30,000 children facing starvation in Burma

Daily Record May 19 2008

MORE than 30,000 kids under five will die of hunger in Burma in days unless their brutal rulers let the world help them.

That was the warning yesterday from the charity Save The Children, who said many youngsters in the desperately poor country were already weak from lack of food before Cyclone Nargis destroyed their homes on May 2.


Jasmine Whitbread, who heads the UK branch of Save The Children, said: "We are extremely worried that many children are now suffering from the most serious level of hunger.

"When people reach this stage, they can die in a matter of days."

Save The Children believe that kids in the worst-hit area, the Irrawaddy Delta, may already be dying of starvation.

Burma's paranoid military dictators have been accused of condemning their people to death by refusing to let foreign aid experts into the country.

The junta fear that contact with foreigners will encourage ordinary Burmese to rebel against their 46-year-old regime.

The generals claim their soldiers have already completed all the relief work that is needed. But aid agencies say 2.5million cyclone survivors are still living in misery.

Charities also dispute the junta's claim that the storm left 78,000 dead and 56,000 missing.

They believe the true total of dead and missing is 217,000, and fear that many more will die of hunger or disease unless the generals relent.

The leader of the junta, General Than Shwe, has ignored two letters and several phone calls about the crisis from United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Ban has now sent the UN's head of disaster relief, John Holmes, to Burma to deliver a third letter and assess the situation on the ground.

Holmes landed in the capital Rangoon yesterday and was met by the Burmese deputy foreign minister, sparking hope that the junta are finally ready to talk.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown branded the regime "inhuman" on Saturday and warned that they were turning a natural disaster into "a man-made catastrophe".

But Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown, who is in Burma, said yesterday that the generals were starting to show mercy.

The Labour peer, a former deputy chief of the UN, said only 25 per cent of cyclone survivors have received the aid they need but the relief effort was now "starting to move".

He forecast that the junta would take "quite dramatic steps" in the next few days to allow foreign aid to reach victims.

Charities say the survivors need food, shelter from monsoon rains, medicines, clean drinking water and sanitation.

Source