[THS] Food price rises are mass murder - U.N. envoy

[Peter Webster]

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-33134320080420?sp=
true

Food price rises are "mass murder" - U.N. envoy
Sun Apr 20, 2008 3:13pm IST

VIENNA (Reuters) - Global food price rises are leading to "silent mass
murder" and commodities markets have brought "horror" to the world,
the United Nations' food envoy told an Austrian newspaper on Sunday.

Jean Ziegler, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, told Kurier
am Sonntag that growth in biofuels, speculation on commodities
markets and European Union export subsidies mean the West is
responsible for mass starvation in poorer countries.

Ziegler said he was bound to highlight the "madness" of people who
think that hunger is down to fate.

"Hunger has not been down to fate for a long time -- just as (Karl) Marx
thought. It is rather that a murder is behind every victim. This is silent
mass murder," he said in an interview.

Ziegler blamed globalisation for "monopolising the riches of the earth"
and said multinationals were responsible for a type of "structural
violence".

"And we have a herd of market traders, speculators and financial
bandits who have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and
horror. We have to put a stop to this," he said.

Ziegler said he believed that one day starving people could rise up
against their persecutors. "It's just as possible as the French Revolution
was," he said.