| Show New life for refugee starts at Susan Roylance Contributing Writer Im excited I have never gone to a school as big as this said Thee Klay a refugee from the country of Myanmar now living in Salt Lake City He is one of the lucky ones who escaped from the brutal military regime of his native country Both Bothof Bothof Bothof of his parents have died and he isnow is isnow isnow now on his own This week in his native country many children are going back to school in temporary structures Some arc even meeting under trees as over schools were destroyed when Cyclone Nargis slashed through the Delta of Myanmar on May 2 and 3 The category four cyclone hit while the he people were sleeping with little warning from their government A foot 12 high wall of sea water swept across the land up to 25 miles inland destroying the basic infrastructure and collapsing the houses in hundreds of villages It is now reported that people have died and are missing UNICEF estimates that a third of the fatalities from the cyclone were children and many children who survived lost their parents More than schools serving 11 m million children were damaged or destroyed by the storm and more than teachers were killed The government is planning to train volunteer teachers as they hold classes in camps and other temporary sites The military regime has been slow to accept humanitarian aid from other countries In the first week following the storm their focus was on the preparation for fora a Referendum vote May 10 lOon lOona on ona ona a constitution that would firmly finnly establish the military leadership in Myanmar They feared outside intervention so they would not approve visas to allow humanitarian aid workers to enter the country One month later the World Health Organization reported The damage to health facilities and the loss of health personnel in the affected areas are major risk factors for death and illness Population displacement overcrowding in temporary shelters and lack of safe drinking water are other factors increase the risk of disease outbreaks On June 2 the United Nations reported that more than 1 million people in Myanmar still dont don't have adequate food water or shelter Myanmar l Continued on Myanmar Refugee Continued from A I 1 IThe The United States has four Navy ships off the coast of Myanmar filled with supplies for the needy people They have helicopters on deck that could be used to deliver the supplies into the areas of the Delta where bridges are washed out and boat docks are destroyed The Myanmar government has refused permission to dock The US U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has accused the Myanmar government of criminal neglect Even before the cyclone hit there were hundreds of thousands of refugees in camps along the border border- in Thailand Some of these refugees have lived in the camps for over twenty years Our student Klay escaped to a refugee camp after both parents died He lived in the Ma Lae Camp for six years before being resettled in Utah I want to go back to Burma in five or six years after I graduate from college he said He hopes the country will have new leadership by then Although he loves the many opportunities in America he misses his friends in Burma However hel that some of them have died Moo the father of 1 a Burm Burmese se r refugee family family recently resettled in Salt Lake City said he hopes the international attention being given to the crisis crisi in Myanmar will help overthrow the military government i |
