By VIOLET CHO
Burmese military authorities have ordered around 5,000 people to leave two refugee camps in Laputta Township, according to local residents and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) operating in the area.
Staff working for INGOs in Laputta confirmed that local authorities closed the two camps—the Three-Mile and Five-Mile camps—in early September.
Refugees sheltering at the camps were relocated to new sites near the villages of Panae Tong and Mingone Tong, between Laputta and Myaungmya, said sources.
“The relocation sites are in remote areas, a bit far from the main road from Laputta to Myaungmya,” said an aid worker. “With limited support from humanitarian group, refugees have to be self-sufficient and build up new villages.”
Relief workers in Laputta also said that it was difficult for outsiders to gain access to the new sites because they are under military guard.
“The military has taken responsibility for camp security, so even INGOs have to ask permission from military strategic command offices if they want to open clinics or provide other forms of assistance to refugees living in the camps,” said an aid worker in Laputta.
An army sergeant based in Laputta said, however, that humanitarian agencies were still permitted to enter the camps. He added that the tightened security was necessary because of a recent murder.
“A girl was raped and murdered on the road between Laputta and Myaungmya,” said the sergeant, referring to an incident that occurred on September 4. “Military security at the camps is needed to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.”
Meanwhile, as some INGO groups in Laputta said that they hoped to continue providing assistance to people living in the new sites, others said that they would soon be pulling out of the area.
“We are planning to leave this community by the end of October, after we hand over our work to another organization,” said a local staffer working for the Netherlands-based medical relief agency Artsen Zonder Grenzen, one of the first groups to provide emergency relief in the area affected by Cyclone Nargis.
There are also concerns about the international community’s commitment to meeting relief and reconstruction needs in the Irrawaddy delta, where more than two million people where affected by Cyclone Nargis when it struck on May 2-3.
Surin Pitsuwan, the secretary-general of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (Asean), said that financial aid of US $1 billion promised by the UN and international humanitarian organizations over the next three years would most likely not be enough because of the magnitude of the destruction in the Irrawaddy delta.
As the chairman of the Humanitarian Task Force coordinating relief and reconstruction efforts by Asean, the UN and the Burmese regime, Surin said he would ask Asean leaders to raise the issue at a meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York in late September.
“We have to help them survive,” Surin said of the victims of Cyclone Nargis, according to a report in the Bangkok Post.
Aung Thet Wine contributed to this story.
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