One month after a cyclone left more than 130,000 people dead or missing, Myanmar's military government reopened schools Monday in several areas despite worries that the extent of the damage could put children in harm's way.
Foreign aid workers also criticized the regime for continuing to drag its feet on allowing them speedy and full access to survivors of the disaster.
The junta had promised U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that foreign relief workers would be allowed into the areas worst affected by the storm in the Irrawaddy delta after they were initially barred.
"Access remains problematic both for logistic staff inside Burma to the delta and for staff trying to get in from the outside. There has been a lot of talk about process but little results we can see," said Lionel Rosenblatt, president emeritus of U.S.-based Refugees International.
Faced by international censure for its inept handling of the catastrophe, Deputy Defense Minister Maj. Gen. Aye Myint told an international security conference in Singapore on Sunday that the junta broadcast warnings about the cyclone more than a week in advance, and moved quickly to rescue and provide relief to the estimated 2.4 million survivors.
"Due to the prompt work" of the military government, food, water and medicine were provided to all victims, the defense minister said. "I believe the resettlement and rehabilitation process will be speedy."
In its struggle to return to normalcy, the junta reopened many schools Monday in areas hit by the cyclone, though some were scheduled to reopen in July.
UNICEF said more than 4,000 schools serving 1.1 million children were damaged or destroyed by the storm and more than 100 teachers were killed. As a result, the government planned to train volunteer teachers and hold some classes in camps and other temporary sites, the U.N. Children's Fund said.
"What is normally a safe space can become an unsafe space," said Gary Walker, a spokesman for the U.K. charity Plan. "Sending (children) to what can be unsafe buildings with ill-trained and ill-equipped teachers can actually set them back rather than leading them on a road to speedy recovery."
Anupama Rao Singh, UNICEF's regional director, said reopening schools in the delta Monday "may be too ambitious," since construction materials were still on the way and there was not enough time to rebuild schools and train new teachers.
Myanmar's generals have also come under sharp criticism for kicking homeless cyclone survivors out of shelters and sending them back to their devastated villages.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of displaced people have recently been expelled from their temporary shelters in schools, monasteries and public buildings, Human Rights Watch said Saturday.
"The forced evictions are part of government efforts to demonstrate that the emergency relief period is over and that the affected population is capable of rebuilding their lives without foreign assistance," Human Rights Watch said.
Some international aid agencies said their staffers were still meeting survivors deep in the delta who have not received any help since the storm hit.
In Geneva, the U.N.'s top human rights official said the world's long record of tolerating rights abuses in Myanmar allowed the country's government to obstruct international aid in the wake of the May 2-3 cyclone.
"The obstruction to the deployment of such assistance illustrates the invidious effects of long-standing international tolerance for human rights violations," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said Monday.
Arbour, who leaves office at the end of the month, made her comments in a speech to the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council.
In March, the 47-member council criticized Myanmar for its record of violently suppressing pro-democracy groups and extending the house arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The Nobel Peace Prize winner has been detained for 12 of the past 18 years since her party won a 1990 general election that the junta refused to acknowledge.
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