Burma Gives 'Cronies' Slice of Storm Relief
On Magazine's List of Junta's Chosen Tycoons Are Some Facing U.S. SanctionsBy Glenn KesslerWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, June 13, 2008; A16
Just seven days after
Cyclone Nargis devastated Burma last month, the ruling military junta parceled out key sections of the affected Irrawaddy Delta to favored tycoons and companies, including several facing sanctions from the
U.S. Treasury, according to a Burmese magazine with close ties to the government.Some of the most notorious business executives in Burma, including Tay Za and Steven Law, also known as Tun Myint Naing, were given control of "reconstruction and relief" in critical townships, under the leadership of top generals. Tay Za was identified by Treasury as a "regime henchman" this year when it slapped economic sanctions on hotel enterprises and other businesses he owns.
All told, more than 30 companies and 30 executives are to divide up the business in 11 townships in areas affected by Nargis, according to the report.The document in the magazine is dated May 9, a time when the
United Nations, aid groups and many countries were pleading with the Burmese government to allow access to affected areas in the aftermath of the storm, which killed as many as 130,000 people and left 2.5 million without homes. Despite promises of greater openness, the Burmese rulers have continued to impose restrictions on aid relief, including new and onerous identification requirements for aid workers, according to reports from the region.
The document, which includes the cellphone numbers for many of the executives, was published in the Voice, a weekly journal published by Nay Win Maung. A translation was provided by BIT Team, a group of
India-based Burmese who try to promote information technology in the xenophobic country.
Nay Win Maung is a son of a military officer and was brought up among Burma's military elites, giving him good connections to military insiders. His magazines can access government-related news and exclusive information."The Treasury is targeting the regime's cronies, and the regime wants its cronies to get the money," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for
Human Rights Watch. "They see it as an opportunity to profit from the international community's compassion. But these are not experts in providing relief; they are experts in running guns and drugs and making a lot of money."Efforts to reach Burmese representatives in Washington last night were unsuccessful. The cellphone number listed for Steven Law in the Voice was answered by an associate who said he was not available.
While some of the executives awarded contracts are well known to human rights activists and financial-crime experts, others are less prominent, potentially making the document a guide to the individuals currently in favor with the military leadership. The government estimated it needed more than $11 billion in reconstruction aid shortly after the May 2-3 cyclone, a figure that met with a cool reception at an international donor’s conference in Rangoon three weeks ago. Burma, also known as Myanmar, is rich in natural resources, but much of the country is desperately poor. The junta has enriched itself with natural gas fields that bring in about $2 billion in annual revenue, as well as trade in jewels, heroin, amphetamines, timber and small arms.
Some of the conglomerates given business in the delta, such as Law's Asia World and Tay Za's Htoo Trading, were also tasked with building the country's new capital at Naypyidaw, more than 200 miles from the old capital of Rangoon. With little notice three years ago, the junta uprooted the capital to a remote area, requiring massive construction of new government buildings, hotels and housing for civil servants. Much of the country, in fact, is a forced labor camp, with more than 60 prisons, labor camps and detention centers, according to a report this year by the Burma Fund, an anti-government activist group. People forced into construction are paid minimal wages, if at all.
Hlaing Sein, an officer with the London-based Burma Campaign UK, said that Htoo Trading, which was given control of Heingigyum and Ngaopudaw townships, forced cyclone victims to work for 800 kyat a day, roughly 70 cents, in order to meet a government order to reopen schools by June 2. But a quart of water in the delta now costs the equivalent of $1.50, she said.
The Treasury sanctions against Tay Za, Law and other junta cronies -- and some of their companies -- freezes their assets and prohibits all financial and commercial transactions by U.S. entities with the designated companies and individuals, as part of an effort to break up their financial networks. The Treasury has released detailed charts about the financial links among the junta and Tay Za, Law and related associates. Tay Za, whose businesses include timber, palm oil and aviation, is said to be close to Senior Gen.
Than Shwe, the junta leader, in part because of his habit of hiring the children of powerful generals. The Bangkok Post recently reported that though no public warnings were made about the approaching cyclone, air force fighters and private passenger planes from Bagan Air -- believed to be a joint venture between Tay Za and Than Shwe's family -- were moved the evening before the storm from Rangoon airport to Mandalay, which was not in its path.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-secret13-2008jun13,0,5256820.storyFrom the Los Angeles Times
Bolger’s note.
Dr Nay Win Maung is a controversial figure among Burmese in exile over his views of national reconciliation between the Burmese opposition and ruling military junta.In 2004, Yale University's World Leaders Program invited him to the New Haven to study for four months.He has been a leading critic of the government in Burma through his magazine. Trained as a medical doctor, he sees himself as a policy critic and leading advocate for economic and political reform in Burma. He is an influencial person inside Burma.
In Myanmar, a Times reporter worked in secret to cover the story
Aided by boatmen who risked arrest, the journalist saw what the government didn't want seen in the wake of Cyclone Nargis.
From a Times Staff Writer
June 13, 2008
KONG TAN PAAK, MYANMAR — From the far side of a murky brown river, the only moving thing visible on the ravaged landscape was a tattered maroon cloth, fluttering listlessly atop a tree stripped of its branches.
Two Buddhist monks had torn it from the only material they had, one of their own coarse robes. Its message was just as plain: "Alive! Please help."
Tropical Cyclone Nargis killed 300 people in this village, wiping away almost every trace of the people, their homes and a monastery. Surviving monks went to a relief camp, but after nearly three weeks, they figured that what they had fled couldn't be much worse. So they took some of the meager rice rations they received from the military, came back and made themselves a tent by stretching tarps over a frame of fallen trees. In the two days they had been living in it, our riverboat was the first to stop. My interpreter went ashore first.
When he confirmed that no soldiers or government officials were there, I crawled out of my hiding place. Over the last 16 years, I have reported on famine, massive earthquakes and a tsunami. Cyclone Nargis is the first natural disaster that required working undercover to write about the hungry, sick and homeless.
Myanmar's military regime is suspicious of outsiders, fearing they are spies or that their presence could expose the fallacy of the government's claim to be an all-powerful provider of development and stability. The May 2-3 storm killed at least 78,000 people. And 56,000 are missing.
More than a month after the cyclone, the government continues to deny unhindered access to the disaster zone for foreign experts, such as medical and water-purification teams, threatening thousands of lives, especially those of children, pregnant women and the elderly, the United Nations and other agencies say. In the cyclone's aftermath, the regime was so determined to keep prying eyes from a landscape littered with corpses and people begging for help that it set up checkpoints on the main roads into the Irrawaddy River delta, which took the brunt of the storm.
The names and passport details of those caught were recorded before the vehicles were turned back. Local people accompanying them were interrogated.But it's much harder to police the boats that ply the delta's labyrinth of rivers and canals. The younger of the two monks, U Nya Tui Ka, 53, approached our boat, one of four I hired to take me to the delta during a month of visits, and was shocked to see a foreigner poking his head from the hold.
He assumed that help had arrived. His despair gave way to a broad smile, and then to disappointment as the interpreter explained that I was a reporter. There was an unsettling silence. Not a birdsong, a dog's bark or a crying child could be heard -- only the wind and a few buzzing flies.
Standing in the blazing sun, chewing on a mouthful of betel, the senior monk, U Pyinar Wata, patiently answered our questions. The monks could make do with the little food they had, he said. After all, Buddha had taught that without craving, there is no suffering. But the monks were worried about a few homeless children in their care. Together, the monks and boys were the only people on their side of the river for miles. Without fresh water, the monks feared, the boys might not last long. What they all needed most, said Pyinar Wata, 60, was a pump and some diesel fuel to run it, so they could empty a 150-square-foot reservoir of seawater and corpses and let it fill with clean rainwater.
He might as well have been asking for a rocket to Mars.
We had traveled with some boxes of antibiotics, bottled water, packages of cookies and instant noodles to hand out. But those had run out early on the trip. All I had left was a camera, a tape recorder -- and sympathy. We were eager to leave to stay out of the military's sight. But the monks wanted us to take pictures of the reservoir, see where they slept and cooked on a mud floor.Most cyclone survivors were the same. They talked for as long as we would stay, pouring out their souls along with the tea, coconut juice or water they offered from their meager reserves. When it was time to move on, the kindest of them said we had lifted a great weight just by caring enough to stop and listen. The 30-foot boats I hired normally haul sugar cane, bananas or rice. No crew was willing to chance two trips, so after each four-night journey, we returned to Yangon, also known as Rangoon, switched boats and set out again. The boats are not built for comfort. The holds are open to leave room for cargo, which meant my only hiding place was the cramped space beneath the top deck. About 15 feet across and 8 feet deep, with a wooden ceiling and peeling turquoise paint, it was a dark, sweltering cell barely big enough to sit upright in. The pilots sat on the roof above me. One, to keep his hands free for frequent bottles of cheap cane liquor, pinched a steel pipe between his toes, deftly working the Chinese-made 18-horsepower diesel engine that spun a long-tail propeller sluggishly churning the water. The machine pounded like a jackhammer. And since the four-man crew felt safer staying away from land, it thumped day and night, stopping only when we slipped into storm-ravaged villages.
Their courage braced by the cane liquor, the crewmen felt their way through the night. They poked at shallow channels with a bamboo sounding pole, comparing what they could see of the ruined landscape with foggy memories of trees that once pointed the way. Sunset was also the signal for the boats' full-time occupants to come crawling out of the cracks. Cockroaches the size of mice and spiders with legs as long as crabs' feasted on the crumbs of our food. At times, so many bugs skittered around that it sounded like a gentle rain. A green vine snake dropped in one night from an overhanging branch. The long, thin snakes are agile and only mildly venomous. A bite would be very painful but not fatal. Just the same, it would have blown my cover pretty quickly. A crew member who usually worked the hand pump to clear the constant flow of bilge water beat the serpent to death. Carefully keeping it at arm's length, he tossed it overboard with a stick.
The bigger danger was that we'd be found out, which the crew feared would mean jail time. It almost happened twice.
While we were docked at the delta town of Mawlamyine Gyun, two policemen on foot patrol questioned the crew. The pilot said he was a rice trader, which apparently made sense to the officers even though the hold was empty and the cyclone had wiped out the rice crop. They didn't bother to look into my hiding place, where I was cringing under a rough blanket. Another day, we nearly pulled into a destroyed village to ask directions as two army officers were ordering people around. Just yards from shore, the pilot throttled up and made a sudden U-turn as I ducked back into my cell. No one followed. Otherwise, authorities were usually nowhere to be seen in the remote villages where the suffering was most severe.
Largely left to fend for themselves through weeks of living with decomposing bodies, scant aid and evictions from relief camps, many of the survivors began to lose something: their fear of speaking out. Most are no longer afraid to openly criticize the military, to express anger that they once hid beneath a veneer of loyalty and obedience learned during 46 years of military rule. Volunteers asserted new authority. An American aid worker, also working under cover, told of a local volunteer deliberately stepping on a military officer's toes to deliver rice directly to villagers instead of following orders and taking it to the township council.
Tens of thousands of volunteers collected donations in the cities, loaded supplies into vehicles and boats and headed for destroyed villages. They came back with photos and stories of what they'd seen, short-circuiting the junta's propaganda machine. The regime's English- language newspaper, the New Light of Myanmar, praised the country's leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, for staying away from damaged areas for two weeks after the storm hit. It said his "farsightedness and genuine goodwill" let relief efforts proceed faster without him. When he did go, his "warm words of encouragement . . . made downhearted victims happy," according to the report. "While watching the news and scenes of the Senior General cordially greeting the victims on TV, we, all the people, were pleased with the efforts of the government."
But in the cities, millions have heard from foreign radio broadcasts and Internet news sites that weren't yet blocked by the regime that the generals had refused to allow tons of aid on U.S., French and British warships to be brought ashore. And they know that soldiers have forced people into trucks and dumped them back in ruined villages, and that despite promises to ease restrictions on entry to the country, their rulers are delaying the arrival of foreign experts and life-saving equipment. Villagers are listening too.
One night, when several suggested we would be safer tying up to a tree in their creek than risking the busier river route, a man heard the crackling Voice of America and British Broadcasting Corp. on the interpreter's shortwave radio. He joined him on the roof of my hiding place and listened for several hours. At dawn, when the pilot was cranking up the engine to a sputtering start, the man returned to ask a favor. He didn't want food, medicine or water. He needed the radio so the whole village could hear.
So we donated it.
The writer, who recently completed an assignment in Myanmar, is unidentified to protect those who worked with him.
Bolger’s note.
Times - One of the boats used by a Los Angeles Times staff writer for an undercover look at conditions in the Irrawaddy River delta is docked at the storm-ravaged village of Pa Dewe Gaw, Myanmar. There, survivors lived in small, leaky shacks pieced together …
ေရးမိရင္ အေကာ့နဲ႔ အတက္နဲ႔။
