The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand, Bangkok - Three years after the 2012 preliminary ceasefire negotiations between the Myanmar government and the Karen National Union (KNU), reported instances of land confiscation continue to increase in southeast Myanmar. In its 2015 report, ‘With only our voices, what can we do?’, KHRG highlights four main land use types which lead to land confiscation: infrastructure projects, natural resource extraction, commercial agriculture projects, and military activities.

Land confiscation is narrowly defined by KHRG as incidents in which villagers’ access to or use of land is forcibly supplanted by another actor without their consent. Land confiscation often occurs at proposed development, natural resource extraction, or private business sites, including hydro-electric dams, mining and logging projects, and plantation agriculture. Increased militarisation at these sites perpetuates a cycle of land confiscation in areas adjacent to the sites for the development of military camps, roads, or other infrastructure to support the project.

Throughout the Mekong region, large-scale development projects such
as hydropower dams, mines, conventional power plants, and mono-crop
plantations are displacing communities and limiting access to natural
resources. Several hydropower dams have already been built on the
Upper Mekong in China’s Yunnan Province, and the governments of
Cambodia, Laos and Thailand are planning eleven additional large dams
on the Mekong River’s mainstream. If completed, these dams would
not only destroy local ecosystems, but also reduce the ow of silt

Villagers in Karen areas of southeast Myanmar continue to face widespread land confiscation at the hands of a multiplicity of actors. Much of this can be attributed to the rapid expansion of domestic and international commercial interest and investment in southeast Myanmar since the January 2012 preliminary ceasefire between the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Myanmar government. KHRG first documented this in a 2013 report entitled ‘Losing Ground’, which documented cases of land confiscation between January 2011 and November 2012.

Executive Summary:
"Worsening conflict and abuses by Burmese government troops in
northern Shan State have displaced over 2,000 Palaung villagers from
fifteen villages in three townships since March 2011. About 1,000,
mainly women and children, remain in three IDP settlements in Mantong
and Namkham townships, facing serious shortages of food and medicine;
most of the rest have dispersed to find work in China.
Burmese troops have been launching offensives to crush the Kachin

This report, authored by leading land experts, is the culmination of a three-year research project that brought together forty members and partners of ILC to examine the characteristics, drivers and impacts and trends of rapidly increasing commercial pressures on land.

The report strongly urges models of investment that do not involve large-scale land acquisitions, but rather work together with local land users, respecting their land rights and the ability of small-scale farmers themselves to play a key role in investing to meet the food and resource demands of the future.

The Asian Human Rights Commission on Wednesday sent a message of support to farmers and their allies gathering for a "people's conference" to oppose land confiscation and degradation for a copper mining project.

In the message to farmers and others gathering for the inaugural Letpadaung Mountain region people's conference, the AHRC said that the farmers' struggle set "an important example and signals the determination of people [in Burma]… to resist dispossession, repression and the use of violence and illegal tactics by powerful interests".

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was
established on 8 August 1967 in Bangkok by the five
original Member Countries, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Brunei Darussalam joined on
8 January 1984; Vietnam, on 28 July 1995; Lao PDR and
Myanmar, on 23 July 1997; and Cambodia, on 30 April 1999.
In principle, ASEAN supports poverty reduction, food security,
sustainable development, and greater equity in the ASEAN
region. However, a closer look at the pronouncements contained

Much has been made in recent times of the continued use in Burma of antiquated and anti-human rights laws from the country's decades of military rule, as well as from the colonial era. While legislators discuss the amendment or revocation of some laws, and the issue is debated in the public domain, much less is said of the superstructure of military-introduced administrative orders that officials around the country continue to employ in their day-to-day activities, invariably in order to circumscribe or deny human rights.

Commentary: Land Grabbing and Related Issues and Abuses Continue...
Contents: Themes & Places of Violations reported in this issue...
Acronyms:
MAP...
Land abandoned under force seized and original owners required to buy them back, in Lai-Kha...
Burmese military let people’s militia groups grow crops on lands long cultivated by local people, in Nam-Zarng...
Situation of land grabbing and related abuses in areas under the influence of a ceasefire group “UWSA”, in Murng-Ton...

This past week the parliamentary Farmland Investigation Commission submitted its report on land confiscation to the parliament. The report finds that the military have taken almost 250,000 acres of land from villagers. The commission stated that they had spoken to military leaders about the confiscation, “Vice Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing […] confirmed to me that the army will return seized farmlands that are away from its bases, and they are also thinking about providing farmers with compensation.”...

RANGOON—Less than eight months after a parliamentary commission began investigating land-grabbing in Burma, it has received complaints that the military has forcibly seized about 250,000 acres of farmland from villagers, according to the commission’s report.

The Farmland Investigation Commission submitted its first report to Burma’s Union Parliament on Friday, which focused on land seizures by the military.