Super Rats Invade; Blamed for Myanmar Famine
As thousands starve, officials seize food aid, relief groups say.
October 16, 2008— -- A rat infestation so severe that an estimated 100,000 people are on the brink of starvation is devastating the Chin State in Western Myanmar, and the nation's government is doing nothing to help its people, according to activists fighting for aid.
Human right organizations on the ground say as many as 100 children and elderly have already died from malnutrition as the rats ravage the community's crops. While this infestation started as a natural disaster, it is being met by gross neglect by the nation's leaders, according to the rights groups.
"The famine is little known, poorly dealt with, and ignored by the government," said Salai Bawi Lian of the Chin Human Rights Organization, which is based in Canada.
"In this area, people have been suffering, dying, no people know about it," Lian said of the Chin region, which he described at the most isolated jungle area in the country.
In Myanmar, the phenomenon causing the famine is known as "maudam"- a happening that occurs about once every 50 years, in which flowering bamboo trees produce a fruit on which the rat population gorges. The last time it struck was in 1958, with other occurrences in 1911 and 1862.
Instead of cannibalizing their young for food, as these rats normally do, the bamboo fruit provides the rats with the means to multiply by the millions. And when there is no fruit left, the plague of hungry rats decimate rice and corn crops in Western Myanmar so much so that an estimated 200 villages of an estimated 100,000 Chin people are now without food.
"Rats are everywhere, everywhere," Victor Biak Lian, the chair of the Chin Human Rights organization who recently visited the region. "What I see is starvation."
And while the rat problem is explosive, the rights groups say that what is even more horrific is the way in which the Myanmar government has responded: by doing nothing. Myanmar is not the only nation plagued by this phenomenon, but aid workers say it is the only one where no action is being taken by its government. The bamboo flower-fuelled disaster has also hit India, but the government there formed alliances with NGOs and prepared for the crisis.
