Rev. Danny Fisher

Our thoughts, prayers, and practice are with those in central China. As soon as I know what can be done to help, I’ll let you know.

The Associated Press offers a disturbing story today about silence in Labutta, Myanmar–the silence wrought not only by recent trauma, but also years of systematic oppression by the junta.

Apart from the sound of children crying, the town of Labutta is strangely silent.

Traumatized by the ordeal of surviving Cyclone Nargis, few people have anything to say. But it is also fear bred by 46 years of repression by military regimes that keeps them quiet.

Although overwhelmed by the worst disaster in Myanmar’s recent history, the junta has turned down foreign help and insists on using its ragtag infrastructure and poorly equipped military to conduct a grossly mismanaged relief operation for some 2 million people in distress.

And no one dares to protest. Few survivors wanted to speak to an outsider, as military trucks drove constantly through the town. Most cowered in corners.

On the outskirts of Labutta, 12 people were crammed into one tent pitched on a rice field. They were the only survivors from the village of Pain Na Kon and had fruitlessly searched Labutta for family members.

“We are family now. We are from the same place. We are together,” said U Nyo, one of the survivors, his eyes red from tears and fatigue. “We need food. There isn’t enough space in the town so we decided to stay here.”

Aid agencies are also cautious.

“There are certainly parameters around whatever we do. It is very sensitive politically, but within those parameters we are getting through,” said Tim Costello of World Vision in Yangon, one of the few foreign aid workers allowed in.

Aid workers said critical supplies were reaching Labutta, a town of 20,000 people whose population more than doubled with 30,000 refugees streaming in from dozens of surrounding villages devastated by the May 3 cyclone.

But efforts to rush food and medicine from Labutta to lower-lying parts of the delta that were hardest hit have been slowed by the military’s intense micromanaging.

“The government wants total control of the situation although they can’t provide much and they have no experience in relief efforts,” said a leading aid worker for an international aid organization. “We have to report to them every step of the way, every decision we make.

“Their eyes are everywhere, monitoring what we do, who we talk to, what we bring in and how much,” the aid worker said in a soft voice, constantly looking around nervously as his assistant turned off all the lights except one dim lamp.

He agreed to the interview at night after being assured he wouldn’t be named or identified in any way.

“We don’t want them to see you here. They don’t trust us, as it is,” he told a foreign reporter in Labutta.

Visit http://www.burmaitcantwait.org.

Sad news from Reuters:

A fire ripped through a Buddhist temple in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province at the weekend, killing seven people and injuring eight, police said on Monday.

The victims were sleeping on the second floor of the Vihara Buddhist Aloviestra temple when the fire broke out before dawn on Sunday, said Eriwan Saragih, a local police officer.

Some people were hurt after they flung themselves off the second floor to escape the fire, the officer said.

The victims were spending the night at the temple after working on preparations for celebrations for the Buddhist Day of Enlightenment, which falls on May 20, he said.

Police said the fire may have been caused by an electrical short circuit.

Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, but has sizeable minorities of Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and other religions.

Please keep the victims and their family members in your thoughts, prayers, and practice.

The BBC offers this startling footage of Nepalese police arresting some 560 Tibetan women, including Buddhist nuns, after “breaking up several all-women protests for Tibet.”