I haven’t posted much on this lately, because the news has been pretty repetitive. Today is more of the same, but this lead story is so outrageous that it deserves wide coverage. It probably won’t get it, but I’ll try and do my part here.

Volunteers Who Bury The Dead Arrested

Seven Burmese civilian volunteer aid workers, members of a team known as “The Group that Buries the Dead,” were arrested on June 14, following their efforts to bury victims of Cyclone Nargis.

Aung Kyaw San, the chief editor of the Myanmar Tribune weekly journal, and his volunteer team of several dozen people undertook the grim task of removing some of the many corpses that still lie in the rivers and fields throughout the Irrawaddy delta.

The bodies, which had badly decomposed since the cyclone struck on May 2-3, were given simple cremation or burial rites.

“They worked to clean up the bodies around Bogalay,” an aid worker close to the group told The Irrawaddy on Thursday. “The authorities have not done much about the corpses. They volunteered to do the government’s job on their own.”

Bogalay Township, one of hardest-hit areas, had tens of thousands of corpses littering the rivers, streams and fields, according to the volunteer aid worker.

“When they returned from Bogalay to Rangoon on June 14 their vehicle was stopped at a checkpoint in Pyapon Township,” he said. “They looked at their identity cards and arrested them.”

Salt Shortage Adds to Post Nargis Woes

Amid worries that Burma’s food security could be at risk if farmers in the cyclone-ravaged Irrawaddy delta don’t start planting rice soon, there are growing concerns that the country is also facing a shortage of another dietary staple: salt.

Merchants at the Bayintnaung wholesale market in Rangoon said that traders have been turning to Mon and Arakan states to meet the demand for salt since the Irrawaddy delta, the center of Burma’s salt industry, was hit by Cyclone Nargis last month.

“Normally seventy percent of salt consumed in Rangoon comes from the delta,” a salt trader told The Irrawaddy. “Now we are worrying that a shortage will come very soon.”

Meanwhile, the price of salt has hit an all-time high.

A trader in Mudon, a town in Mon State, reported that salt now costs 600 kyat (US $0.50) per viss (a standard measurement of about 1.63 kilograms), or six times the usual price.

UN Urges Junta To Grant Aid Workers Access

The UN Human Rights Council asked the government in Myanmar to grant immediate access to aid organizations in a resolution approved Wednesday in Geneva. It urged the military junta to stick to the promises made to the UN Secretary-General on humanitarian aid as it concluded its eighth regular meeting.

It also strongly urged Myanmar to desist from politically motivated arrests and to release all political prisoners without delay in a resolution drawn up by the EU group of countries.

Pray for the people of Myanmar!