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Newsdesk Special: Burma: Junta claims aid is a &direct gift& from Gen Than Shwe | News | The First Post
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May 12, 5:06am
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•http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/burma,,...
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A new spin for "re-gifting."
From the page:
"Heavy rain added to the misery of hundreds of thousands of cyclone survivors in Burma's Irrawaddy delta as a storm front swept in from the Bay of Bengal today and drenched the devastated region, writes Edward Loxton for The First Post. Starving families sought shelter where they could find it, cowering in makeshift huts built of bits of salvaged timber, shreds of fabric, bamboo and banana leaves.
Meanwhile, in a callous propaganda exercise, the military regime was trying to hoodwink the Burmese into believing that food, water, medicines and other emergency supplies, sent by the outside world, was being donated by the junta leader. Aid supplies impounded at Rangoon airport were finally being sent on their way - but bearing stickers suggesting they are a direct gift from General Than Shwe, who has yet to offer any condolences to the cyclone victims.
A correspondent of the French news agency AFP said he drove through roadside crowds of survivors pleading for food and water. UN aid agencies and relief organisations say the death toll, already over 100,000, could top 1.5m as cholera, typhoid, malaria and dysentery spread through the stricken region. "This is a ticking time bomb," said Oxfam director Adrian Lovett. "It's a very, very dangerous situation." Oxfam's East Asia director Sarah Ireland, who gave the 1.5m estimate, described the situation as a "perfect storm of factors."
The regime's official death toll was raised to 28,458 at the weekend. "It's clear they're just grabbing numbers out of the air," said a UN official in Bangkok. "They have no idea of the true scale of the disaster. They're in a paranoid state of denial.""
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