Just evil.  Literally:

Against this backdrop, small groups of rescue workers are having to wait outside the iron-spiked, grey walls of the embassy compound in Bangkok while their leaders and local visa agents try to see if their applications have got anywhere.

“It is very frustrating,” said Australian firefighter Craig Allan, who dropped everything at home to get to Bangkok and apply for a visa on Thursday.

… Patrick Michaudel, a French employee of medical services firm SOS International, with clinics in Yangon, was almost in tears as he left the embassy after a fruitless week-long visa wait.

When he got to the front of the queue, Michaudel was elated to see his passport open on the desk with a visa inside.

He could only watch in horror as a female official then carefully peeled the visa sticker out of his passport and crudely covered up the partial stamp on the passport page with liquid paper.

“No reason, no reason. She just peeled it out,” he said, with a shrug of the shoulders. “I’ve had enough of this. I’m going home.”

It’s almost impossible to understand why the Burmese Generals are doing this.  But the Toronto Star has a few ideas - channeling the Generals, Thomas Walkom in the Star writes:

The assumption in the Western press is that the junta is just being perverse by not opening its doors to foreign aid workers. But it is not. It is behaving perfectly logically for a dictatorship. It knows the West disapproves of its existence. So it is understandably wary when countries like the U.S., Canada and France offer to have their troops deliver aid.

It is not even being unusually paranoid in its suspicion of the UN. The world used to belittle Saddam Hussein’s claim that some UN weapons inspectors sent into Iraq after the first Gulf War worked for the CIA. But, as former American weapons inspector Scott Ritter revealed in his book, Iraq Confidential, Saddam was correct.

So when the Burmese junta demands that UN workers entering the country have proper passports that it can check out, it is not simply being obstructionist. Self-interested maybe. But not irrational.

So you see, it’s kinda sorta America’s fault.  Well that’s solved - I feel better now.

Related:

Kinsella on awareness.  OK, we’re aware - not what?  Charity rock concert?  Maybe some kind of wrist band?

or: “Is it Time to Invade Burma?”