Varieties of Burmese food will be available with small price and we hope that all of our Dhamma friends will enjoy their Saturday evening with tasteful dishes.

So we urge all of Burmese people including your friends to contribute your generosity to the cyclone Nargis victims while you are enjoying our food.

Event Information

When: 2-6pm, Saturday 26th July
Where: Panditarama Sydney Meditation Center Inc. Find us on Map.

List of Available Food

• Noodle in fish paste (Moh-hin-khar)
• Delicious tea
• Friend rice
• Friend prawn
• Soft drink
• Ah-pu-shar-pu
• Pann-tay-khauk-swe
• Barbeque chicken and lamb
• Kyay-owe
• Nan-gyi-tote
• Steam chicken
• Sticky-rice (ta-min-nae)
• Shan traditional food

Laksmita Noviera spokesperson of the UN Coordination Office Myanmar said the fresh appeal  was revised and based on the assessment undertaken by the Tripartite Core Group of the UN, Asean, the Burmese government and NGOs.

“Based on the results of the TCG assessment, we now have a clearer or the big picture of the residual needs,” said Noviera.

“We are hoping that the donors will continue to support the humanitarian organisations working in Myanmar,” she added.

The UN on Thursday launched the second appeal for donation to help victims of Cyclone Nargis that struck Burma on May 2 and 3.

The UN received a total of US $ 201 million after the first appeal and made a revised appeal based on the assessment conducted by the Post-Nargis Joint Assessment teams, said Noviera.

PONJA, which comprised 38 teams, conducted an extensive survey covering over 250 cyclone affected villages in Rangoon and Irrawaddy Divisions. It released an initial report in the end of June. But the full report is to be released on July 20-21.

Burma’s military government had requested the international community including the UN to provide US$ 11 billion for emergency relief and reconstruction work in the cyclone affected areas.

However, the Burmese junta, which initially restricted movement of international aid agencies, including the UN, to help cyclone victims, failed to receive the requested amount.

Ironically, the junta in its mouthpiece newspaper, New Light of Myanmar, on Friday attacked several developed countries for spending more on wars but failing to respond to the humanitarian crisis including Burma.

The article in the state-run newspaper said, the US in the Gulf War in 1991, spent 650 million dollars in the first day, 80 billion dollars on the 43-day air-army operation, and about 100 billion dollars in total for the whole war.

In response to US request, Japan contributed 10.7 billion dollars, Germany, 6.6 billion dollars, and Australia, 250 million, the article added.

“Powerful countries have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. How much will they spend on rehabilitation of victims of Cyclone ‘Nargis’?” the paper asked.

Despite its accusations, the Burmese regime disallowed US, French and British aid ships from entering its coast. The aid ships, which carried aid supplies including helicopters, withdrew after waiting for nearly a month.

The Burmese military junta welcomed aid supply but not international aid workers until the United Nations Chief Ban Ki-moon persuaded Burma’s military Supremo Snr. Gen Than Shwe on May 23 to relent.

Though the United Nations said it needed more funding, the international community’s response to its appeal is positive as it has been able to obtain about 75 percent after the first appeal.

“I don’t think it is a slow process because the first appeal brought in 75 per cent… I don’t think it is a slow process,” Noviera said.

Source: Mizzima

The United Nations’ World Food Program was facing a critical shortage of money for its operations in the country, including the delivery of food and other supplies to the devastated Irrawaddy Delta via 10 helicopters.

The use of helicopters, trucks and boats will be halted by the end of this month unless they get additional funding no.

Source: The New York Times

The cyclone left over 1,34,000 dead and missing and six weeks after the devastation bloated and disfigured bodies continue to float into the coastline or rot in the ravaged areas. There has been precious little effort by the junta’s administration to cremate or bury the bodies, leave alone show some dignity to the dead.

Now volunteers helping out in burying and cremating the dead are being rounded up and dumped in jails.

In the weekend regime officials arrested the chief editor of the Myanmar Tribune journal, Aung Kyaw San (45) and six of his colleagues. Their crime: they had buried cyclone victims in Bogale township, Irrawaddy division for the stench from the rotting bodies had been permeating the atmosphere, reports in the Myanmar media in exile suggest. Ironic as it may seem the journalists were not arrested for flouting Myanmar Censor Board’s draconian laws but for helping bury the dead.

Those arrested in Myanmar disappear as suddenly as they have been arrested with their family remaining in the dark about their whereabouts. Aung Kyaw San was arrested Bogale and later shifted to Yangon. The family is perplexed and worried for it has no idea where the journalist has been detained. The journalist stopped publishing Myanmar Tribune and had been helping in relief work, media reports said.

In the aftermath of the killer cyclone which devastated the Irrawaddy delta and Yangon division, the journalist made three trips to Bogale, one of the worst affected regions to help in relief operations. He was arrested during his last visit. His colleagues were said to have been released but he continues in detention, the media said.

The arrest of the chief editor has raised the hackles of the media fraternity and invited criticism from literary circles because the junta for no explicable reason whatsoever has been placing obstacles in the way of relief operations by volunteers, harassing them, interrogating them and putting them behind bars, when its own efforts in helping cyclone victims has been pathetic to say the least.

In a more inhuman instance, there have been reports in the Myanmar media in exile of policemen stripping, rotten, disfigured and bloated bodies of jewellery, ostensibly while trying to identify them.

Scores of bodies floated to the coastline of Mon state in southern Myanmar. The junta authorities forced villagers to dig pits, line it with lime and bury the dead. Some were ordered to be cremated. But before villagers were compelled to do that, police personnel went out to sea to check the bodies for valuables, like gold necklaces, rings, bracelets and the rest before allowing residents to dispose off the bodies.It is not surprising that under the ruthless military junta such an attitude towards the dead would be fostered, simply because where the living is not accorded any dignity, how would one expect dignity in death.

Source: www.merinews.com

“Now we have 250-plus of our, what we call our post-Nargis assessment teams, in the Delta, in the Yangon division, in the south and they will be doing the full assessment and they will have full access to the affected region,” Surin Pitsuwan told reporters in Singapore.

“I think if we look at that, it’s already a great achievement and we will try to maintain that momentum”, he said.

Cyclone Nargis pounded the southwest Irrawaddy Delta and the main city of Yangon on May 2-3 leaving more than 133,000 people dead or missing.

ASEAN said one week ago that the Emergency Rapid Assessment Team had begun to deploy in the delta region to start a long-awaited examination of the needs of millions of people affected by the storm.

It said then that its advance teams, ferried by UN World Food Programme helicopter, would compile a first-hand “progress report” for an ASEAN Roundtable meeting in Yangon on June 24.

Surin said there were no doubts that the team would be able to do its job adequately and with credibility, “coming up with a report that would be taken up by all parties in order to be the basis of rehabilitation and reconstruction later on.”

Read the rest of story at The New York Times.

A call for $201 million brought only $82 million in donations by June 9, the UN said in a statement.

“Funding is urgently needed to sustain the pipeline for food assistance,” Amanda Pitt, a spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said in Bangkok yesterday. “The overall concern is to continue to try to get systematic assistance to those most in need.”

International aid agencies are supplying Myanmar’s southern Irrawaddy River Delta, the country’s main rice-growing region that was devastated by Tropical Cyclone Nargis. Survivors were put at risk of disease and starvation because the military government refused to allow aid teams into the country for almost three weeks after the disaster, the UN says.

A shortage of funds may affect food, shelter and medicines reaching the region in coming weeks, the UN said. The May 2-3 cyclone left more than 134,000 people dead or missing.

“We need some half a million tarpaulins to help with shelters,” Pitt said.

The World Food Programme, which has distributed 11,000 metric tons of food to cyclone-hit areas since the storm, is now handing out cash to help people meet rising food costs, the UN said.

Cyclone survivors will probably need food aid for a year because Nargis destroyed fields, preventing planting, Paul Risley, a WFP spokesman, said in Bangkok earlier this week.

An estimated 200,000 hectares (494,210 acres), or 16 percent of the agricultural land in the Irrawaddy delta, was damaged by Nargis, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization says. The region’s five worst-affected states produce most of the rice, fish and pork for Myanmar’s 47.8 million people.

A tidal surge that swept about 35 kilometers inland during the cyclone resulted in saline damage to fields and other areas are still under water, the UN said.

Source: www.bloomberg.com

A World Food Program spokesman said boats have been delivering some aid to villages cut off by flooding, but helicopters are much more efficient. He said the U.N. is sending four more helicopters to Burma this week, bringing the total to 10.

He said aid will have reached 26 villages by the end of the day Tuesday. The United Nations estimates some one million people affected by the cyclone are still in need of aid.

Source: VOA News

As of today, 11,046 tons of WFP food assistance have been delivered to the affected areas (with 5,316 tons of food actually distributed). WFP estimates that it has reached approximately 501,000 beneficiaries with varying rations.

WFP has organized a total of 39 air cargo shipments into Yangon airport from Bangkok. These shipments have included medical kits, tents, tarpaulins and other vital humanitarian material such as temporary warehousing and water purification equipment.

Six WFP helicopters are now in Myanmar carrying food and other critically needed humanitarian supplies to hard-to-reach Delta areas. A first helicopter completed relief deliveries in the Delta every day last week, and was joined by five helicopters which arrived in Yangon on Saturday 7 June.

WFP has now received 43 visas for international staff since the cyclone struck and has deployed 37 TDY international staff to the cyclone operation. WFP has employed 111 additional national staff since the cyclone.

WFP currently has a total of 376 staff in Myanmar, of which 62 are in Ayeyarwady Division, including an international Head of Sub-Office in Bogale.

Source: United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-GUDL2KXo4

“Over the past three weeks we have made at least 15 attempts to convince the Burmese government to allow our ships, helicopters and landing craft to provide additional disaster relief for the people of Burma, but they have refused us each and every time,” said Adm. Timothy J. Keating, commander of American forces in the Pacific.

The four-ship Essex group can produce fresh water from seawater, has medical facilities on board and landing craft and helicopters that can ferry personnel and supplies to remote locations. Admiral Keating said the ships and marines on board could still offer assistance “should the Burmese rulers have a change of heart.”

Source: The New York Times