Posted on 01/02/2005 4:58:22 AM PST by flitton
With panic in his face, the fisherman beckoned me to lie down and hide at the prow of his longboat. The Burmese navy was patrolling its territorial waters and looking for interlopers as it sought to preserve the dictatorship's fiction that only 90 people died in last weekend's devastating tsunami.
The splintered remains of a wooden bridge just ahead, on the large island of Palao Ton Ton, told a different story. The fisherman said he saw 50 people swept to their deaths from this bridge alone. The red-and-white woodwork lay smashed in pieces and a large gap yawned in the middle of the span.
"All the people were just swept away," said the fisherman hopelessly, his face shaded by a wide-brimmed, khaki hat. He was sheltering at an inlet across the water when the tsunami struck with deadly force. He went to help but there were no survivors.
"They were on foot, trying to cross over to the land side," he said. "Look, there are bits of the bridge still floating in the water. That is all that is left."
In the aftermath of the tsunami the government in Rangoon sealed off parts of its coastline, fuelling concerns that thousands more people died in the disaster than it - to the disgust of many ordinary Burmese - has so far been prepared to acknowledge.
Other fishermen spoke of the terrible loss of life farther up the coast at Kra Buri, 50 miles north of the border with Thailand. "Many, many homes were ripped away by the big wave," said one fisherman. "The government is lying, lying very much, when it says just a few people were killed."
While aid workers believe that Burma escaped the carnage that was visited on Indonesia, where about 100,000 people are feared to have lost their lives, they say the death toll is certain to be higher than Burmese officials have admitted. "It is in the thousands," estimated one foreign diplomat.
Burma is a closed society and the regime is hostile to outside influences. Journalists are banned and tight controls are placed on the movements of aid workers and diplomats. The climate of fear instilled by almost four decades of military dictatorship is such that any Burmese willing to help in exposing suffering and loss of life faces a long jail sentence.
Since the tsunami the military's grip has become even tighter. Conscript soldiers have been deployed on main roads leading out of the southern town of Kawthaung. They have orders to prevent foreign nationals from travelling more than two miles from the centre. The naval vessels are looking for boats that they do not recognise in order to prevent unauthorised missions landing along the ravaged coastline.
A government official intercepted our vehicle as we left Kawthaung with the aim of catching a glimpse of the damage wreaked on one of the world's last dictatorships. "Go back now," he told us. "I cannot give you permission to leave town and the army checkpoints will stop you. There is nothing to see. We are handling the situation in our own way."
Instead, and despite the navy patrols, we took to the sea and made a hazardous boat trip across a mile-long stretch of estuary on the Andaman Sea.
The fisherman who agreed to take us up the coast to Palao Ton Ton was too scared for his name to be used. He did not want to stay more than a few minutes in such a sensitive area with foreigners on board. He turned the boat back towards Kawthaung and then indicated the lush hillsides where hundreds of homes still clung precariously to the land at the water's edge. "This is how we live, all the way up the coast," he said. "Not all were so lucky to have escaped."
Kawthaung itself survived the worst of the waves because it is protected by a ring of outlying islands. Even so, boats out in the bay were lifted 30ft on to the main road by the force of the water.
There are many remote islands that no one has yet reached. The fishermen who ply these waters and know them well tell of widespread devastation on the Coco Islands and the Mergui Archipelago. The vast island chains, which belong to Burma, lie in a swathe across the Andaman Sea, north of Thailand's Phuket peninsula and south of India's Nicobar island chain - both of which suffered heavy loss of life.
Aid workers in Rangoon have repeatedly pressed the government for permission to inspect the islands but have been rebuffed. Their population has never been surveyed and the tribes who live there are renowned for their amphibian way of life. Estimating the likely death toll would be very difficult.
"The government says that it is possible to go but say the local fisherman claim that the tides are particularly high, making sailing unsafe. But we cannot see any difference," one aid worker said. "It is also impossible to fly over the area because it is a designated military zone."
Two days after the tsunami, when neighbouring governments were gratefully accepting overseas assistance in the mass rescue operation, Rangoon brushed aside most offers of help, accepting a token £104,000 worth of aid from communist China.
Brig-Gen Aung Thein, the government's spokesman, declared that only 36 people had died. By the end of the week diplomats were told that the total had risen to just 90.
Further clues to the extent of the damage come, however, in reports of foreigners who are missing in the area. Two South African backpackers and a group of Christian charity workers have not been in contact with friends and relatives for a week. A Florida-based missionary group has launched an appeal to rebuild a Burmese village destroyed in the tsunami.
From the government, however, there is no word.
It will be a great day when the Burmese regime falls.
"You’ll most likely know it as Myanmar, but it’ll always be Burma to me..."
It's BURMA you a$$clown. Burma BURMA Burma. As in BURMA Shave.
Oh, and bite me you Stalin wannabe.
5.56mm
The dictators named Burma Myanmar. The opposition doesn't accept that term.
I don't think those tyrants read FR. They must read DU.
Stalin wannabes are the DUmmies biggest heros.
Rangoon Press Release: 90 people died as far as you know.
It never ceases to amaze me how there is a Seinfeld quote for every occasion.
Amazing. The world is offering free money, but this North Korean Mini-Me is having no part.
Ping............
My sister-in-law (and family) just left the 29th of November to Thailand, trying to eventually get visas to become a missionary in Myanmar. The doors have become tighter and tighter all the time. They are praying for a window of opportunity in order to get in.
poing
Perhaps this will be it. Maybe a good thing to come out of this whole situation will be a weakening of the grip of authoritarian rulers in the area including the likes of the Tamil Tigers etc.
Problem with Burma is it isn't waiting for just one idiot to die like Cuba; Burma doesn't have one dictator, it has this sort of faceless ruling junta comprised of a bunch of generals.
There are more problems in Burma than just the current rulers. It would be great if Aung San Suu Kyi believed what her father believed, but she does not. Aung San wanted to give full rights to the various minorities. His daughter wants to force majority rule on them. Even if she somehow got power, this is not going to go over very well.
The Tamil Tigers were infact losing their cohesiveness with lots of internal wrangling & the peace process in full swing,backed by India signing a defence treaty with Sri Lanka.But the Tsunami may just prove to be the impetus to make them a threat again-there are plenty of reports on websites of how the Sri Lankan govt is trying to block much needed aid from going to the area.I don't know how true it is,but having seen Chandrika Kumaratunga's obstinance,I won't be surprised if it is.If innocent people in Jaffna & elsewhere starve,it will be the gel that binds the tigers together.The only way to prevent it is for India & the US to put pressure on the Lankan government or for India to forcibly resupply those areas as it did in 1986.
Interesting if sad, thanks for that info.
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