Finally, Burma's cyclone victims in the Irrawaddy delta region have been able to mourn their dead. The regime announced three days of official mourning but could offer no assurance that adequate aid is on the way.

Cyclone survivors are mourning without food and proper shelter from the rain, often encountering intimidation from armed police and local officials, who ordered them to stop begging for food and to show "discipline" when VIPs call on them.

Although it appears that Burmese officials have stopped counting the dead, nearly three weeks after Cyclone Nargis struck, the body count and numbers game aren’t over yet.

At first the regime, perhaps unaware of the true scale of the disaster, announced 350 people had died. That toll rose in steps, to 10,000, then more than 20,000 and on to 78,000, with 56,000 people listed as missing.

When the number of dead reached 130,000 the regime mouthpiece, The New Light of Myanmar, nervously buried the fact on an inside page, reserving the front page for stories and pictures of the generals inspecting refugee camps and handing out aid packages to survivors.

Even that official toll is far short of the reliable estimates of international observers and diplomats, who believe more than 200,000 could have died. They say the cyclone struck more than 2 million people in one way or another.

But who knows the true figures behind this disaster? Who is counting the dead? There have been no major relief operations in the Irrawaddy delta region, let alone official attempts to rescue survivors and recover the dead.

We’re reminded of the 1988 uprising, when about 3,000 activists and students were believed to have been gunned down on the streets, while the regime insisted only a few hundred looters were killed. Twenty years on, the real death toll is still unknown.

Although the true scale of this month’s cyclone disaster is still to be revealed, the regime has issued a bizarre announcement that the first phase of the emergency relief mission is over.

Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein declared: "We have already finished our first phase of emergency relief. We are going on to the second phase, the rebuilding stage." The New Light of Myanmar trumpeted in a headline: "Rehabilitation task goes on with greater momentum."

The UN reports that its agencies and partners have been able to reach only about 25 percent of the people affected by the cyclone. But how we do know it is 25 percent? And how could the UN provide sustainable assistance to them? Denied visas and access, UN officials have been trying to deliver aid by remote control from Bangkok or Rangoon. And the UN continues to make one concession after another to junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe.  

Until now The New Light of Myanmar, eschewing any informative reports on the plight of the cyclone victims and the impact of the disaster on the region, has been content to carry daily lists of aid and its origin. It paints a rosy picture of how VIPs are “helping” the victims and claims the situation is returning to “normal.”

Normal? Foreign Ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations must have wished it only were so, after Burma's Foreign Minister Nyan Win told them at a ministerial meeting in Singapore that his country needed US $11.7 billion for rehabilitation and reconstruction.

Thailand’s Surin Pitsuwan, Asean’s secretary-general, spoke for many when he cautioned, after a visit to Rangoon: "How do we know it's $11 billion? How can we be certain?”

Surin said: "Accessibility is important to guarantee confidence and verify the damage and needs, otherwise confidence during pledging will be affected."

Ahead of a donor conference in Rangoon on Sunday, Human Rights Watch warned donors that before they committed themselves to reconstruction projects they should obtain a commitment from the regime to make a significant contribution of its own. So far the regime has committed US $4.4 million (5 billion kyat)—hardly “significant” from a government that holds an estimated $4 billion in foreign reserves and is thought to collect $150 million monthly in revenues from gas exports.

Burma specialist Sean Turnell, of Macquarie University in Australia, posed the question: where is all that money sitting? And he came up with the answer: “What we do know is that it's sitting somewhere where Burmese people can't get access to it."

Turnell added: "Either it's sitting offshore or it's sitting in the accounts of the Myanmar [Burma] Foreign Trade Bank or the Central Bank. But it looks like it's only accessible by Than Shwe and perhaps one or two others; it's not being used for the benefit of the Burmese people, which of course is critical at the moment.