IDPs

Dear Friends
Hope you all are fine. I would like to let you know about people in northern Lu Thaw township, Papun district are facing with food shortage. Regarding that crisis I am sending you short information as follow. As we are familiar already I would like to request all of you to try to get rice assistance for them. If not between 3,000 to 4,000 people are going to face with starvation or have to leave for border area in the near future.

Even small amount of assistance is very helpful, we are collecting assistance from various source to help them.

We are looking forward to hear from you.

Take care

Saw Steve
CIDKP



Background and cause of food shortage
Northern Lu Thaw township is located Mu Traw ( Papun ) district. The main river is Bwe Loe klo ( Yunzalin ) river and is running from north west to south east but boat can not run.. Flat land is found along the Bwe Loe klo and it's tributaries, the rest are low land mixed with high land.
When Burma army started four cut operation in 1975 the Burma army came up some time in northern Lu Thaw. but not set up position in this area . In 1997-98 the Burma army came up again and took position in Kay Pu village tract at northern Paw Kay Kho Some time Burma army practiced operation in whole village tract.
In 2002-2003, because SPDC army who came and located their military camp in Paw Kay Kho went out of the village, so, the whole village tract could work and had enough food to eat.
But in 2006 and 2007, because SPDC army came up again and practiced more operation and aimed to make the car road from Pywa Gaw to Bu Shar Khi, SPDC army entered more, practiced more operation, destroyed and burnt down the villages and kill many villagers. As they had aimed, in early 2007, they made the car road, so the villages which are close to the car road were burnt down and the villages which are far from the car road, SPDC soldiers entered and operated, launched the heavy weapon, so the whole village tract are abandoned and the villagers have to leave their occupation, paddy and rice which are kept in hide out. The villagers have to steal back their rice and paddy at the night time.
SPDC troops are still staying at the same place (military position) and also patrolling regularly so people were not able to return to their former villages. They moved to another villages and stay together with other villagers.
The main livelihood of villagers are up land paddy and low land paddy. After 2006-2007 SPDC’s military operation (in 2006 Burma army MOC10, MOC15 and in 2007 LID 88 practiced operations ) people had to abandon their villages and low land paddy fields and depend on up land paddy field for their living. Villagers who had to abandon their villages and staying with another villagers have to do up land paddy as well, because of the number of people increased the area for doing upland paddy field getting narrow, there fore in 2008 generally one family covered only between 5-6 months for the family.
Now some people are facing with food shortage, villagers who have a little more rice share among them selves, local authorities ( township and district ), local CBOs and some individual donor help as possible as they could but comparing the need the rice assistance is not much, if support didn’t come from out side between 3,000 to 4,000 people are going to face with starvation or have to leave for border in the near future.

တီးေစာလြင္ဦး(AKO)ၽမွေပးပို ့သည္။တီးေစာလြင္ဦးအားေက်းဇူးတင္ရွိပါသည္။