Myanmar Victims Have Nowhere To Go

Some Are Getting No Help At All, Not From Their Military Government, Or International Aid Groups

(CBS) 

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They are victims of a natural disaster. They are also a national secret - the government of Myanmar doesn't want the world to see these survivors - CBS News had to sneak past military checkpoints to find them, at a monastery in the town of Shuliman.

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The monks share their food with the survivors. They offer them a patch of dry land to sleep on - but they can't protect them.

The government is forcing people out of the monasteries and back to their villages, where there is no shelter, no food, no clean water, more than two weeks after the storm, survivors are still on the run.

A nearby soccer stadium is now home to 173 families. They've come a long way.

Tin Mau Tun is a village elder. He knows that the government might punish him for talking to foreigners but wants us to see his people's suffering.

When they left their villages, they took only what they could carry with them and left everything else behind. Since then, they've been relying on handouts.

Under pressure from the international community, the government is finally allowing more planes to land at the airport, more aid workers into the country.

Aid officials suspect some supplies are being diverted, which means they're not reaching those who need the most. Mau Tun says the government has not come to give his people food.

In fact, Mau Tun expects that - when military officials do finally get here - it will not be to help his people, but to evict them.

Nature destroyed their homes, but it's their government that is starving them. Uprooted and isolated, the villagers have no way of knowing that the whole world is trying to send them the help they need.