Sydney - One protester was arrested Friday and others cautioned at a rowdy demonstration outside the Myanmar embassy in Canberra over the regime's reluctance to allow foreign aid for victims of the cyclone that belted the Irrawaddy Delta six days ago. An Australian Federal Police spokeswoman said one woman was arrested for throwing a plastic bottle and two men were detained for breaches of the peace.
Mee Oung, a nurse from Melbourne, told Australia's AAP news agency that about 20 police charged into the group of about a dozen protesters.
Oung said she hadn't seen her family in Myanmar for 20 years and had not been able to contact them since the cyclone struck. "You can see how we are suffering," she said.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said it was "obscene" that the generals in Myanmar were preventing aid reaching victims. "This is an extraordinary reaction," Rudd said.
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Andrew Robb said Canberra had been mean in only offering 3 million Australian dollars (2.8 million US dollars) in relief aid.
"I think we should be taking the lead," Robb said. "We are talking about potentially 100,000 deaths and over a million people dislocated."
