Murky measures in Myanmar's disaster

Over three weeks since Cyclone Nargis crashed through Myanmar's populous Irrawaddy Delta, the country's military regime has been more forthcoming about the number of buffaloes and chickens that perished than on human casualty and missing counts. The official human toll in Myanmar, or Burma, now stands at 77,738 deaths and 55,917 missing. This figure was revealed in a small story that appeared at the bottom of page six in a May 17 of the New Light of Myanmar, a mouthpiece of the regime. That figure was almost double of what the notoriously secretive junta had revealed nearly 10 days after the powerful cyclone struck in the early hours of May 3. Since the country's worst natural disaster in living memory, the official figures of dead and missing people have been revised at least four times. Some international humanitarian agencies have estimated the death toll to be over 130,000. Yet even that number may be much lower than what a few civilian organizations working closely with the junta estimate, according to information revealed to Inter Press Service (IPS). By the end of the first week, information gathered by the junta and discussed among a small group of senior military officers in the former capital Yangon had put the death toll as high as 300,000, the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. "They were shocked by the scale of the disaster and that is why they clamped down on information getting out and outsiders, like foreign aid workers, going into the delta," he added. This revelation was made a few days before another assessment... Asia Times Online