Food Crisis Deepens in Chin State

By LAWI WENG

At least 1,000 villagers are currently facing a food crisis in Haka Township in Chin State, a Rangoon-based Chin development agency told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday.

The Country Agency for Rural Development (CAD), a Roman Catholic-based NGO which facilitates sanitation, education and construction projects in the most remote villages of Chin State, said it assessed the food situation in 20 villages around Haka Township last week and discovered that seven of the villages faced a severe and immediate food crisis.

According to CAD’s assessment, farmers from the seven most affected Chin villages have been forced to let 500 acres of land lie fallow after an infestation of rats destroyed rice crops followed by a drought earlier this year.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy by telephone on Tuesday, Win Hling Oo, the director and founder of CAD, said, “People have sold their domestic animals to survive. They can’t find jobs in the area and they are too far from the [Indian] border to walk there in search of food. By the end of this month they will have no food left.”

The seven villages at risk—Jan Ra, Kon Toy, Lwin Hong, Tong Jin, Lon Hong, Hong Zen and Tong Ra—lie some 50 miles (80 km) south of Haka, an area out of reach of international humanitarian agencies, said the CAD director.

“While we were there, I saw farmers dumping their land because of the drought and the rats. It hasn’t been a good rainy season either,” said Win Hling Oo.

The villagers hoarded food supplies last year, he said. However, they will have run out by the end of this month.

Meanwhile, the Chin Human Rights Organization, which is based on the Thai-Burmese border, said that international humanitarian aid organizations can’t reach many of these villages, because they are too many days’ walk through mountain trails from the Indian border.

Victor Biak Lian, a member of the Chin Human Rights Organization, said, “We don’t know how bad the situation is for the people in these villages. We have not been able to reach them.”

Biak Lian said that 2,000 Chin people fled last month to seek refuge or find work in Mizoram, on the Indian side of the border.

Chin leaders said they have not received food relief from the Burmese military government. Meanwhile, the Burmese authorities have banned ethnic Chin people from receiving food supplies from foreign countries.

According to a Mizoram-based Chin relief group, the Chin Famine Emergency Relief Committee, 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, such as diarrhea, 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.