...The main objective of this research is to examine housing, land, and property rights in the context of Burma’s societal transition towards a democratic polity and economy. Much has been written and discussed about property rights in their various manifestations, private, public, collective, and common in terms of “rights”. When property rights are widely and fairly distributed, they are inseparable from the rights of people to a means of living.

Nyaunglebin (known in Karen as Kler Lwe Htoo) District is a northern Karen region straddling the border of northern Karen State and Pegu Division. It contains the northern reaches of the Bilin (Bu Loh Kloh) River northwest of Papun, and stretches westward as far as the Sittaung (Sittang) River in the area 60 to 150 kilometres north of Pegu (named Bago by the SPDC). The District has 3 townships: Ler Doh (Kyauk Kyi in Burmese), Hsaw Tee (Shwegyin), and Mone.

This report documents in detail the plight of villagers and the internally displaced in these two
northern Karen regions. Since 1997 the SPDC has destroyed or relocated over 200 villages here,
forcing tens of thousands of villagers to flee into hiding in the hills where they are now being
hunted down and shot on sight by close to 50 SPDC Army battalions. The troops are now
systematically destroying crops, food supplies and farmfields to flush the villagers out of the hills,

Situation to the end of 1996

This report contains the full transcript of an interview conducted by a KHRG researcher in May 2011 with a villager from Ler Doh Township, Nyaunglebin District. The researcher interviewed Naw Sa---, a 26-year-old villager who described human rights and humanitarian conditions in her village, in a mixed administration area under effective Tatmadaw control.

At least 8,885 villagers in 118 villages in Lu Thaw Township, Papun District have either exhausted their current food supplies or are expecting to do so prior to the October 2011 harvest. The 118 villages are located in nine village tracts, where attacks on civilians by Burma's state army, the Tatmadaw, have triggered wide scale and repeated displacement since 1997.

Executive Summary:
"The impact of decades of military repression on
the population of Burma has been devastating.
Hundreds of thousands of Burmese have been
displaced by the government�s suppression of
ethnic insurgencies and of the pro-democracy
movement. As government spending has concentrated
on military expenditures to maintain its
control, the once-vibrant Burmese economy has
been virtually destroyed. Funding for health and
education is negligible, leaving the population at

Mass Displacement by the Burmese Army's forced relocation program in Tenasserim division first rose to awareness when multi-national companies started to build the Yadana gas pipeline. What followed was a Burmese Army offensive in 1997 to KNU controlled areas to secure more of the area for their business interests. After the arrival of foreign companies and the Yadana gas pipeline the Kamoethway area became a refuge for those fleeing from the gas pipeline area. Later Kamoethway area itself became another target for Burmese troops trying to gain better access to the gas pipeline.

Burma has a population of 50 million people, recent estimates place 2 million of those people as Internally Displaced
Persons (IDP). They live precarious and transient lives in the jungles of Burma’s ethnic border areas and in the more urban
central plains. They are denied the stability of having a home and a livelihood and are forced into a constant state of
movement: never having the opportunity to maintain a home, their farms, access to education and medical facilities and
peace of mind...

Historically underdeveloped and divided, Burma today is politically isolated, increasingly militarised, economically mismanaged by its own authorities, and socially and culturally divided along ethnic, religious, and language lines. Following independence from Britain in 1948, parties representing the ethnic minority population have been struggling for greater autonomy from the central Burmese regime.

Photo essay.....
"The country's political reforms have not shielded remote communities from being devastated by ongoing conflicts...Myanmar has undergone political reform over the past few years, led by President Thein Sein, a former military commander who has adopted a more moderate stance concerning the country's political system.

Despite the reforms, however, conflicts involving minority groups have escalated, and Myanmar's Muslim communities, especially the Rohingya in the northwest, have become victims of violence.

In recent months, the Rohingyas have been making headlines again. Who are they?
It was reported1 recently that Myanmar Foreign Minister U Nyan Win had told his ASEAN2
counterparts in Hua Hin, Thailand, prior to the ASEAN Summit, that the SPDC is "willing to
accept the return of refugees from Myanmar if they are listed as Bengali Muslim minorities but
not if they are Rohingyas, because Rohingyas are not Myanmar citizens". What does this
signify? To the uninitiated, what difference does it make if they are Bengalis or Rohingyas? Are