Myanmar lets ICRC deliver aid to detention centers

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - Myanmar authorities have allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross to distribute food and other supplies to inmates held in three detention centers in cyclone-hit areas, the ICRC said on Tuesday.

While it marked the first access the neutral humanitarian agency has had to detainees in Myanmar in more than two years, ICRC spokeswoman Carla Haddad said the operation could not be considered as a resumption of its prison monitoring visits. That would requires access to prisoners in private to evaluate their conditions of detention.

In a statement, the ICRC said a truck carrying four tonnes of relief supplies had reached the cyclone-stricken Irrawaddy delta on Tuesday. This followed an ICRC relief flight which brought 35 tonnes of medical and sanitation equipment on Sunday.

"Basic food items, blankets, clothing, essential drugs and soap were distributed today (Tuesday) at three detention sites -- two labor camps and a facility for women -- identified by the Ministry of Home Affairs as being in urgent need of assistance," it said.

Pierre-Andre Conod, head of the ICRC's delegation in Yangon, welcomed the development.

"This gave us the chance to meet some of the immediate needs of the people detained in these facilities, and to see, first hand, the scale of damage done by the cyclone, enabling us to get a better idea of what kind of help is needed," he said.

Aid distributions were planned in at least eight other prisons and labor camps over the next two days but would pose additional challenges of moving supplies by boat, the ICRC said.

The ICRC has been working in Myanmar since 1986, providing limbs and physical rehabilitation for landmine victims and other disabled people at its orthopedic centers.

From 1999 until the end of 2005, ICRC officials made regular visits to some 10,000 detainees, including political prisoners, in 70 prisons and labor camps.

But since 2006, Myanmar's military rulers have not allowed it to carry out the activity according to ICRC's standard procedures, under which its findings remain confidential in exchange for full and private access to prisoners.

"Today's distribution inside the detention centers cannot be considered as regular visits to detainees in line with our usual procedures," ICRC spokeswoman Carla Haddad said in Geneva.

The organization has no current estimate of the number of detainees in Myanmar. Although it has not been able to visit prisons, the ICRC facilitated 3,500 family visits to detainees in 2007, Haddad said.

(Editing by Matthew Jones)