Child killed after eating castor oil seeds from plant cultivated under regime orders

May 2, 2008

WCRP:

A child in Hongsawatoi Ward, Thanpyuzayat Town, was killed after eating over fifty castor-oil seeds in December 2007, his neighbors recently reported to a Woman and Child Rights Project field reporter. In January, two other children were also hospitalized in nearby Wait Rat village.

The two children, ages eleven and twelve, are studying in standard three. The two were playing near a motor road along which rows of castor-oil trees have been planted, and each ate about thirty seeds. They soon became sick and, after throwing up, were taken to the Thanpyuzayat hospital by their parents.

The children like the taste of the castor-oil seeds, comparing them to cashew nuts, report their parents. The seeds are colorful and enticing and parents report that they are worried more children will eat the seeds.

The regime has ordered castor-oil trees to be planted all over the country, especially along motor roads and in front of people’s houses, gardens, fields and farms. The campaign began in 2006, and though people cannot refuse to plant the trees, sign boards have been posted reading “Let’s plant Castor-oil trees as our fences.” The project is advocated without warning to the plant’s dangers, and state-owned MRTV broadcasts almost every day, championing the plant’s positive uses and providing instructions explaining how to grow the plant.

Ostensibly, the seeds can be used to produce oil for bio-diesel, but actual fuel yields have been minuscule. But sources within the National League for Democracy say that the campaign began after Daw Kyine Kyine, wife of General Than Shwe, was told by an astrologer that planting castor-oil through-out the country would lead to defeating opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Written by HURFOM · Filed Under News