Burmese junta closes off Rangoon
May 17, 2008 — 10.34pm
Burma's military rulers have thrown a tightening ring of security around Rangoon, blocking aid workers, foreign diplomats and journalists from reaching cyclone-battered regions where millions need food and medicine.
New roadblocks staffed by armed police have sprung up around Burma's largest city. Authorities at the checkpoints record passport information and license plate numbers and sometimes interrogate drivers and their foreign passengers before ordering them to return to Rangoon.
"A circle has been drawn around Rangoon and expats are confined there. While you are getting aid through, it's like getting it through a 3-inch (7.6-centimetre) pipe, not a 30-inch (76-centimetre) pipe," said Tim Costello, president of the aid agency World Vision-Australia, in Rangoon.
"Foreigners can't go this way," a policeman told a driver for a foreign journalist at a checkpoint today with 10 police and an immigration official dressed in khaki.
The reporter was heading north of Rangoon, not even in the direction of the Irrawaddy delta, where Cyclone Nargis spent its greatest fury two weeks ago. The United Nations says more than 100,000 people may have perished, while up to 2.5 million survivors face starvation and disease.
In the week after the storm hit, entry by foreigners into the delta was difficult but not impossible. However, the security cordon has been noticeably tightened in recent days, with numerous new roadblocks thrown up along roads leading south and west into the delta from Rangoon.
Some diplomats will be taken on a visit to the delta by the Foreign Ministry on Saturday, said US Ambassador Shari Villarosa. Diplomats, who must seek official permission to travel outside Rangoon, have faced the same barriers in trying to enter the affected region.
Even the few tourists remaining in Rangoon cannot now take a ferry across the city's Rangoon River, visit townships in the immediate Rangoon area or travel to tourist sites elsewhere in the country.
"I tried to leave again yesterday, hoping to go to the Golden Rock, but they wouldn't let me board a bus after checking my ID," said Michael Emery, a university student from Australia who said he plans to leave Burma because he is being confined to Rangoon. The Golden Rock temple is a popular tourist destination about 195 kilometres southeast of Rangoon.
The director of an international aid organisation said he managed to penetrate the hardest-hit Irrawaddy region by taking roundabout routes to towns 160 kilometres to 240 kilometres from Rangoon. He ended up driving a 22-hour round trip to spend just two hours in the area, and returned to Rangoon on Monday.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want restrictions on his agency's travel in the future.
Earlier, others who managed to reach severely hit towns like Laputta and Bogalay were ordered out before they could enter the evacuation centers in which thousands of homeless, sick and hungry are huddled.
"Things will still get done but they will not be done as effectively, efficiently or as quickly which means delays, which means increasing risk (for survivors)," said Steve Marshall, a U.N. staffer interviewed in Bangkok, Thailand, on Friday after arriving from Burma.
From the start, the isolationist regime has restricted foreign involvement in the crisis, saying it welcomes outside aid but not outside experts.
"It has been very clear: 'Don't try to leave Rangoon or you could compromise your arrangement with the government,"' Costello said. "There is a visible fence around Rangoon that we don't dare cross."
Burma staffers of international agencies such as World Vision, Save the Children and UN organisations have been permitted into the delta and the government has made only one exception to the no-foreigners order. Thailand planned to send in Saturday a 30-member medical team that has been promised access, while about 130 aid workers from China, India and Bangladesh may follow them into the delta.
The four countries, especially China, have close political ties with Burma, which is widely criticised by Western nations and activist groups of suppressing pro-democracy forces and trampling on human rights.