BANGKOK, 13 May 2008 (IRIN) - As a coordinator for the Grassroots Foundation for Education and Development, an NGO that educates the children of migrant workers from Myanmar in Thailand, Hla Phone has been busy helping other migrants keep up with the developments since the disaster.

"We read the newspapers and internet and print them out and distribute them," he told IRIN. "People are very angry. They want the military government to allow international aid. They are waiting."

After Cyclone Nargis battered Myanmar, Phone was distraught with worry for his family in Bago, an area badly affected by the category four storm. "I was so worried – I could not make contact with my family or friends – no one," he said. "I could only watch CNN, so I knew that many people were dying."

But after many frustrating days, Phone finally got through to a friend in Bago and later established that his parents were unscathed.

Although the Bago area was battered by the cyclone, it was too far inland to be hit by the subsequent ferocious tidal surge that has been blamed for most of the 30,000 confirmed deaths.

Yet even now Phone, like all Burmese abroad, is gripped by the catastrophe.

Indeed, in factories, farms and construction sites around neighbouring Thailand, migrant workers and political exiles from Myanmar are watching the tragedy in their troubled homeland with shock, dismay and anger.

Many are seething as Myanmar's government is blamed for limiting the flow of international humanitarian aid into the disaster zone, where the UN estimates that between 1.5 and 1.9 million people are severely affected and particularly at risk from waterborne diseases.

Mobilising supplies

Other exiles are trying to help the struggling relief effort by sending cash and supplies through trusted channels, or even going back home to help on the ground.

"Everyone is mobilising – inside and outside the country," confirmed Aung Naing Oo, a Thailand-based analyst from Myanmar. "Everyone is trying to donate whatever they can. They are putting their money in and sending it to different organisations, and Burmese students in the UK and elsewhere are going back to help.

"The military is failing in its duty, foreigners cannot go to the area so we have to help," he explained. "The military said that local self-help groups can help each other, so everybody is trying to scramble."

Thailand is home to up to two million migrant workers and refugees from Myanmar, although the Irrawaddy Delta, the area worst affected, is not one of the main source areas for migrants heading to Thailand.

Htoo Chit, head of Grassroots, said migrants from the worst-affected areas working in the beach resorts of southern Thailand have since returned to Myanmar to search for family members or news of them.

"They are going to help, and they are also thinking they are going to bring their family to Thailand," he said.

Migrants' anger

In the Thai province of Samut Sakhon, migrants from Myanmar working in the sea-food processing industry for less than the minimum wage are collecting supplies to help their compatriots.

"The migrants are really angry that international people want to help the disaster victims, but the government is not allowing them to go there," said Ko Ko Aung, an activist from Myanmar with the Labour Rights Promotion Network in Samut Sakhon. "Even though the migrants' own situation is not so good, they are trying to collect clothes or medicine or money or whatever they can offer."

So far, he said, his organisation has collected six pick-up truck-loads of clothes, dried foods and other relief goods, which they will now try to get into the country for distribution through trusted networks.

In addition, Burmese academics are translating relevant information on such matters as disposing of corpses, purifying water and disaster management into Burmese to send to local community organisations working in the affected area.

"It's beyond stress and beyond sadness, seeing all your fellow citizens suffering like this," said Win Min, one of the translators, who comes from the hard-hit town of Bogolay. "It's very, very terrible – beyond comprehension."

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