‘Are we not eating tonight?’ Myanmar’s military junta accused of using hunger as a ‘weapon’ by blocking vital food aid

(CNN) — Khin Mar Cho worries for her 4-year-old son as she struggles to scrape together enough food to feed him in a makeshift displacement camp at a crowded monastery in western Myanmar.

Soldiers had stormed their village of Byine Phyu, Rakhine state, and forced her and other family members out of their homes. They detained all the men and shot her brother and other neighbors, she said.

Survivors like Khin Mar Cho fled to the monastery just outside the regional capital Sittwe. There, a lone monk is struggling to feed about 300 people who have sought refuge inside the camp as a three-year civil war intensifies around them, waged by Myanmar’s military junta against an armed resistance.

“There are days that we have no food, even though we are hungry,” Khin Mar Cho said. “I cannot feed my kid anything more than meals donated by people because I don’t have a job or income, and all the male family members have been taken away.”

Disturbing accounts from multiple aid workers suggest hunger is being used as a weapon of war in Rakhine state.

The junta is preventing aid from reaching desperate people by imposing checkpoints, blocking roads and waterways, and refusing to issue access permits to humanitarian groups, multiple senior United Nations officials, and local and international aid workers in Rakhine told CNN on condition of anonymity because most weren’t authorized to speak.

Rakhine has become a focal point of the conflict, where a powerful ethnic minority armed rebel group, the Arakan Army (AA) — which is accused of human rights abuses — has seized control of at least 10 of the state’s townships since a year-long ceasefire with the military collapsed in November.

The aid officials said the junta is trying to “starve” civilians in AA-held territory, using tactics that have repeatedly been described as war crimes and crimes against humanity by UN officials and rights groups.

“They are using food as a weapon,” a senior aid official told CNN. “That much is clear.”

In a statement to CNN, Myint Kyaw, Deputy Permanent Secretary for Myanmar’s Ministry of Information, alleged rebel groups — not the junta — are restricting “people’s access” to territories they control.

“The Myanmar government is committed to the equality of all citizens,” the statement said. “Every citizen has the right to travel freely without any restrictions.”

Risk of starvation

Aid workers say they don’t know the full extent of the suffering due to telecoms and internet blocks coupled with restrictions on access to affected areas.

But they say the crisis is acute.

The situation unfolding across the country is desperate, but in Rakhine — which is almost entirely dependent on food aid — the UN says that fewer than a quarter of the 873,000 people who need food assistance have received it.

“There is a very real possibility that the most vulnerable… may die if they do not receive support,” a UN report warned in June. It is now August, and the situation has deteriorated.

Displaced residents in Rakhine told CNN they are growing increasingly desperate as they and their families struggle to cope with escalating violence and dwindling supplies of food and medicine.

Prices for basic staples, like rice, fuel and cooking oil, have skyrocketed partly due to shortages created by the junta’s control of supply routes north from Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, aid officials said. Requests to transport goods, including food, into the region are being refused, they added.

Meanwhile, food production in the state has plummeted, with farmers predicting a 50% drop in this year’s rice harvest, independent Myanmar news outlet The Irrawaddy reported.

Mohammed, a 43-year-old father of three, has lived in a displacement camp with his family in Sittwe since 2012, when anti-Muslim violence forced tens of thousands of people from their homes.

The latest fighting has not yet reached Sittwe, which the junta still controls. But since the collapse of the ceasefire deal between the AA and the military in November opened a major new front in Myanmar’s civil war, the camp has been all but cut off and conditions have drastically deteriorated, he said.

Mohammed’s children attend a small, makeshift school within the camp, but he says it’s difficult to nurture their dreams when he can only feed them half a bowl of rice.

“My children would cry and ask, ‘Are we not eating tonight?’ In those moments, feeling desperate, I would go to a neighbor and ask for some food to feed our children,” Mohammed told Partners Relief and Development, an aid NGO.

Yet his neighbors are hungry too, and they have little to spare.

Access denied

Shayna Bauchner, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, told CNN the junta is obstructing aid deliveries in Rakhine by blocking roads and waterways, seizing relief cargoes and confiscating medical supplies.

“As the conflict has spread around Rakhine, we’ve also seen the destruction of roadways and bridges,” she said. “The result is, basically, no one has access to these places.”

Aid groups, including UN agencies, must get “travel authorizations” from the state government, which reports to the ruling military council, before they can access territory that the junta considers “travel-restricted areas,” according to aid officials.

In February, the junta stopped issuing nearly all travel authorizations to contested or rebel-controlled territory in the state, most of which are in northern Rakhine, according to seven aid officials with direct knowledge of the matter, all of whom requested anonymity.

Without the travel authorizations, it’s impossible to pass through the junta’s road and waterway blockades, they said.

One senior aid official said, “it is difficult to negotiate because the SAC does not want assistance to go to non-SAC controlled areas,” referring to the State Administration Council, the official name of the junta government.

In May, some aid agencies received travel authorizations for Sittwe when the junta allowed them to begin transporting supplies from Yangon. Two cargo vessels carrying rice and basic medicine arrived in Sittwe two months later, but some items such as solar lights, hygiene and newborn kits remained held up, OCHA reported in August.

Teams still can’t access the surrounding townships or areas further afield.

“No official travel authorization has been granted to humanitarian partners to implement activities outside of Sittwe township since November 2023,” a senior aid official told CNN.

Seeking to broker an end to the blockade, senior UN officials held informal talks with SAC officials last month in the country’s capital, two sources told CNN.

The UN aid officials made clear in their meetings, which have not been previously reported, that the status quo is unacceptable, the sources said. Separately, the two officials said the issue was raised with the UN Security Council, the European Union and China, among others.

The junta told humanitarian groups that it cut their access to AA territory because aid workers cannot safely travel through areas the military does not control, sources told CNN.

But “that’s a lame excuse,” said a senior aid official. “We don’t need the junta to cover for our security.”

Local aid workers caught trying to deliver food and supplies in junta-controlled territory without a permit have also been arrested, those on the ground told CNN.

Aid workers and officials say the junta’s blockade is part of a wider war strategy long used by the military, designed to chip away at the rebel group’s popular support by cutting off food, water and medical care to the civilian population.

Bauchner, the Human Rights Watch researcher, said the blockades are “deliberate, and they are intended to harm the population in what is an apparent war crime.”

Myint Kyaw of the junta’s information ministry, said humanitarian groups are “being allowed to go to safe areas” after completing a verification process and alleged — without evidence — that rebel groups are blocking aid deliveries.

In the statement, the junta linked instability in the region to armed groups allegedly engaging in online gambling, planting and selling illegal drugs, human trafficking, online scams and illegal weapons deliveries to “terrorist groups” in rebel-controlled areas.

But one local aid official who works in northern Rakhine said the junta is “punishing civilians collectively” by blocking most food and medicine imports. Even the limited food that is available in the state is prohibitively expensive to most, largely thanks to blockade-induced inflation, he said.

“People are surviving on the bare minimum … like rice and salt,” said Ejaz, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym for his safety.

“I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

War and hunger

Many of the displaced in Rakhine are members of the stateless Rohingya minority, who have been persecuted for decades in a country that denies them citizenship.

Jamila, 26, a former resident of the predominantly Rohingya town of Buthidaung, close to the Bangladesh border, said the community recently suffered food shortages for at least six months due to the fighting.

“No one came to give us food. The junta blocks all roads. They block all aid trucks,” said Jamila, who goes by one name and spoke to CNN from a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where her family recently fled.

Many shops were looted by fighters and soldiers, she said, and those still open could only get supplies by smuggling them at high prices across the border from Bangladesh.

Food supplies were also strained as droves of displaced people from surrounding villages fled to Buthidaung to escape fighting and landmines.

“Everyone was helping everyone,” she said. “I lived life with risk and hunger.”

With little food and no medicine, Jamila said her children suffered from diarrhea and vomiting. “I am suffering from allergies. My whole body is full of itching. But there is no medicine, no treatment,” she said.

In late May, the Arakan Army said it seized Buthidaung. Activists and relatives of residents accused AA soldiers of extrajudicial killings, torching and looting Rohingya neighborhoods, and forcing thousands of people to flee.

Jamila said fighters stormed her village, drenching her home in petrol and setting it on fire while she and her family were still inside.

As the flames consumed their home, they scrambled to grab what belongings they could salvage — but only those on the ground floor had time to flee. Her parents-in-law, asleep in their beds upstairs, did not make it out.

They had no time to mourn. As they ran to escape their village, the howl of gunfire rang out, and a bullet pierced her younger brother. He did not survive.

“We didn’t try to save him,” Jamila said. “We were hearing the screams of people, the cries of children.”

She walked for six days to reach Bangladesh, saying “we lived by eating banana leaves and drinking pond water.”

CNN could not verify Jamila’s account but it matches other reports from the incident.

In a statement, the AA denied it torched Buthidaung, saying it “adheres to its principle of fighting under the military code of conduct and never targets non-military objects.”

Earlier this month, the AA was accused of killing Rohingya people in drone strikes and artillery fire as villagers fled the nearby town of Maungdaw. It denied involvement and blamed the deaths on the Myanmar military and allied Rohingya armed groups.

CNN reached out for comment to the AA and the Humanitarian and Development Coordination Office (HDCO) of the United League of Arakan (ULA), the AA’s political wing.

In a statement to CNN, the HDCO said there are about 590,000 people displaced in Rakhine state, according to their data, but civil society organizations are only reaching 20-30% of conflict-affected people.

“Emergency responses are extremely slow. The ULA government, including HDCO, is making every effort to provide food, shelter, water, and healthcare with the limited resources available,” it said.

“The primary challenge remains the acute shortage of essential supplies, including food, non-food items, medicines, medical equipment, women’s dignity kits, agricultural products, seeds, and fuel.”

The HDCO, which said its primary focus is on data collection, emergency response, monitoring aid requirements and tracking aid distribution, said junta blockades and risk of aerial bombardments means “there are instances where we are unable to reach those in need.”

‘We are invisible’

When the junta blocks official aid deliveries, regional and local humanitarian groups use covert tactics to operate without approval from the military, risking their lives to deliver aid to those in need, according to officials at four local aid groups, all of whom declined to publicize their tactics because it could jeopardize their operations.

But it’s far from enough.

At least 18.6 million people — about one third of Myanmar’s population — need humanitarian assistance this year, but aid workers have only been able to reach 2.1 million, according to an OCHA report published last week. Even in territories that the junta does not blockade, intensifying war, record-low funding and international apathy are also limiting aid workers’ access.

Aid workers have also become targets in the junta’s war.

A World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse in Maungdaw was looted and burned in June, depriving that community of urgently needed food aid. But WFP’s local partners were already struggling to reach their warehouses in Rakhine because “artillery shells are falling everywhere,” according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

Junta-imposed restrictions on communications are also limiting aid workers’ ability to operate, they say. Signal, a popular encrypted messaging app, has become inaccessible to users in Myanmar unless they use a VPN (virtual private network), four Yangon residents told CNN. Junta police are also conducting random phone checks throughout the city, one resident added.

Meanwhile, the UN’s humanitarian response program in Myanmar is among the most underfunded in the world. UN agencies and their local partners estimate that about $1 billion is needed to fund aid efforts in the country through 2024, but they have only raised about 20% of that amount.

“In the best-case scenario, based on my discussions with the donors, we may raise 30-35%, though not beyond that, by the end of the year,” Sajjad Mohammad Sajid, the OCHA Head of Office in Myanmar, told CNN. “This is the second year in a row that Myanmar is facing a significant decrease in funds despite rising food insecurity.”

Without an immediate injection of cash and a lifting of the blockade, aid officials say they will be forced to choose who does — and does not — receive humanitarian aid, leaving millions of desperate civilians without urgently needed assistance.

“Underfunding will result in livelihoods falling beyond the point of repair,” the OCHA report warned.

A senior UN aid official in Myanmar blamed the funding shortfall in part on international apathy. There are relatively few global advocacy groups and international news outlets consistently reporting on the country, and unlike Gaza and Ukraine, human rights abuses in Myanmar have gained little international attention, he said.

“We have become invisible,” the official said. “Donors will find it difficult to fund missions that are invisible.”

The monastery in Sittwe, where Khin Mar Cho and her family now reside, relies on food donated from the local community.

Another villager from Byine Phyu, who declined to be named for safety reasons, told CNN that on good days they are given two basic meals of rice and vegetables, but her two children, aged 11 and 7, often go to bed hungry.

“The soldiers took all the money we had,” she said. “All we need at the moment is aid and support to survive this.”

Though his small monastery is overwhelmed with displaced people, the monk said he tries to collect more donations from the community, hoping to feed those in the compound more than small helpings of rice.

But they receive meager food donations. Adding to the dire situation, his makeshift camp is overfilled, many families are forced to sleep outside without a covering in the height of the rainy season, so sickness and diarrhea is rife, the monk said.

“There are no NGOs or medics helping them,” he said.

“The only help we get is from the fire service for their funerals.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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CNN’s Rosa de Acosta contributed to this report.