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Rights Group: Myanmar Food Shortage



Rights Group: Myanmar Food Shortage 

BYLINE: MARCOS CALO MEDINA 


AP Hong Kong, 20 October 1999. Myanmar's government has caused food 
shortages in the country through misguided economic policies that placed 
military strength before the proper allocation of resources, a human rights 
group said Wednesday. 

Farmers have been systematically pushed out of their farmlands, arbitrarily 
taxed for their crops or coerced into selling rice to Myanmar's military at
less 
than half the market price, the Asian Human Rights Commission said in a
report. 

''This is one of those reports where those who put it together wish they
could be 
proven wrong,'' Mark Tamthai, professor of philosophy at Thailand's
Chulalongkorn 
University, told a press conference. 

The 145-page report was culled from interviews with 26 witnesses who traveled 
across Myanmar for three years, gathering data, photographs, and video clips 
of the areas under military control, said Tamthai. 

Tamthai was part of a tribunal convened by the independent human rights 
group that interviewed the witnesses and published the report. The Asian Human 
Rights Commission released the report in Hong Kong, where it is based. 

Late Wednesday, the Myanmar government said in a fax that the report accusing 
the army of reselling food stolen from villagers, and confiscating rice and
livestock 
was made up of ''groundless accusations'' and ''regretful.'' 

But the human rights group, citing information given by refugees who have
crossed 
into Thailand, said the army was arbitrarily expropriating cash and
construction material 
or imposing heavy fines in areas of suspected rebel activity. 

Soldiers were burning houses or forcing farmers to work in government
infrastructure 
projects such as building roads and dams, said H. Suresh, a retired High
Court judge 
from Bombay, India, who interviewed some witnesses. 

Suresh would not say how many people have been affected or how much damage the 
military has caused but said ''a large number of farmers have fled their
homes because 
they can't grow rice in a traditionally rice-producing country.'' 


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