Burma:More on the tragedy

The tragedy grows ever larger, this from The Times:-

We saw the first one a few minutes downriver, no more than five hundred yards from the quayside and the busy town centre of the river port of Pyapon. He was caught in the crook of a toppled tree, floating in the water on his back with his arms spreadeagled – the naked, decaying remains of a drowned man.

There was another corpse a few yards down, and then another, and then three more close together. Number six was recognisably that of a woman, with a green undergarment still clinging to her; number seventeen was a young girl. Close by was a dead buffalo, and what I mistakenly took to be a coconut or a drowned animal. “Khalaylay,” said the boatman, correcting me. A baby.

We chugged gently down the river, past the devastation of Cyclone Nargis, which passed almost directly over head a week ago this morning. Warehouses had their roofs ripped off, 50 foot boats had been picked up by the storm surge and deposited a hundred yards inland, and every few yards were the sunburned, distended bodies of the storm’s human victims. In 25 minutes, I counted 23 of them. And then I stopped counting.

Until yesterday, this disaster has had an unreal quality. The physical damage to trees, fields and buildings is overwhelmingly obvious. Refugees are living in schools and monasteries thought the Irrawaddy Delta. But the huge casualty figures have been impossible to grasp imaginatively.

Later in the article:-

Foreign diplomats in Rangoon report that the government has at its disposal only seven helicopters but, from the available evidence, these are not being used for serious aid work. Instead, the generals use them for a series of photo opportunities, which duly appear in the following morning’s state run press.

In one, the prime minister, Thein Sein, is pictured “assisting” the loading of relief supplies onto a helicopter; in another a junior minister, hands over a bag of rice to a scared looking but “grateful” cyclone victim. The accompanying news stories achieve the feat of making the country’s worst disaster in living memory seem like nothing more than a bothersome inconvenience.

In the most staggering image of all, Mr Thein Sein “presented 20 sets of TV, 10 DVD players and 10 satellite receivers … for the storm victims enabling them to enjoy the programmes”. It would be hilarious if it were not so depressing: having survived the destruction of their homes, the deaths of their loved ones, and lacking food or medicines, the cyclone survivors are being forced to watch Burmese state television

The bold text is Adam’s.

WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS THE WORLD DOING?

THIS IS JUST NOT ACCEPTABLE IN 2008.

THESE PEOPLE NEED HELP, NOW!!!