May 12, Reuters
Anger mounts in Bangkok at Myanmar aid visa delays - Ed Cropley
A furious rescue worker accused Myanmar's military junta on Monday of
crimes against humanity for refusing to give visas to aid officials
desperate to enter the country to help the 1.5 million survivors of
Cyclone Nargis.
"They say they will call, but it's always wait, wait, wait," Pierre
Fouillant of the Comite de Secours Internationaux, a French disaster
rescue agency, told Reuters after being turned away from the former
Burma's embassy in the Thai capital.
"I've never seen delays like this, never," said Fouillant, a veteran of 10
humanitarian disasters. "It's a crime against humanity. It should be
against the law. It's like they are taking a gun and shooting their own
people."
Like dozens of others, Fouillant applied on Thursday for a business visa,
his only option since the military-ruled and isolated southeast Asian
nation has no such thing as an "emergency aid worker" visa.
The embassy was closed on Friday for a Thai holiday, and on Saturday and
Sunday. It opened as normal on Monday morning.
At least 100,000 people are thought to have died in the May 2 cyclone and
storm surge in the Irrawaddy delta, a death toll that could rise
dramatically if survivors do not get access to food, clean water and
medicine in the next few days, experts say.
Reuters witnesses on the edges of the disaster zone say towns and villages
are being swamped by huge numbers of cyclone refugees and cannot cope.
There is virtually no government assistance and food is running out. Some
residents say they are afraid the desperate evacuees will be forced to
turn to looting.
FRUSTRATION
Against this backdrop, small groups of rescue workers are having to wait
outside the iron-spiked, grey walls of the embassy compound in Bangkok
while their leaders and local visa agents try to see if their applications
have got anywhere.
"It is very frustrating," said Australian firefighter Craig Allan, who
dropped everything at home to get to Bangkok and apply for a visa on
Thursday.
His agency, part of Baptist World Aid, is called "Rescue 24" as it is
meant to be able to put a team on the ground within 24 hours of any
disaster anywhere in the world. In this case, it might be 24 days, he
joked bleakly.
The U.N. said its top representative in Myanmar had flown to Naypyidaw,
the generals' new capital, on Monday to hand over in person a list of 60
"critical" U.N. and relief agency staff.
Despite this, U.N. officials said none of its staff in Bangkok had
received any visas on Monday. They also said foreign staff inside the
country were prevented from leaving Yangon.
"There are limits, if not bans, on staff going to the delta," Terje
Skavdal of the U.N.'s humanitarian arm told re****ters.
Patrick Michaudel, a French employee of medical services firm SOS
International, with clinics in Yangon, was almost in tears as he left the
embassy after a fruitless week-long visa wait.
When he got to the front of the queue, Michaudel was elated to see his
pass****t open on the desk with a visa inside.
He could only watch in horror as a female official then carefully peeled
the visa sticker out of his pass****t and crudely covered up the partial
stamp on the pass****t page with liquid paper.
"No reason, no reason. She just peeled it out," he said, with a shrug of
the shoulders. "I've had enough of this. I'm going home."
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