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Mistrust, misery mix in devastated Myanmar
http://edition.cnn.com/ 2008/ WORLD/ asiapcf/ 05/ 09/ rivers.btsc/ index.html?eref=edit...
CNN's Dan Rivers has left cyclone-ravaged Myanmar after sneaking into the country without the knowledge of the nation's secretive ruling junta. The government hunted the journalist even as it seized food aid and kept out relief agencies.
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Invade Myanmar?
http://controllingauthority.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/invade-...Time online today suggests it might be time to invade Myanmar to ensure that aid reaches victims of the cyclone. Here’s a CNN reporter’s accounting of his narrow escape out of the country & how the “generals” seem to be treating this tragedy. What do you think? Invasion makes more sense in this case than 5 years ago going into Iraq, BUT…. All my life, I’ve heard how many lives were “saved” by Truman’s decision to drop the bomb(s) on Japan, but I remain unable to reconcile that argument with the known consequences. In this case, we do know many people are dying while waiting for a drink of fresh water, some food, shelter, etc. What’s the right thing to do? Sending money, especially in this case, left me wondering if whatever it buys will ever get to those suffering. I remember the debate on this blog about the stolen skateboard, & I said something like…maybe the person who took it needed the thing or the money from it more than the kid who actually bought it. Now that feels kind of naive when I picture the junta soldiers taking emergency supplies for their own use or charging a fortune for them. They want to distribute it themselves. Will they?
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Burmese News
http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/?p=83...Since the Burmese government for the most part prevents good outside journalism about the cyclone or their politics, the most reliable source of information so far (aside from BBC/ITV sneak-in journalism) is Irrawaddy, an expat newspaper with ample coverage of the subject. I am seriously thinking of donating some money not to some international aid organization but this newspaper itself. From CNN is an account by Dan Rivers on the difficulty of reporting events. I remember the most striking detail in early reports was that Burma possessed only 7 functioning helicopters in this country. Here’s the wikipedia page on the storm. The rest of these articles come from Irrawaddy. Min Zin on how the Burmese government is commandeering foreign aid and extorting donations from local businessmen. The source added that Than Shwe believes he has already distributed 5 billion kyat (4.5 million dollars), which he mostly extorted from Burmese businessmen as “donations”, and he also has more than US $30 million from international assistance pledges. He then decided to use his own Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) and army to distribute aid. “What Than Shwe doesn’t understand is that his $4.5 million can only be used for food for 12 days, and all the promised dollars from the world may not come if the international experts are not allowed into the country,” said Win Min, a Burmese analyst in Thailand. Moreover, Burmese businessmen cannot afford to donate much more cash, and overworked Burmese doctors have run out of resources. Non-government organizations (NGOs) and international non-government organizations (INGOs) within Burma, who had to sign memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with the regime to begin their projects, defining the nature of their work and their areas of operation, have now found themselves restricted by those same MOUs. Since many NGOs do not have projects in the Irrawaddy delta, they are not allowed to do any aid work in the devastated region since they were not authorized to do so in their MOUs. According to inside sources, NGOs are now trying to work under the UN’s umbrella in order to reach into the delta. Meanwhile, the military and its thuggish USDA members are intimidating private donors who provide rice and clothing to cyclone victims in the suburban townships of Rangoon. Many donors are reportedly being asked to hand over their relief supplies to local USDA members for them to supervise distribution. Sean Turnell on how the Burmese government is reaping record oil profits while suffering from inadequate food production: Most of Burma’s prominent corporations are owned by the military, and the country is judged by Transparency International as the second most corrupt in the world. Burma spends a mere 1.4 per cent of GDP on health and education, less than half that spent by the next poorest country in Asia, and it is the only country in the region whose defence budget is greater than that of health and education combined. In 2008 Burma’s per-capita GDP will amount to only around US $290 per annum. Over 70 percent of this income will be spent on food, by far the highest proportion so devoted in the region. Another shocking fact from the article: Rising gas prices as well as increasing output volumes have caused Burma’s gas exports to soar, driving a projected balance of payments surplus for 2007/08 of around $2.4 billion. International reserves, hitherto barely sufficient to cover more than a month or so of imports, will rise to a (relatively) healthy $3.5 billion. Burma’s gas earnings should be transforming the country’s prospects—and allowing the fiscal space for the spending on basic infrastructure, health and education the country so desperately needs. Alas, however, this is not happening, and the foreign exchange revenues Burma is accumulating are currently making next to no impact on the country’s fiscal accounts. The reason is simple. Burma’s gas earnings are being allocated in the government’s published accounts at the ‘official’ exchange rate of the kyat. This official rate (at around 6 kyat:$1) over-values the currency by around 150–200 times its market value (which is currently about 1,000 kyat:$S1). Such exchange rate duality imposes other costs on Burma’s economy, but critical here is that the use of the official exchange rate to convert the gas earnings into kyat dramatically underplays their true (potential) contribution to state finances. Recorded at the official rate, Burma’s gas earnings for 2006/07 of $1.25 billion translate into 7.5 billion kyat, or a mere 0.6 per cent of budget receipts. By contrast, if the same US dollar earnings are recorded at the market exchange rate, their contribution of 1,500 billion kyat would more than double total state receipts, and more or less eliminate Burma’s fiscal deficit. What could be the motivation for this deliberate withholding of financial wherewithal to the state? No-one but the Chairman of the SPDC, Gen Than Shwe, can know for sure. The most likely explanation is that, so recorded, Burma’s foreign exchange earnings can be kept ‘quarantined’ from the public accounts, and thereby are available for the portioning out by the regime to itself and its cronies. Here’s an AP photo depicting the gas lines. Fuel costs $2.50/gallon, with a maximum of 2 gallons a day allowed. (Black market prices are 4x that). Finally from Irrawaddy archives, an article by James Rose about the awkward visit by Sylvester Stallone during a politically sensitive moment to Burma to promote his new Rambo movie: The nature of the Burma demonstrations, to date via the world’s media, has been one of peaceful protest. The cry of metta (“loving kindness”) sent out into the Burmese air by the marching monks has become the banner under which the world has tended to view the current situation in Burma. As such, introducing a snarling, blood-soaked, murderous Rambo into the media landscape and you have a classical case of what is known, in media terms, as a “mixed message”. The combination of two such diametrically opposed approaches to dealing with Burma’s dire circumstances tangles the whole Burma issue and removes some of the pillars of the bridge of clear communication to the world. “Is Burma about peaceful change or is it about civil war?” once media consumers begin asking such questions, the answer is already more or less unimportant. By now, many tracking Burma via the world’s media coverage have already expressed their confusion and have begun the fatal process of moving on. Media consumers in advanced economies like their causes simple and clear-cut. Few are inclined to take the time to assess and analyze a given situation. They want clean lines of entry. Confusion is the death-knell for any campaign seeking to gain public attention and support.
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In Hiding in Burma….
http://mandyconners.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/in-hiding-in-bu...From CNN.com: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences covering news and analyze the stories behind the events. Here CNN’s Dan Rivers details his remarkable personal story to CNN Wire news editor Ashley Broughton after returning home Friday from five days in Myanmar, reporting on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. CNN’s Dan Rivers returned Friday from five days in Myanmar, reporting on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. 1 of 2 more photos » var CNN_ArticleChanger = new CNN_imageChanger(’cnnImgChngr’,'/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/09/rivers.btsc/imgChng/p0-0.init.exclude.html’,1,0); //CNN.imageChanger.load(’cnnImgChngr’,'imgChng/p1-0.exclude.html’); (CNN) — Hiding under a blanket in the back of a car at a police checkpoint. Hopping on boats instead of staying on a road. Constantly looking over your shoulder, knowing that at any moment you — and those with you — face the possibility of imprisonment, torture, even death. It sounds like a spy movie. But CNN’s Dan Rivers, who sneaked into storm-ravaged Myanmar without the knowledge of the nation’s secretive ruling junta, says the reality is even more frightening than it appears on the silver screen. Now out of Myanmar, Rivers said Friday that his experience raises a question: If the government is chasing down a journalist reporting on a natural disaster, what kinds of problems are aid workers facing? “The whole country is kind of a basket case,” Rivers said. “Combine that with a disaster on this scale and a government that won’t let anyone in — they’re turning a bad situation into … what really is criminal negligence on a massive scale.” Look at satellite pictures of the damage by the flooding » He is concerned, he said, that many more may die as a result of the government’s self-imposed isolation. Earlier in the week, he said, his crew videotaped government workers dumping bodies of the dead into a river. A government not engaged in such activities, which amount to a kind of cover-up, should have nothing to hide, Rivers noted. “Why should they be trying to hide a natural disaster? It’s not their fault. It just illustrates the mentality of the regime. It’s so suspicious of the outside world.” Watch how some aid is getting through » Rivers arrived in Myanmar on Monday morning, a few days after Cyclone Nargis ripped through the Irrawaddy Delta region, putting more than 2,000 square miles of land under water and killing tens of thousands of people. The Myanmar government has said 22,000 people were killed. The top U.S. envoy in the country has said the death toll may be as high as 100,000. Rivers is no stranger to natural disasters and their aftermath. In 2004, he was in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, covering the devastation wrought by a tsunami. In October 2005, he was in Pakistan after a magnitude-7.5 earthquake killed 75,000 people in Pakistan and India. “I’ve seen a lot of horrible things like that, unfortunately,” he said of the situation in Myanmar. But “it was bad, and … it’s the kind of story you really feel emotionally. In that way, it’s easy to write the story, because it just flows out. You feel passionate about it.” In Myanmar, however, “the logistics were horrendous,” he said. Getting to the hardest-hit area involved an eight-hour drive on dirt roads. In some ways, Banda Aceh before the tsunami resembled Myanmar, he said. The region, the closest land to the magnitude-9.0 underwater earthquake that spawned the tsunami, was also home to a nearly three-decade conflict between Indonesian troops and separatist rebels, and people tended to be suspicious of outsiders. Watch Dan Rivers’ report from Myanmar » However, after the disaster, “they just opened the whole place up, and it was just carte blanche,” he said. “Anyone could go in. I guess I naively assumed it would be the same in this instance,” thinking that police, with so many victims and so much damage to worry about, would not be concerned with, say, the kind of visa carried by a visitor. Within days of his arrival, he realized he was wrong. Rivers and his crew had been in Myanmar for only a day when a local contact warned them that the government was seeking him — just after his name was broadcast. The contact said authorities were alerting all hotels to report which foreigners had stayed there. Still, though, “I was pretty confident we were being careful enough,” he said. He and his crew were continually changing locations, moving from hotel to hotel. But he knew that the potential for a problem was there. That became more apparent during a visit in the country’s southern portion Thursday, when members of his crew asked a local official whether a road was open. The official said yes and was going to give them a pass, but he said an immigration official wanted to talk to them, Rivers said. That official took the crew members’ passports and were comparing them to a picture of Rivers — apparently taken from a picture of a CNN screen. Learn more about Myanmar’s recent history » “They disappeared for, like, two hours,” Rivers said. “I didn’t know what had happened to them.” He said he was worried his crew members might be interrogated or tortured, and considered turning himself in. “I was wandering the street, not knowing what to do,” he said. It was “baking hot” — about 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), he said. He knew no one and was not fluent in the language. People were asking him who he was, where he came from. One person asked whether he was with the CIA. The situation was “pretty uncomfortable,” he said. “I must have looked pretty suspicious.” Luckily, he did not turn himself in — and later found out that the officials did not know the crew members were from CNN or that they were accompanying him. When the crew told him the officials had his photo, however, Rivers realized other authorities probably had his picture as well. The group decided to push farther south, he said. At one point, he hid under a blanket in the back of the car at a police checkpoint. It was at that checkpoint they were told that the people in the village they had just left wanted to see them again. The crew turned around but decided to get off the road and followed a dirt road into the middle of the jungle, Rivers said. They parked the car, hopped on a boat and traveled down the river in two small boats. They reached a small village and were able to do some videotaping, he said. They also were checking on a rumor that there was a speedboat nearby. While walking, however, they were stopped by a local official carrying a walkie-talkie, he said. The group was told to return to their van and that police would be waiting for them there. The encounter, he said, was “gut-wrenching … you think, ‘Oh, my God, this is just going horribly wrong.’ “ On the hour-long trek back through the jungle, Rivers said, he was genuinely fearful. “For the first time, I was thinking, you know, this is it,” he said. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. No one knows where we are, exactly. They could just shoot us and throw us into the river and say we had an accident. … You start to think about family and what you’d put them through if you disappear.” He said he expected a large phalanx of police officers at the van but was heartened to see only two officers there. The group was asked for their passports. In holding his out — the last one to offer it — Rivers said he held it in such a way that his thumb covered his surname. Not noticing, police took his middle name and radioed it in. “They thought we weren’t who they were looking for and basically let us go,” he said, calling it a “fluke.” The group was escorted back into town and met with a more senior government official, who appeared convinced they were there as part of an aid group. Finally released, “we kind of hightailed it,” driving all night into Yangon, he said. “It was a genuinely very scary 12 hours,” he said. “It really did seem like a week.” Still, he wasn’t yet home free. One last search Sitting in a seat on a flight out of Yangon, having made it through security with no problems, Rivers thought he was finished with the Myanmar government. But a flight attendant approached him and told him immigration authorities wanted to see him again, he said. He was escorted off the plane to officials who were waiting for him at the gate. The authorities “basically searched everything I had,” he said. They went through his bag and made him turn out his pockets, remove his shoes and socks. He believes they were looking for pictures or videotapes, but he had none. They did find a computer flash drive, Rivers said, but it had nothing on it and it was returned to him. His passport was taken — and his real name seen this time. Eventually, the flight attendant returned. Although he did not understand the discourse, Rivers said he believed she was telling them the flight could not be held any longer and asking whether they were going to let him leave. And so they did. “They hadn’t found anything on me. They probably just wanted to get me out of the country anyway,” he said. “The whole time, I just didn’t really say anything.” Speaking from his home Friday and battling exhaustion after about 36 hours without sleep, Rivers said his experience as a wanted man was “really surreal.” “I guess the colorful bit, all this sneaking around in the swamps and getting on boats and stuff — there were some quite comical moments, when I was literally under a blanket in the back of a car, sweating profusely at a checkpoint, trying to look like a piece of luggage in the boot, and you’re thinking, ‘How do I get into these situations?’ “ But he said the stubbornness of the Myanmar regime was “breathtaking” — that, in the face of such a large-scale disaster, they would utilize time and resources looking for a reporter. “The more resources are spent chasing me, the less they’re going to be concentrating on actually helping people,” he said. “There comes a point where I’ve done my job. I’ve told people what was going on … staying in much longer would have meant I was getting in the way of the story.” Blogger’s Note: I am glad that CNN let someone sneak into Burma. However, I was annoyed last night while watching Anderson Cooper 360. Politics was the lead, not Cyclone Nargis and it’s devastation. In fact, it didn’t come up until almost a half hour into the show. Not to be critical, but back during the most recent uprisings in Burma, we were promised that CNN would continue to follow the goings on in that country, and I feel let down. I don’t know what the producers are thinking, honestly. I mean, yes, politics is important, but does an ENTIRE BROADCAST have to be basically devoted to it, night after night? I remember why I stopped watching. It’s just too frustrating. I can’t wait until November is over. Then maybe I can go back to watching the news. To the real subject at hand…I hope the military junta soon realises their mistake in not letting enough aid into the country. People are dying, and that will just cause anarchy, which will lead to more deaths, especially under martial law, which Burma essentially is. I think this is wishful thinking on my part. But, don’t worry…..after about a week, everyone will forget all about Cyclone Nargis and its aftermath, people will move on, until the next big storm-turned-failure-of humanity. Great. Always great to look forward to. Society never ceases to baffle me. The apathy, the readiness to “move on” when we’ve had enough, heard enough, or seen enough. To me, there is never too much information that can be disseminated. The more the better. The more we know about what’s really going on the US, or in remote corners of the world, I think we’re better prepared. Then, if we see, if we’re aware, we can’t say we “didn’t know”.
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Sad.
http://dinodinodino.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/sad/Pretty much the only word I can think of to sum up the situation in Burma. Great story here about a journalist’s attempt to see the disaster on the ground. “The whole country is kind of a basket case,” Rivers said. “Combine that with a disaster on this scale and a government that won’t let anyone in — they’re turning a bad situation into … what really is criminal negligence on a massive scale.” He’s right, of course. It’s complete and total madness and no one will ever know how many people simply vanish because of the erratic, inane, and evil junta. Turning back aid agencies? I don’t even think Kim Jong-Il could be that crazy (then again…) if a disaster of similar devastation struck North Korea. There’s little point in praying for Burma’s prisoners–sorry, citizens–I’ve heard those are being turned back as well. So we’re just left with one moping syllable: sad.
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The World, Too, Is Bipolar [News Roundup]
http://jezebel.com/389200/the-world-too-is-bipolarHillary Clinton won't wear Donna Karan anymore because it makes her look too well-dressed. Four words, Hillary: Nancy Pelosi is Speaker. [Times UK] Nader wants to to save half of your tax return and give him the other half so he can hopefully get McCain elected. Man, fuck that guy. [Boston Globe] It's okay, though, because oil is now $126 a barrel, a new record, so you'll just have to spend it on that anyway. [Washington Times]Staff Sgt. Louis Falcon spent months of his tour of Iraq trying to get a teenage Iraqi girl prosthetic legs. It made him feel so good he's, um, willing to do more tours there killing people. [LA Times] The Burmese junta is going to hold elections on time tomorrow, now that they've successfully resolved the humanitarian crisis of a CNN reporter reporting on the cyclone and the resulting death and destruction they don't really give a shit about doing anything about. [Washington Times, CNN] But they're in "good" company in their apathy, since OPEC only gave $1.5 million to the World Food Programme this year, dwarfing the only member donation from the UAE of $50,000. The U.S., by comparison, has given $362.7 million so far this year and pledged $250 million to the WFP. [Fox News] But, hey, the oil industry's got plenty of money for a charm campaign. They're taking bloggers to oil platforms! Everyone will learn to love high gas prices once bloggers explain to them the nuances of oil prices and why oil companies deserve billion-dollar profit margins. [Washington Post] Schadenfreude alert: Al Sharpton owes $1.5 million in back taxes and penalties. Someone's gotta pay for those suits. [Associated Press] Obama has surpassed Clinton in the race for superdelegates this afternoon. Not a good Friday at Hillary HQ. [NY Times] Which probably explains the anti-Obama e-mail campaign Hillary supporters have started, much to the chagrin of uncommitted superdelegates. Really, people? McCain is better than a Democratic Presidency? Maybe you're the ones who should move to Canada. [Huffington Post] I've already had a drink but, like this judge, I could really use a foot massage. I'd rather not have to order an underling to do it, though. Yay equality, bringing sexual harassment to both sexes. [CNN] Crap, I was supposed to find a happy story. Um, the trade deficit is down because our economy sucks! But, the trade deficit's down! [NY Times]
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Killing with Correctness
http://dopaminedreams.blogspot.com/2008/05/killing-with-corr...CNN's Dan Rivers has left cyclone-ravaged Myanmar after sneaking into the country without the knowledge of the nation's secretive ruling junta. The government hunted the journalist even as it seized food aid and kept out relief agencies. "They're turning a bad situation into ... what really is criminal negligence on a massive scale," Rivers says. Here CNN's Dan Rivers details his remarkable personal story to CNN Wire news editor Ashley Broughton after returning home Friday from five days in Myanmar, reporting on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. Well, allow me to point out that the members of this ruling junta are the ones that change the name of the fucking country – and the American press in particular just fell all over themselves to get on board with the new name. This is one of the reasons I wasn’t sorry to leave journalism. “Political correctness good … thinking hard.” *sigh* By calling the place “Myanmar”, they are legitimizing this gang of armed thugs that has control of the country. The same thugs who are now keeping aid from hosts of victims currently dying in the wake of this major natural disaster. The name of the damn country is Burma! Granted, “Burma” is a somewhat Europeanized version of the native name, but “Myanmar” is in the native ethnic language of the illegally ruling junta, and is a slap in the face to the other ethnicities of Burma. You can bet your ass they aren’t calling the place “Myanmar”. But American journalists just jump right onboard the bandwagon without giving anything any fucking thought at all. *sigh* Until the people vote to change the name, it’s BURMA! Aung San Kyi is the rightfully elected prime minister! If we had a functional United Nations, this piece of shit junta would have been overthrown and democracy reinstated long before this crisis. Believe it or not, the UN wasn’t originally organized to spend every moment shooting spitballs at an ever more indifferent United States. It had a purpose, once. Here’s the CNN story. There’s links to a bunch of other accounts from their site. (CNN) -- Hiding under a blanket in the back of a car at a police checkpoint. Hopping on boats instead of staying on a road. Constantly looking over your shoulder, knowing that at any moment you -- and those with you -- face the possibility of imprisonment, torture, even death. It sounds like a spy movie. But CNN's Dan Rivers, who sneaked into storm-ravaged Myanmar without the knowledge of the nation's secretive ruling junta, says the reality is even more frightening than it appears on the silver screen. Now out of Myanmar, Rivers said on Friday his experience raises the question: If the government is chasing down a journalist reporting on a natural disaster, what kinds of problems are aid workers facing? "The whole country is kind of a basket case," Rivers said. "Combine that with a disaster on this scale and a government that won't let anyone in -- they're turning a bad situation into ... what really is criminal negligence on a massive scale." Photo Look at satellite pictures of the damage by the flooding » He is concerned, he said, that many more may die as a result of the government's self-imposed isolation. Earlier in the week, he said, his crew was able to videotape government workers dumping bodies of the dead into a river. A government not engaged in such activities, which amount to a kind of cover-up, should have nothing to hide, Rivers noted. "Why should they be trying to hide a natural disaster? It's not their fault. It just illustrates the mentality of the regime. It's so suspicious of the outside world." Rivers arrived in Myanmar on Monday morning, a few days after Cyclone Nargis ripped through the Irrawaddy Delta region of Myanmar, putting more than 2,000 square miles of land under water and killing tens of thousands of people. The Myanmar government has said 22,000 people were killed. The top U.S. envoy in the country has said the death toll may be as high as 100,000. Rivers is no stranger to natural disasters and their aftermath. In 2004, he was in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, covering the devastation wrought by a tsunami. In October 2005, he was in Pakistan after a magnitude 7.5 earthquake killed some 75,000 people in Pakistan and India. "I've seen a lot of horrible things like that, unfortunately," he said of the situation in Myanmar. But "it was bad, and ... it's the kind of story you really feel emotionally. In that way, it's easy to write the story, because it just flows out. You feel passionate about it." In Myanmar, however, "the logistics were horrendous," he said. Getting to the hardest-hit area involved an eight-hour drive on dirt roads. In some ways, Banda Aceh before the tsunami resembled Myanmar, he said. The region, the closest land to the magnitude 9.0 underwater earthquake that spawned the tsunami, was also home to a nearly three-decade conflict between Indonesian troops and separatist rebels, and people tended to be suspicious of outsiders. However, after the disaster, "they just opened the whole place up and it was just carte blanche," he said. "Anyone could go in. I guess I naively assumed it would be the same in this instance," thinking that police, with so many victims and so much damage to worry about, would not be concerned with, say, the kind of visa carried by a visitor. Within days of his arrival, he realized he was wrong. Rivers and his crew had been in Myanmar for only a day when a local contact warned them the government was seeking him -- just after his name was broadcast. The contact said authorities were alerting all hotels to report which foreigners had stayed there. Still, though, "I was pretty confident we were being careful enough," he said. He and his crew were continually changing locations, moving from hotel to hotel. But he knew the potential for a problem was there. That became more apparent during a visit in the country's southern portion on Thursday, when members of his crew asked a local official whether a road was open. The official said yes, and was going to give them a pass, but he said an immigration official wanted to talk to them, Rivers said. That official took the crew members' passports and were comparing them to a picture of Rivers -- apparently taken from a picture of a CNN screen. "They disappeared for like, two hours," Rivers said. "I didn't know what had happened to them." He said he was worried his crew members might be interrogated or tortured, and considered turning himself in. "I was wandering the street, not knowing what to do," he said. It was "baking hot" -- about 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), he said. He knew no one and was not fluent in the language. People were asking him who he was, where he came from. One person asked him if he was with the CIA. The situation was "pretty uncomfortable," he said. "I must have looked pretty suspicious." Luckily, he did not turn himself in -- and later found out the officials did not know the crew members were from CNN or that they were accompanying him. When the crew told him the officials had his photo, however, Rivers realized other authorities likely had his picture as well. The group decided to push further south, he said. At one point, he hid under a blanket in the back of the car at a police checkpoint. It was at that checkpoint they were told the people in the village they had just left wanted to see them again. The crew turned around, but decided to get off the road and followed a dirt road into the middle of the jungle, Rivers said. They parked the car, hopped on a boat and traveled down the river in two small boats. They reached a small village and were able to do some videotaping, he said. They also were checking on a rumor that there was a speedboat nearby. While walking, however, they were stopped by a local official carrying a walkie-talkie, he said. The group was told to return to their van and that police would be waiting for them there. The encounter, he said, was "gut wrenching ... you think, 'Oh, my God, this is just going horribly wrong.' " On the hour-long trek back through the jungle, Rivers said he was genuinely fearful. "For the first time, I was thinking, you know, this is it," he said. "We're in the middle of nowhere. No one knows where we are, exactly. They could just shoot us and throw us into the river and say we had an accident. ... You start to think about family, and what you'd put them through if you disappear." He said he expected a large phalanx of police officers at the van, but was heartened to see only two officers there. The group was asked for their passports. In holding his out -- the last one to offer it -- Rivers said he held it in such a way that his thumb covered his surname. Not noticing, police took his middle name and radioed it in. "They thought we weren't who they were looking for, and basically let us go," he said, calling it a "fluke." The group was escorted back into town and met with a more senior government official, who appeared convinced they were there as part of an aid group. Finally released, "we kind of hightailed it," driving all night long into Yangon, he said. "It was a genuinely very scary 12 hours," he said. "It really did seem like a week."
