A vengeful Burmese junta has been using Burmese Army soldiers to kill domestic animals in Darling village in Matupi Township, southern Chin state in areas that have been badly hit by food crisis. The slaughtering is a sort of revenge because the residents of the area did not vote ‘Yes’ in the referendum to approve the draft constitution.

The soldiers from Light Infantry Battalion (140) stationed in Darling village near the Indo-Burma border - where around 600 people reside – arbitrarily shot dead domestic animals belonging to Darling villagers, according to villagers from Chin state.

 “Almost every day, they kill pigs that we raise in the backyard. They take only the liver and abdominal parts of the pigs and hand over the rest to the owners,” a villager whose domestic animal was killed by soldiers said on condition of anonymity.

The villagers believe that the killing of domestic animals in Darling is directly related to the soured relations between military camp commander and village council members after a majority of villagers from Darling rejected the Burmese regime’s constitution in the referendum on May 10.

“Earlier killing of livestock by soldiers was rare in the village but now slaughtering of pigs is taking place almost daily after the referendum,” another villager said.

Similarly, soldiers were also said to have killed several Mithuns (buffalo type animal traditionally raised for domestic consumption) in Phaneng village around four miles from Matupi Township.

“We don’t know what to do and are at a loss. There is nobody or no organization to stop them from slaughtering our live stock,” a villager complained.

There are reports from individuals and organizations from inside and outside Chin state that the Burmese regime had not only turned a blind eye to the plight of its citizens struggling from shortage of food from Muatam - famine caused by bamboo flowering – but added to their woes by extorting money from the villagers, engaging them in forced labour for tea and jatropha plantations in Muatam affected areas and killing villagers’ livestock.