Famine in Chin State is causing people to abandon their native homeland, says an ethnic Chin man interviewed as he approached Three Pagodas Pass, on the Thai-Burma border.
The twenty-seven-year old man was traveling with forty-one other people from Chin State, including fifteen children. Many of the refugees in the group are from Haka, the capital of Chin State, located 705 kilometers from Rangoon. Others in the group were from Tamu Township, to the north of Haka in Sagaing Division. The man said it had taken the group about a week to arrive in Karen State.
“We can barely survive because everyone’s crops and farms were eaten by rats,” the man told IMNA. “People are leaving their land because they have nothing to eat.”
Many of the refugees from Chin state are trying to get to Malaysia, says a source close to a Chin leader in the Ethnic Nationalities Council (ENC), in Chiang Mai. Travel from Chin State to Malaysia will cost each person in the group 1.5 million kyat, added the man. The Chin Church of Malaysia, as well as other Chin organizations, is offering support, including help paying for the cost of the trip, said the Chin man interviewed near the border. According to Salai Bawi Lian Mang of the Chin Human Rights Organization, ninety percent of ethnic Chin people are Christian.
Significant numbers of people fleeing the famine have already arrived in Malaysia, Nai Row Mon, at the Mon Relief Organization (MRO) in Malaysia, told IMNA “The amount of Chin refugees in Malaysia is increasing every month. The number of Chin refugees in Malaysia has increased to nearly 50,000 since the famine.”
Last month, the head of the Three Pagodas Township Peace and Development Council instructed ethnic ceasefire groups to notify authorities of Chin refugees approaching the Thai-Burma border, a source in the NMSP told IMNA. An IMNA field reporter, however, witnessed checkpoints on the Zemi River charging Chin refugees 2,000 kyat per person before letting them pass.
The famine has been caused by a plague of rats, which devastated crops in the area. The number of rats began increasing in 2006, when “Melocanna Baccifera” bamboo began flowering and producing large, nutrient-rich seeds. Rats fed on the abundant seeds, their population skyrocketed and the animals eventually descended upon farms looking for food. The species of bamboo flowers only once every fifty years. According to a report by the Chin Human Rights organization, the flowering bamboo covers one fifth of Chin State.
The crop destruction comes at a time when Burma is already struggling to recover from the loss of twenty percent of its rice paddies, which were destroyed by Cyclone Nargis in May. The boom in the rat population, and the attendant impact on agriculture of the region, is having severe impacts. According to an ENC statement made on September 30th, more than a hundred thousand people face starvation. The Chin man interviewed near the Three Pagodas Pass confirmed this: “Life was hard for us before the famine. The rats made it even more difficult. We have no way to defeat them.”
