Anger mounts at Myanmar aid visa delays

By Ed Cropley

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A furious rescue worker accused Myanmar's military junta on Monday of crimes against humanity for refusing to give visas to aid officials desperate to enter the country to help the 1.5 million survivors of Cyclone Nargis.

"They say they will call, but it's always wait, wait, wait," Pierre Fouillant of the Comite de Secours Internationaux, a French disaster rescue agency, told Reuters after being turned away from the former Burma's embassy in the Thai capital.

"I've never seen delays like this, never," said Fouillant, a veteran of 10 humanitarian disasters. "It's a crime against humanity. It should be against the law. It's like they are taking a gun and shooting their own people."

Like dozens of others, Fouillant applied on Thursday for a business visa, his only option since the military-ruled and isolated southeast Asian nation has no such thing as an "emergency aid worker" visa.

The embassy was closed on Friday for a Thai holiday, and on Saturday and Sunday. It opened as normal on Monday morning.

At least 100,000 people are thought to have died in the May 2 cyclone and storm surge in the Irrawaddy delta, a death toll that could rise dramatically if survivors do not get access to food, clean water and medicine in the next few days, experts say.

Reuters witnesses on the edges of the disaster zone say towns and villages are being swamped by huge numbers of cyclone refugees and cannot cope.

There is virtually no government assistance and food is running out. Some residents say they are afraid the desperate evacuees will be forced to turn to looting.