Six Years After Cyclone Nargis

Apr 28, 2014 | Robin Lustig, The Huffington Post
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Next week will mark the sixth anniversary of Cyclone Nargis, which swept through the Irrawaddy Delta in Burma and killed at least 140,000 people. I've just been to the delta to see how the survivors have managed to rebuild their lives. This is what I found:

Tattered white strips of cloth still flutter from the trees that overhang the wide waterways of the Burmese delta, distress signals from six years ago when Cyclone Nargis devastated the region. They are a poignant reminder of a time when the people who lived here waited desperately for help after one of the worst natural disasters of modern times. The message was a simple one: Please help us.

But little help came. The military regime that had ruled Burma for more than 45 years banned all foreign relief organisations from the delta - and no one knows to this day how many people died. The estimates start at 140,000. I remember interviewing the then foreign secretary, David Miliband, at the time, and pressing him again and again: why wasn't more being done to help the people of the delta in their hour of need?