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By EDITH M. LEDERER, UNITED NATIONS, April 1: Without billions of dollars more to feed millions of hungry people, the world will see mass migration, destabilized countries, and starving children and adults in the next 12 to 18 months, the head of the Nobel prize-winning U.N. World Food Program warned.

David Beasley praised increased funding from the United States and Germany last year, and urged China, Gulf nations, billionaires and other countries “to step up big time.”

In an interview before he hands the reins of the world’s largest humanitarian organization to U.S. ambassador Cindy McCain next week, the former South Carolina governor said he’s “extremely worried” that WFP won’t raise about $23 billion it needs this year to help millions of needy people

“Right at this stage, I’ll be surprised if we get 40% of it, quite frankly,” he said.

Last year, Beasley raised $14.2 billion for WFP, more than double the $6 billion in 2017, the year he took over as executive director. That money helped over 128 million people in more than 120 countries and territories.

Beasley said he was able to convince the United States last year to increase its funding from about $3.5 billion to $7.4 billion and Germany to raise its contribution from $350 million a few years ago to $1.7 billion, but he doesn’t think they’ll do it again this year.

Other countries need to step up now, he said, starting with China, the world’s second-largest economy which gave WFP just $11 million last year.

Beasley applauded China for its success in substantially reducing hunger and poverty at home but said it gave less than one cent per person last year compared to the United States, the world’s leading economy, which gave about $22 per person.

China needs “to engage in the multilateral world” and be willing to provide critical help, he said. “They have a moral obligation to do so.”

Beasley said they’ve done “an incredible job of feeding their people,” and “now we need their help in other parts of the world” on how they did it, particularly in poorer countries including in Africa.

With high oil prices Gulf countries can also do more, especially Muslim nations that have relations with countries in east Africa, the Sahara and elsewhere in the Middle East, he said, expressing hope they will increase contributions.

Beasley said the wealthiest billionaires made unprecedented profits during the COVID-19 pandemic, and “it’s not too much to ask some of the multibillionaires to step up and help us in the short-term crisis,” even though charity isn’t a long-term solution to the food crisis.

In the long-term, he said what he’d like to see is billionaires using their experience and success to engage “in the world’s greatest need – and that is food on the planet to feed 8 billion people.”

“The world has to understand that the next 12 to 18 months is critical, and if we back off the funding, you will have mass migration, and you will have destabilization nations and that will all be on top of starvation among children and people around the world,” he warned.

Beasley said WFP was just forced to cut rations by 50% to 4 million people in Afghanistan, and “these are people who are knocking on famine’s door now.”

“We don’t have enough money just to reach the most vulnerable people now,” he said. “So we are in a crisis over the cliff stage right now, where we literally could have hell on earth if we’re not very careful.”

Beasley said he’s been telling leaders in the West and Europe that while they’re focusing everything on Ukraine and Russia, “you better well not forget about what’s south and southeast of you because I can assure you it is coming your way if you don’t pay attention and get on top of it.”

With $400 trillion worth of wealth on the planet, he said, there’s no reason for any child to die of starvation.

The WFP executive director said leaders have to prioritize the humanitarian needs that are going to have the greatest impact on stability in societies around the world.

He singled out several priority places — Africa’s Sahel region as well as the east including Somalia, northern Kenya, South Sudan and Ethiopia; Syria which is having an impact on Jordan and Lebanon; and Central and South America where the number of people migrating to the United States is now five times what it was a year-and-a-half ago.

Beasley said McCain, the widow of U.S. Senator John McCain from Arizona who was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and has been the U.S. ambassador to Rome-based WFP and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, “is the right person at the right time” to lead the World Food Program.

They’ve been working together to make sure “she hits the ground running,” he said, But “it’s going to be a very, very challenging time” because of all the money going to the war in Ukraine, and the need to help so many other fragile economies.

Beasley said his biggest surprise was believing in April 2017, when he took over the agency and there were 80 million people in the world “marching to starvation,” that “we could end world hunger and put the World Food Program out of business.”

What he didn’t expect were the conflicts and wars, the climate shocks, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war, he said, which raised the 80 million in desperate need of food to 135 million right before COVID started spreading in early 2020, to 276 million before Russia invaded Ukraine – “the bread basket of the world” — in February 2022, and to 350 million now.

Beasley said “it’s hard not to get depressed” but two things give him hope.

Seeing little girls and boys smiling amid war and suffering from hunger “inspires you not to give up,” he said, as does the bipartisan support in the often divided U.S. Congress for helping the poorest of the poor around the world.

As he returns to his family in South Carolina, Beasley said his dream remains to end world hunger.(AP)

WASHINGTON: Despite the Myanmar army’s denials, survivors and witnesses recently told VOA that during raids on their villages, soldiers used “systematic tactical force” to suppress resistance from villagers, including burning down houses, torture, rape, and mass killings.

According to witnesses, Tar Taing village in Sagaing township was raided by junta troops in early March, leaving 17 local people dead, all brutally tortured and killed. Pro-junta media outlets described the victims, who were shot in the back of the head, as “terrorists.”

Over the next 10 days, nearly 30 more civilians were killed in Nanneint village in the Pin Laung region of Shan State. Photos and a video taken of the incident, provided by the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF) and verified by VOA, showed at least 21 bodies piled up around the Nanneint Monastery in Nanneint.

Disturbing pictures show mutilated corpses with severed limbs and heads placed in morbid arrangements on the ground. The junta immediately claimed that local fighters killed the villagers.

In a briefing to the United Nations General Assembly on the Myanmar situation on Thursday, Special Envoy Noeleen Heyzer said that since extending its state of emergency on Feb. 1, the junta has increased the use of force with more aerial bombing, burning of civilian homes and other “grave human rights violations to maintain its grip on power.”

According to the envoy, martial law has been imposed in 47 townships, and the regime has begun arming citizens deemed loyal to the regime.

The United States imposed its latest round of sanctions on the junta on Friday to help address its atrocities. The sanctions target the supply of jet fuel to the military and its allies in the Southeast Asian country, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement that identified two people and six entities connected to the junta.

According to the Treasury’ statement, those sanctioned are accused of enabling continuing atrocities, including through the import, storage and distribution of jet fuel to the military.

Raid on Tar Taing

Tar Taing is a small fishing village in the Sagaing region of central Myanmar, with a population of about 400 people. Survivors of the massacre there told VOA, “When the army surrounds a village, it has a tactical plan; it does not go in as a group. Soldiers surround the village in columns, spread out, and each column has an assignment. There is a column that arrests people, a column that enters houses and searches for things, and a column that tortures and kills people.”

According to Associated Press sources, soldiers in Myanmar rampaged through several villages, raping, beheading and killing in this area. Villagers familiar with the junta’s tactics describe the column sent to do the killing as “the demon column.”

Maung Zaw from Tar Taing village, whose 43-year-old wife Ma Swe Swe Oo was raped and killed by the soldiers in the “demon column,” told VOA by phone on Saturday that he saw his wife’s dead body, “with my own eyes. Her inner bodice was falling out of its hooks, I could see scratches on her nipples … there was male semen all over her body and in her vagina.”

“I felt devastated and heartbroken. My wife was killed. I am thinking about how me and my children will survive without her,” Maung Zaw said.

Maung Zaw recounted how he and his children escaped and hid in the jungle, but his wife was rounded up by the soldiers along with other villagers. “They captured them and held them in a monastery for the entire night.”

The next morning, March 2, soldiers took the hostages, including Maung Zaw’s wife and two other women, led them to another area and killed them.

Another villager who collected the bodies told VOA the victims of the mass murder were found dumped in a nearby village called Nyaung Yin in Myinmu township, separated from Tar Taing by the Mu River.

“All of them were villagers,” the man said, requesting anonymity for fear of government reprisal. “The soldiers took them as hostages and killed them. They shot five men in the mango grove. They shot their chests and heads. We found nine more bodies in another place on March 2. Three women and six men. We saw two more bodies the next day. The faces are no longer visible because they were brutally tortured. We burnt all of the dead bodies after we identified their names.”

According to Myanmar Now, currently publishing bilingual Burmese and English articles on its online portal, the Tar Taing massacre is “one of the worst massacres” since the military coup in February 2021.

As of this report, the junta has not released an official statement about the mass killings in Tar Taing Village. Their social media outlets, such as one on Telegram, refer to the raids as fighting against the presence of the People’s Defense Forces (PDF) in the villages. Locals told VOA there were no arms or PDF fighters in their village, only unarmed fishermen.

The PDF comprises small armed groups of young protesters who are easily overrun by the junta’s military force.

Mass killing in Shan State

Another mass killing took place in southern Shan state on March 11. A Buddhist monastery in Nanneint was attacked, leaving 22 civilians dead, including three monks. Their bloody bodies were left displayed in rows against the monastery walls in pools of blood.

VOA interviewed Khun Bedu, chairman of the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force, also known as the KNDF, from bordering Karenni state. The group sent its members to the massacre site to document the killings and provided photo and video evidence to international news outlets including VOA.

The KNDF is an armed resistance group formed in response to the 2021 Myanmar coup. In his interview via Zoom last week, Khun Bedu said that bullets found near the victims were of a type used by the Myanmar military, substantiating the reports of government responsibility. After the soldiers left Nanneint village the next day, March 12, KNDF and local Pao ethnic PDF forces arrived at the monastery where they found the aftermath of the killings.

“Evidence shows the killing of the villagers was carried out by the junta. The type of bullets and the manner of the killings, with civilians being executed along the walls of the monastery, points to military involvement. Medical records show there were scratches on their backs and cigarette burns on their bodies.

“We found bodies with mutilated legs, and smashed hands; evidence that they were brutally tortured before being killed. The victims were finally shot in the head or the mouth. It is all documented, and verified by doctors on site,” Bedu noted.

A day before the mass killing in the monastery, Bedu said, “fighting had broken out in Nanneint Village on March 10 between the military and combined forces of local resistance armed groups.”

That fighting resulted in the military shelling and launching airstrikes directly at the village, prompting many of the civilians to take refuge in the monastery where they were found and killed. Other villagers “left for safer places,” Bedu said.

Responsibility for mass killings

In a response to VOA by phone on March 12, General Zaw Min Tun, a spokesperson for the junta, confirmed there was a massacre at Nanneint Monastery but said it was an act between competing armed groups and that the military, known as the “Tadmadaw,” was not involved.

He claimed that military and armed civilian groups cooperating in the area were only providing “security and law enforcement.”

“These KNDF groups, the terrorist groups, have been more active in the Pao area. … We have seen some deaths there. The issue is between them, but they blame the Tatmadaw.”

In a Zoom interview, National Unity Government Human Rights Minister Aung Myo Min told VOA that in the two years since the military coup there have been at least 64 civilian massacres of five people or more carried out by the junta. According to Min, mass killing is “a pattern by the junta attacking its own civilians.”

He added, “The killings are a war crime committed by the military.”

The NUG has called for an expansion of the International Criminal Court investigations into human rights abuses in Myanmar to include not only the treatment of the Rohingya, but also the killing of ethnic resistance groups all over Myanmar.
(VOA/Ingyin Naing)