Burma Junta has caused food shortag

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Subject: Burma Junta has caused food shortage: Rights Group (AFP)

Junta has caused food shortage: Rights Group (AFP)

Hong Kong, Sept.1:

Burma is suffering from a serious food shortage partly due to the
displacement of millions of rural people on the orders of the military
junta, a rights group here claimed on Wednesday.

?Food scarcity is a general phenomenon in Burma due to the displacement
of people under the government?s militarization measures,? said Mr.
Sanjeewa Liyanage, executive officer of the Asian Human Rights
Commission.

Under the scheme, millions of villagers have been driven from their
farmlands and sent to areas where they are forced to grow crops they
have no experience with, Mr. Liyanage said. He said forced labour and
crop procurements for the Army were also causing hardship.

?The scheme requires farmers to give 80 per cent of their crops for the
military to feed the Army,? he said. Full details of the food shortage
situation will be made public in a report to be released next month by
the rights group, based on testimony gathered by a tribunal it held this
year, he said. (AFP)