'Eating rats': Myanmar's second lockdown drives hunger in city slums

[snoop1130]

'Eating rats': Myanmar's second lockdown drives hunger in city slums

By Shoon Naing

 

A man sells eels caught for a meal amid a lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus, in a slum area of Yangon, Myanmar, October 21, 2020. Picture taken October 21, 2020. REUTERS/Shwe Paw Mya Tin

 

YANGON (Reuters) - After the first wave of coronavirus hit Myanmar in March, 36-year-old Ma Suu closed her salad stall and pawned her jewelry and gold to buy food to eat.

 

During the second wave, when the government issued a stay-home order in September for Yangon, Ma Suu shut her stall again and sold her clothes, plates and pots.

 

With nothing left to sell, her husband, an out of work construction labourer, has resorted to hunting for food in the open drains by the slum where they live on the outskirts of Myanmar's largest city.

 

“People are eating rats and snakes,” Ma Suu said through tears. “Without an income, they need to eat like that to feed their children.”

They live in Hlaing Thar Yar, one of Yangon's poorest neighborhoods, where residents shine flashlights in the undergrowth behind their homes, looking for some night creature to stave off their hunger.

 

While rats, reptiles and insects are often eaten by families in rural areas, people in some urban areas are now being reduced to getting nutrition however they can.

 

With more than 40,000 cases and 1,000 deaths, Myanmar is facing one of Southeast Asia’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, and the lockdown in Yangon has left hundreds of thousands of people, like Ma Suu, without work and precious little support.

 

Local administrator Nay Min Tun said in his part of Hlaing Thar Yar 40% of households had received aid but many workplaces were shut and people had become more desperate.

 

Myat Min Thu, the ruling party lawmaker for the area, said government aid and private donations was being distributed but acknowledged not everyone could be covered.

 

The crisis has cast a shadow over a general election planned for Nov. 8, though Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is still expected to win by a comfortable margin.

 

NOTHING BUT THE MARKET

 

Even before the pandemic, a third of Myanmar’s 53 million people were considered "highly vulnerable" to falling into poverty, despite recent gains following the country’s emergence from decades of ruinous isolation under the military junta.

 

The financial squeeze now threatens to plunge many back into poverty or squash their chances of getting out.

 

Poverty in the developing East Asia and Pacific region is set to rise for the first time in 20 years due to COVID-19, the World Bank said in September, with about 38 million expected to remain in or be pushed back into poverty.

 

Myanmar’s government has offered poor households a one-off food package and three cash grants of $15 each as part of its relief plan, but families say it falls far short.

 

A survey by ONow Myanmar of more than 2,000 people across the country in April found 70% had stopped working and a quarter had taken out loans for food, medicine, and other essentials. 

 

Sectors driving industralisation in Myanmar - including garment work and tourism – have come to a halt while remittances have dried up, said Gerard Mccarthy, a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute in Singapore.

 

     "Households already in dire debt from paying for medical treatment, schooling, sustaining the elderly and everyday survival...many will need to pay off these loans before they can begin spending on anything discretionary,” he said.

 

Thant Myint-U, a Myanmar historian, rued the absence of a proper social safety net and the collapse of villages' traditional welfare systems.

 

“For tens of millions of Myanmar’s poor, there is nothing other than the market, which in the good times provides opportunities for informal work in the cities or migration abroad but during a downturn is leaving the poorest with little more than the shirt on their backs,” he said.

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-10-23

 

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[TheFreqFlyer]

Awful situation. 

[sammieuk1]

Probably still enough money left for tanks and guns but none to feed the population another place ruled by out of touch geriatric generals ????

[Aspaltso]

There was so much hope for Myanmar around 2012 when I visited there, and much of that hope seems to have vanished. Very sad situation.

[scammed]

they are fighting covid19 & climate change, applauds ????

peasant life is the new normal

Edited October 25, 2020 by scammed

[RJRS1301]

On 10/24/2020 at 6:37 PM, Aspaltso said:

There was so much hope for Myanmar around 2012 when I visited there, and much of that hope seems to have vanished. Very sad situation.

There is no hope for that country until they address the government sanctioned YaBa factories, making the generals rich and narco warlords even richer.

As for  Aung San Suu Kyi she should return her Nobel prize and hang her head in shame. 

Mind you authoritarian regimes now seem to be SE Asian way of reality . Do they care about the populace it appears not at all.

 

[cooked]

On 10/26/2020 at 5:40 AM, RJRS1301 said:

There is no hope for that country until they address the government sanctioned YaBa factories, making the generals rich and narco warlords even richer.

As for  Aung San Suu Kyi she should return her Nobel prize and hang her head in shame. 

Mind you authoritarian regimes now seem to be SE Asian way of reality . Do they care about the populace it appears not at all.

 

So what is Aung San Suu Kyi supposed to do about it? Does she have the power to tell the military what to do? 

[RJRS1301]

3 hours ago, cooked said:

So what is Aung San Suu Kyi supposed to do about it? Does she have the power to tell the military what to do? 

She never did but made promises about her "power for change" during the "election," and her lack of protesting regarding not only the suppression of the populace, the YaBa factories sanctioned by the military, and her abominable  denials regarding the ethic cleansing of the Rohingya, are some of the reasons that she should hang her head inshame and return the Nobel prize 

[cooked]

22 hours ago, RJRS1301 said:

She never did but made promises about her "power for change" during the "election," and her lack of protesting regarding not only the suppression of the populace, the YaBa factories sanctioned by the military, and her abominable  denials regarding the ethic cleansing of the Rohingya, are some of the reasons that she should hang her head inshame and return the Nobel prize 

Elections are coming up. Maybe she did think she could change things, maybe she didn't want to go back to her house on the lake when she realised she couldn't do anything.

Rohingya? You mean the ones that declared an armed rebellion with the aim of forming an autonomous Islamic state, later to be unified with Bangladesh? That were responsible for many massacres that were under reported (or not at all)? 30 000 non-Muslims killed in 1942 and another 50 000 driven away, never to return? That had been persecuting non-Buddhists in the region for years, as they still are in Assam and the CHT? The ones that started killing people (it wasn't just ARSA) as soon as they realised that pipelines were going to be built to China containing oil and gas from the Bay of Bengal and that huge reserves had been discovered in the Rakhine, both of oil and minerals? Those guys? 

She never asked for the Nobel Peace prize, which has been completely devalued since they gave it to bomber and drone strike Obama.

[RJRS1301]

8 minutes ago, cooked said:

Elections are coming up. Maybe she did think she could change things, maybe she didn't want to go back to her house on the lake when she realised she couldn't do anything.

Rohingya? You mean the ones that declared an armed rebellion with the aim of forming an autonomous Islamic state, later to be unified with Bangladesh? That were responsible for many massacres that were under reported (or not at all)? 30 000 non-Muslims killed in 1942 and another 50 000 driven away, never to return? That had been persecuting non-Buddhists in the region for years, as they still are in Assam and the CHT? The ones that started killing people (it wasn't just ARSA) as soon as they realised that pipelines were going to be built to China containing oil and gas from the Bay of Bengal and that huge reserves had been discovered in the Rakhine, both of oil and minerals? Those guys? 

She never asked for the Nobel Peace prize, which has been completely devalued since they gave it to bomber and drone strike Obama.

So you justify the slaughter pillage, and burning of their villages by the military. You have omitted the role of the "elected" government in the recent debacles. One has to ask who supplies the weapns used on both sides of the genocide

This off topic so will not be replying