Local Authorities Deny Chin Villagers Food Aid -IRRAWADDY

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=14447

By LAWI WENG Wednesday, October 15, 2008

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The local authorities in Chin State refused permission on Monday to a Chin development agency in Rangoon to deliver emergency food aid to about 1,000 villagers in Chin State, western Burma, who are suffering from severe food shortages, said a source close to the agency.

The Country Agency for Rural Development (CAD), a Roman Catholic-based NGO which facilitates sanitation, education and construction projects in the most remote parts of Chin State, was told by local officials that it would not be allowed to send Chin villagers free packages of emergency food—mainly rice.


“The authorities told us: ‘Teach villagers how to find food, but don’t teach them how to get free food,’” a senior member of the CAD said.

The CAD had planned to transport the food packages to 20 villages some 80 km (50 miles) south of Haka Township, an area where it recently conducted an assessment of the crisis before announcing last week that some 1,000 villagers were facing a severe and immediate food shortage with supplies due to run out by the end of this month.

Despite the crisis, the local authorities have ordered the NGO to implement what they call a “Food Forward” project—initiatives aimed at implementing local development utilizing villager labor, paying villages for their collective efforts but not providing free supplies.

Following the news, the senior member of CAD said, “We live under their control, so we have to do what they say.”

According to the CAD’s assessment, farmers from seven villages in Haka Township are facing a food crisis while hundreds of acres of land are lying fallow after an infestation of rats destroyed rice crops followed by a drought earlier this year. The people have sold their domestic animals to survive because they can’t find jobs in the area, and are too far from the Indian border to walk there in search of food. By the end of this month 1,000 people will have nothing to eat, the NGO said.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Tuesday, a representative of the Chin National Council, an exiled human rights group, said that the Chin villagers in question have not received any food relief or emergency supplies from the local authorities. In addition, the Burmese government has banned food supplies from foreign countries from being transported to Chin State.

According to the Chin Famine Emergency Relief Committee, a relief group based in Mizoram, eastern India, about 100,000 of the 500,000 people in Chin State currently face food shortages.

The food crisis broke out in December 2007 when an infestation of rats destroyed crops.

A famine generally occurs about every 50 years in Chin State when the flowering of a native species of bamboo gives rise to an explosion in the rat population, say experts. The rats devour the nutrient-rich bamboo fruit before going on to decimate local rice crops.

In July, the International Rice Research Institute warned of “widespread food shortages” in the region.

Then in August, the Chin National Council reported that 31 children had died from conditions caused by a lack of food, such as diarrhea.

On September 10, British newspaper The Guardian reported that several Chin villages were facing a drastic crisis following the infestation of rats. Then on September 22, the Mawta Famine Relief Committee reported that at least five children had died of famine-related illness in Paletwa Township in Chin State.

Sources said that thousands of local people in Chin State are currently surviving on nothing more than boiled rice and wild plants.