convince the soldiers patrolling the checkpoint. 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...