Elections Won’t Fix Burma’s Chronic Poverty

Shan Refugee (Photo- facebook: Blood Foundation)

A report released today by the Thai Burma Border Consortium accuses Burma’s military regime of “gross economic mismanagement, massive under-investment in social services and a climate where human rights are abused with impunity.”

The TBBC says the ‘climate of instability’ has forced 29,000 people from their homes during the past year. The report, titled “Protracted Displacement and Chronic Poverty in Eastern Burma,” estimates there are more than 128,000 internally displaced persons who remain in southern Shan State.

Jack Dunford, TBBC’s executive director, said nothing will change in the immediate future, regardless of the results from the Nov. 7 election.

“Burma’s government has been indifferent to civilian suffering for decades, and there is no indication the elections will change that,” he said. “Regardless of the outcome in Burma’s first elections for 20 years, the incoming government will inherit a legacy of widespread and chronic poverty throughout the country.”
An eyewitness report from southern Shan State confirms the findings in the TBBC report.


A Shan villager head says at least 100 villagers from four townships have had enough of working for the Burma Army and militia groups aligned to the regime and have taken
refuge in Thailand.

“We grew food to feed our families, but every year the Burma Army demanded we give them rice at a 90 percent discounted price. If the land didn’t produce enough rice for them [Burma Army] we had to buy paddy to give them,” said one villager.

TBBC said in its report that the construction of a 361 kilometer long railway between Mong Nai in southern Shan State and Keng Tung in eastern Shan State means, “thousands of acres of farming land have already been confiscated, including approximately 13 percent of the lowland fields cultivated around Mong Nai.”

Government statistics disguise the extent of the suffering, the group said, and the report findings are consistent with a recent report by community based health organizations, that “…suggest public health conditions in eastern Burma are amongst the worst in the world.”

In a TBBC media statement released today, the director of Mae Tao Clinic, Dr. Cynthia Maung, said: “It is a crime that so many in eastern Burma, particularly women and children, are dying of preventable and treatable diseases.”

Source:http://shanland.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3272:elections-wont-fix-burmas-chronic-poverty&catid=85:politics&Itemid=266