Laura Bush adds condemnation as death toll passes 22,000

As Burma's cyclone death toll rose today to more than 22,000, aid agencies reported administrative problems in getting help to hundreds of thousands of people made homeless by the disaster, writes Edward Loxton for The First Post.

Burma's secretive regime waited two days before finally admitting the huge scale of the disaster and asking the UN and international relief organisations for assistance in tackling a crisis it could no longer cope with alone.

The latest death toll, most of them caused by a tidal wave described as being up to 12ft high, was announced by Foreign Minister Nyan Win - a significant departure from the regime’s usual reluctance to announce details of disasters to hit the locked-down country. When the 2004 tsunami hit the shores of southeast Asia, Burma played down the scale of the killer wave and ignored offers of international aid.

The current disaster, however, is of a scale that it cannot be hidden from the outside world without risking international repugnance and condemnation. Regime officials say a further 30,000 people are missing, raising the possibility of a death toll above 50,000.

When the 2004 tsunami hit the shores of southeast Asia, Burma played down the scale of the killer wave and ignored offers of international aid. The current disaster, however, is of a scale that it cannot be hidden from the outside world without risking international repugnance and condemnation.

The regime is under pressure to assure its own people that it is doing everything possible to rush relief to stricken areas. Angry residents of Rangoon and other devastated cities and towns are accusing the government of battening itself down in the security of its remote capital, Naypyidaw, which escaped the full force and fury of the cyclone.

In Washington, First Lady Laura Bush, an outspoken champion of democracy for Burma, accused the regime of failing to inform its people in time of the approach of the cyclone.

The enormous death toll along Burma's Arakan coast and in the Irrawaddy delta supports her accusation. One city alone, Bogalay, in the Irrawaddy delta, reported that 10,000 of its residents had died in the storm - "A scandalous toll, indicating the authorities had done nothing to prepare for the arrival of the cyclone," according to a UN official in Bangkok.

Pictures taken by unidentified cameramen from the air and broadcast on Western TV show huge swathes of the countryside under water, with just piles of rubble and timber where villages once stood.

The town of Labutta in the Irrawaddy delta was 95 per cent destroyed, and a local monastery collapsed, burying hundreds of residents seeking shelter there. International aid to the stricken areas is being held up by government restrictions on access to areas it lists as "sensitive".

"There are hundreds of thousands of people living in the open out there," said a frustrated UNICEF official, Pat McCormick. "They need help, and they need it right now."

Although communications remain ruptured, isolated residents were getting appeals through to Rangoon and the outside world. "Our food stocks have been wiped out, we have no fresh water, we can hold out only for a few more days," said one desperate farmer.

Rice, when and wherever it's still available, has doubled in price since the cyclone struck. Petrol is now the equivalent of £7 a gallon.

Soaring living costs sparked last September's demonstrations, and the regime must be worried that shortages and price spikes caused by the cyclone will once again ignite public anger across the nation - just when it's pleading with the electorate to vote in favour of a draft new constitution. The referendum might now have to be delayed.

FIRST POSTED MAY 6, 2008