Myanmar's junta confines foreigners to Yangon

Myanmar's military rulers have thrown a tightening ring of security around Yangon, blocking aid workers, foreign diplomats and journalists from reaching cyclone-battered regions where millions need food and medicine.

New roadblocks manned by armed police have sprung up around Myanmar's largest city. Authorities at the checkpoints take down passport information and license plate numbers and sometimes interrogate drivers and their foreign passengers before ordering them to return to Yangon.

"A circle has been drawn around Yangon and expats are confined there. While you are getting aid through, it's like getting it through a 3-inch pipe, not a 30-inch pipe," said Tim Costello, president of the aid agency World Vision-Australia, in Yangon.

"Foreigners can't go this way," a policemen Friday told a driver with a foreign journalist at a checkpoint manned by 10 police and an immigration official dressed in khaki.

The reporter was heading north of Yangon, not even in the direction of the Irrawaddy delta, where Cyclone Nagris spent its greatest fury two weeks ago. The United Nations says more than 100,000 may have perished while up to 2.5 million survivors face starvation and disease.

In the week after the storm hit, entry by foreigners into the delta was difficult but not impossible. However, the security cordon has been noticeably tightened in recent days, with numerous new roadblocks thrown up along roads leading south and west into the delta from Yangon.

Some diplomats will be taken on a visit to the delta by the Foreign Ministry on Saturday, said U.S. Ambassador Shari Villarosa. Diplomats, who must seek official permission to travel outside Yangon, have faced the same barriers in trying to enter the affected region.

Even the few tourists remaining in Yangon cannot now take a ferry across the city's Rangoon River, visit townships in the immediate Yangon area or travel to tourist sites elsewhere in the country.

"I tried to leave again yesterday, hoping to go to the Golden Rock but they wouldn't let me board a bus after checking my ID," said Michael Emery, a university student from Australia who said he plans to Myanmar because he is being confined to Yangon. The Golden Rock temple is a popular tourist destination about 120 miles southeast of Yangon.

The director of an international aid organization said he managed to penetrate the hardest-hit Irrawaddy region by taking roundabout routes to towns 100 to 150 miles from Yangon. He ended up driving 22 hours round trip to spend just two hours in the area and returned to Yangon on Monday.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because he didn't want restrictions on his agency's travel in the future.

Earlier, others who managed to reach severely hit towns like Laputta and Bogalay were ordered out before they could enter the evacuation centers in which thousands of homeless, sick and hungry are huddled.

"Things will still get done but they will not be done as effectively, efficiently or as quickly which means delays, which means increasing risk (for survivors)," said Steve Marshall, a U.N. staffer interviewed in Bangkok, Thailand, on Friday after arriving from Myanmar.

From the start, the isolationist regime has restricted foreign involvement in the crisis, saying it welcomes outside aid but not outside experts.

"It has been very clear 'don't try to leave Yangon or you could compromise your arrangement with the government,'" Costello said. "There is a visible fence around Yangon that we don't dare cross."

Myanmar staffers of international agencies such as World Vision, Save the Children and U.N. organizations have been permitted into the delta and the government has made only one exception to the no-foreigners order. Thailand will send in a 30-member medical team Saturday which has been promised access, while about 130 aid workers from China, India and Bangladesh may follow them into the delta.

The four countries, especially China, have close political ties with Myanmar which is widely criticized by Western nations and activist groups of suppressing pro-democracy forces and trampling on human rights.

"The hand that has been slapping them for their political regime and human rights is the same hand that is offering them aid and saying this isn't about politics. They distrust that hand," Costello said.