Last week's cyclone in Myanmar is expected to leave 100,000 dead in it's wake and could go as high as half-million. Now comes word that the U.N. is suspending aid supplies after the military government seized the food and equipment it had already sent into the country.The top of a small temple sticking out of a flooded field near Yangon, the main city in Myanmar.
In the statement, the government said it would distribute international relief supplies itself. Myanmar said it had turned back one relief flight because, in addition to disaster relief supplies, it carried disaster assessment experts and an unauthorized media group.
"Myanmar is not in a position to receive rescue and information teams from foreign countries at the moment," the statement, from the Foreign Ministry, said. “But at present Myanmar is giving priority to receiving relief aid and distributing them to the storm-hit regions with its own resources."
The first of two major international aid shipments arrived Thursday by aircraft from the United Nations World Food Program, carrying high energy biscuits, water containers, food and plastic sheets.
But two of four United Nations experts who flew in on Friday were turned back at the airport for unknown reasons, said John Holmes, a relief coordinator for the United Nations.
Altogether, by one count, 11 chartered planes with relief supplies have landed in Myanmar, a tiny amount for a disaster that the United Nations said has affected 1.5 million people.
By the government’s official count, 22,500 people have died, but Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Myanmar, said the number could reach 100,000 if help was not prompt and the humanitarian situation worsened.
One United Nations official said he had never seen delays like this before in delivering relief supplies and aid officials. In Indonesia after the tsunami in 2004, he said, an air bridge of daily flights was established within 48 hours.
"The frustration caused by what appears to be a paperwork delay is unprecedented in modern humanitarian relief efforts," said the official, Paul Risley, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, in Bangkok. "It’s astonishing."
He said his agency alone had submitted 10 visa applications for relief workers but that none had been approved before consulates shut down for the weekend.
"We strongly urge the government of Myanmar to process these visa applications as quickly as possible, including working over the weekend," he said.
In New York, United Nations officials all but demanded Thursday that the government open its doors.
In Geneva on Friday, a United Nations spokeswoman said the United Nations was putting together an urgent appeal for funding that would cover its relief efforts in Myanmar over the next six months.[NY Times]