Many Burmese people made donations and / or participated to collect food and to clean. The junta thwarted the volunteers effort : the cyclone-affected area was closed by military who ordered them to leave their supplies to be distributed by the army. Some volonteers turned back, others gave "a gift" to the soldiers to go.
Zarganar lead a 420 donors and volunteers group, he mostly recruited himself . From May 7 they start to go in the Delta, crossing the roadblocks and checkpoints
Zarganar gave testimony : in an interview (June 2, Thai newspaper "The Irrawaddy") he pointed that, a month after the disaster "There were no UN or NGOs there yet, and they had received nothing. Our private group gave them what we had. The most horrible thing was that they had no water to drink and collected water when it rained. We gave them 10,000 bottles of drinking water" He criticized the management of the crisis, including the fact that the UN accepted to be limited by the junta _ " I am not happy with the UN. It doesn’t seem able to reach many of our people. The UN and NGO staff must work under the eye of the regime. That’s a problem. Why are they so concerned with the government's endorsement of their relief work? They should have taken more risks. Even if they can't go without permission, they could assist volunteers like us who are willing to go to the villages. There are a lot of groups like us assisting refugees" In an interview with British television BBC 2 he evokes a "revenge", lead by the Burmese authorities against the population (the ethnic Karen region was most affected).
As a film director, Zarganar shot videos. They showed the extent of damage. They were intend to allow the future donors to evaluate the likely needs of the victims.. On June 4, in the morning, Zarganar was arrested at his home in Rangoon.