Pro-junta group hijacks rice lorries as UN suspends airlift of aid

The United Nations suspended its airlift of emergency supplies to Burma today after Burmese authorities at Rangoon airport impounded 38 tonnes of food flown in for survivors of the cyclone that devastated large areas of the country last Saturday, writes Edward Loxton for The First Post.

Burmese state media said the contents of two UN aircraft had not been confiscated, but would be distributed by the country's own authorities. Angry UN officials said they couldn't be sure the aid would be given to those who need it most.

Their anger is matched in Western capitals, where diplomats are discussing the possibility of supporting a unilateral relief mission into Burma, in violation of international law, but in the interests of saving further lives. The US has said four of its navy ships on an exercise off Thailand are moving closer to Burma in case a decision is made to launch an emergency rescue mission. The ships carry helicopters and all the technical and medical equipment necessary to meet any crisis.

The two UN flights isolated by customs officials at Rangoon airport were part of a UN World Food Programme initiative to rush aid to the worst affected region, the Irrawaddy delta, where more than one million people have been without food, water or adequate shelter for nearly a week. The UN had earlier pressed on with its relief mission although other aid agencies were cancelling their own until the Burmese regime allowed foreign staff into the country to distribute supplies.

The Burmese regime says it welcomes outside help - cash and material aid - but will not tolerate foreign relief workers on its soil.

Fears that the regime might commandeer the supplies for their own purposes were confirmed today by reports that members of a pro-government "citizens' action" group were hijacking lorries carrying rice and other urgently needed food through Rangoon. One group of club-wielding thugs from the government-supported Union Solidarity and Development Association attacked a convoy of several vehicles. It wasn't clear how much of the relief supplies they made off with.

Social order has all but broken down in the Irrawaddy delta, where desperate survivors fight for any food they can find. The few relief workers who have managed to reach villages isolated by the floodwaters are having trouble controlling the crowds that form at food distribution points. Looting is rife throughout the region, and at least one rice mill has been plundered.

UNICEF reports that one in five children among the survivors is suffering from diarrhoea, caused by drinking contaminated water. Cholera outbreaks have occurred in at least two delta towns, as I wrote yesterday [see report below], while malaria deaths have risen dramatically.

Although the regime says it is capable of distributing donated food and medical supplies supplies to the stricken areas, most villages reached by Western relief workers already in the country say they haven't seen one soldier or government medical officer, let alone any aid. "It's an appalling scene," said a member of one non-governmental organisation. "Babies are dying in their mothers' arms. Old people are imploring us for food and water. And all around lie dead bodies. The people are too weak to bury them even if they could."

State television broadcasts, meanwhile, were dominated by Saturday's constitutional referendum, punctuated by a government video showing a line of young women in miniskirts performing a hot little dance number appealing to viewers to vote in favor of the new constitution, designed to entrench military power indefinitely. "Perhaps it's just as well there are no more functioning television sets in the Irrawaddy delta," commented one Burmese exile drily.

FIRST POSTED MAY 9, 2008