Burma's death toll may top 15,000

Junta is criticized in cyclone recovery

Some in Rangoon said the military only cleared streets where the ruling elite live, while other residents had to cope on their own. (Democratic Voice of Burma via Reuters)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Burma struggled yesterday to recover from a cyclone whose official toll soared past 10,000 dead, while its military leaders proceeded with a constitutional referendum on Saturday that would cement their grip on power.

Foreign Minister Nyan Win, speaking on state-run TV early today, said that the cyclone had killed at least 15,000 people, including 10,000 in one town, and that searches of the hardest-hit areas were continuing. If these numbers are accurate, the death toll would be the highest from a natural disaster in Asia since the tsunami of December 2004, which devastated coastlines along Indonesia, Thailand, and other parts of South Asia and claimed 181,000 lives.

Tens of thousands of people were homeless after the cyclone, and food and water were running short.

Officials said they would open their closed and tightly controlled nation to international relief groups. So far, most foreigners and all foreign journalists have been barred from entering the country.

They also said the controversial referendum would proceed. "It's only a few days left before the coming referendum and people are eager to cast their vote," an official statement said yesterday.

But witnesses and residents said the military had been slow to respond to the devastation of the cyclone and some suggested that the government's performance could affect the vote in the referendum.

Residents said that they were being pressured to vote "yes" and that riot police officers had been patrolling the streets before the cyclone in a show of force that was more visible than their relief efforts afterward.

Nine months ago, security forces fired into crowds to disperse huge pro-democracy demonstrations led by monks, killing dozens of people, and in the months since the government has carried out a campaign of arrests and intimidation.

State-owned television had reported early yesterday that 3,934 people had died in Cyclone Nargis, which swept through the Irrawaddy Delta and the country's main city, Rangoon, early Saturday. The broadcast said nearly 3,000 were missing, all of them from one town, Bogale.

That report was followed by a briefing at which three Cabinet ministers told diplomats and UN officials that the death toll could reach 10,000 people in the delta region, an area that is home to nearly half the nation's 48 million people, according to Richard Horsey, a spokesman for the UN disaster response office in Bangkok.

That estimate represented a dramatic increase over the government's initial estimate on Sunday of 351 people killed.

And today, Nyan Win said on Myanmar TV that the cyclone had killed about 10,000 people in Bogale alone.

"What is clear is that we are dealing with a major emergency situation, and the priority needs now are shelter and clean drinking water," Horsey said.

A spokesman for the World Food Program said the government of Burma, which severely restricts the movements and activities of foreign groups, had given the UN permission to send in emergency aid.

At the United Nations yesterday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said he had mobilized a disaster assessment team to determine Burma's most urgent needs.

A human rights group based in Thailand, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma, which has provided reliable information from Burma in the past, said that soldiers and police officers killed 36 prisoners in Insein prison to quell a riot that started after the cyclone tore roofing off cell blocks, Reuters reported.

The report could not be independently confirmed.

The junta that rules Burma and renamed it Myanmar has closed the country to the outside world and maintained its grip on power through force, while its economic mismanagement has driven the country deeper into poverty.

Some government-run enterprises or businesses with associations with the government have already required their employees to vote in advance.

Exile groups said some residents had told them they were angry about the weak response of the military, which had seemed strong enough when the task was cracking down on citizens.

"This is what people I have contacted complain about," said Aung Zaw, editor of the magazine Irrawaddy, based in Thailand. "These people were so active in September killing the monks, but where are they now?"

Residents of Rangoon complained the government failed to adequately warn them of the approaching storm.

"The government misled people," Thin Thin, a grocery store owner, told the Associated Press. "They could have warned us about the severity of the coming cyclone so we could be better prepared."

Burma has been under military rule since 1962 and continues to suppress political opposition. The pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years.

The immediate problem in affected areas now is survival, with water and electricity cut off, roads blocked by fallen trees, roofs torn off homes, and prices for transportation and food rising fast.

"People are starving," an unidentified resident was quoted as saying by the Democratic Voice of Burma, a dissident radio station based in Norway.

"Fuel is becoming scarce," the resident was quoted as saying. "People are likely to die of starvation. If international help doesn't come within a week, it will be impossible to survive. There will be nothing left to eat."

"Stories get worse by the hour," one Rangoon resident, who did not want to be identified for fear of government retribution, reported in an e-mail message. "No drinking water in many areas, still no power. Houses completely disappeared. Refugees scavenging for food in poorer areas. Roofing, building supplies, tools - all are scarce and prices skyrocketing on everything."

Horsey, of the United Nations, said teams representing various aid groups were trying to assess the damage.

Some aid had already been stockpiled in anticipation of natural disasters, he said.

"It will take a few days until a complete and accurate picture of the impact and of the numbers of people affected comes out," he said.

Even without the destruction from the cyclone, travel and communications can be difficult in the country because of its weak infrastructure, said David Mathieson, a specialist on Burma with Human Rights Watch.

In Rangoon, he said, people usually get only five or six hours of electricity a day, and some remote areas have no electricity. "So the fact that electricity is down is not really that important," he said.