Myanmar’s fishing families, vital industry struggle to survive after cyclone

Myanmar’s fishing families, vital industry struggle to survive after cyclone Saturday, July 26, 2008 YAY TWIN GONE, Myanmar: No matter how much she loved the river and sea that once provided her family’s daily food, Tin Tin Latt now just wants to stay away from the water that widowed her, killed two of her children and destroyed the family’s livelihood. Tin Tin Latt is among thousands of widows of fishermen in Myanmar’s cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy delta who have been forced to become breadwinners without land to farm or the means to earn money from the sea. Cyclone Nargis, which struck in early May, killed 84,500 people and left 54,000 missing, according to the ruling junta, in the worst natural disaster in Myanmar’s modern history and the world’s fifth deadliest in the past 40 years. Of the dead, 27,000 were fishermen, the... [read full story]