CSW finds chronic food shortages and human rights abuses in western Burma

Posted on December 4, 2009
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Chin State

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) says members of the Chin ethnic minority in western Burma are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance and are calling for international action.
A joint team from CSW and the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART) recently visited the India-Burma border and found international funds for emergency food relief channelled through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are allegedly being distributed not as aid to villagers, but as loans, repayable at 200 percent interest!
For the last two years, Chin State has faced chronic food shortages caused by plagues of rats that are attracted by the flowering of bamboo that only occurs every 50 years!
The UNDP estimates that at least 10,000 people in over 200 villages are severely affected. Representatives of the Chin Famine Emergency Relief Committee told team leader Baroness Cox, the chief executive of HART that in at least 17 villages in Paletwa Township, the worst affected part of Chin State, the local UNDP have distributed international funds in the form of loans, instead of providing food aid.
Villagers claim they have been told they must repay twice the amount they are given, either in cash or in rice bags.
CSW and HART have written to UNDP to request an urgent investigation.
The team also met with Kachin refugees and received evidence from Kachin and Chin states of religious persecution, forced labour and attempted ‘cultural genocide’
Benedict Rogers, CSW’s East Asia Team Leader, said, “The plight of the Chin people of Burma is desperate. They are facing severe poverty, drastically compounded by a chronic food shortage and lack of health care, as well as cultural genocide, religious persecution, rape and forced labour. It is time for the international community, including India, to act decisively to provide political and humanitarian support to the people of Burma, including the Chin. India, the world’s largest democracy, must stop siding with one of the world’s most oppressive regimes. The international community must intensify efforts to secure a transition to genuine federal democracy, in which equal rights for Burma’s ethnic nationalities are fully guaranteed.”
He added, “We renew our call for a universal arms embargo, a commission of inquiry into crimes against humanity, and international humanitarian assistance to the ethnic nationalities who so desperately and urgently need aid to prevent further loss of life and suffering.”

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