Day by day, world leaders have condemned the Burmese regime's handling of the Cyclone Nargis humanitarian aid effort.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said there is "deep concern and immense frustration."  UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the generals’ intransigence "utterly unacceptable." French President Nicolas Sarkozy found the inaction "utterly reprehensible," and George Bush declared the regime "either isolated or callous."

In the wake of the cyclone that destroyed Burma's rice bowl in the southwestern Irrawaddy delta and heavily damaged its commercial hub, Rangoon, the international community has shown its generosity by sending humanitarian aid to desperate victims.

However, a tiny amount of aid has reached the huge numbers of homeless two weeks after the devastation because the military rulers, insisting they can handle the emergency alone, have repeatedly rejected growing international pressure to open the door to a foreign-run relief effort.

Meanwhile, Burmese Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein announced on state television on Friday, two weeks after the cyclone hit, that the initial relief effort was over.

"We have already finished our first phase of emergency relief. We are going onto the second phase, the rebuilding stage," he said.

This means that rescue teams on the ground have stopped searching for survivors in the most remote areas and the bodies of victims are no longer picked up for identification or burial; some cyclone survivors sheltering in monasteries and schools in disaster areas have been forced by local authorities to return to their flattened homes or to regime-organized refugee camps.

In some areas of the Irrawaddy delta, cyclone victims are reportedly being used as forced labor on government projects to repair the damaged infrastructure and some supporters of the regime get special favors and stay in the best-run international refugee camps.

In the meantime, the military regime is hijacking large portions of international aid at the Rangoon international airport.
In general, the criminal callousness of the Burmese generals is unprecedented in recent natural disasters. Their negligence is creating a new, man-made disaster whose toll may well be greater than the number of victims who died in the cyclone.

The United Nations has warned that Burma faces a "second catastrophe" unless the junta immediately allows massive air and sea delivery of aid. 

First, we must save lives. Second, we must focus on healing the physical and mental wounds of the survivors. Finally, we must rebuild the devastated area, a long-term project that will take years.

The Burmese people deserve the right to grasp the helping hands of the international community.