Summary:
Since 2007, destructive platinum mining has been taking place in the hills north of
Tachilek, eastern Shan State, impacting about 2,000 people from eight Lahu, Akha
and Shan villages. The platinum is being extracted by Burmese mining companies and
exported to China and Thailand.
Five companies are currently operating around the Akha village of Ah Yeh, 13 kilometers
north of Tachilek. They have forced villagers to sell property and land at cheap prices,
and confiscated other lands without compensation. Hundreds of acres of farms and

Zay Kabar, a Burmese company that has been accused of illegally confiscating more than 800 acres of land from farmers in Shwenanthar, a village in Rangoon’s Mingaladon Township, has continued clearing the land despite being told to stop by local authorities.

After embankments on the farmland were leveled last week, around 50 farmers began rebuilding them in preparation for the start of the planting season, prompting officials from the Housing Department and the local administrative office to order both sides to desist.

ABSTRACT: Burma (Myanmar) is currently emerging from almost half a century of severe military dictatorship. In a country comprising over 50% forested landscapes, the status of forest governance and forest rights are central to the democratisation process.

Commentary: Land Confiscation;
Situation of land confiscation in Nam-Zarng and Kun-Hing;
Land confiscated, villagers house destroyed, in Nam-Zarng;
Cultivated land confiscated in Nam-Zarng;
Farmlands and cemetery ground confiscated in Nam-Zarng;
Lands confiscated, forced labour used, to build new military bases and an airstrip, in Kun-Hing;
Confiscation of land with regard to mining projects;
Land Confiscation due to coal mining concession in Murng-Sart;

This website contains mainly news reports about the global rush to buy up or lease farmlands abroad as a strategy to secure basic food supplies or simply for profit. Its purpose is to serve as a resource for those monitoring or researching the issue, particularly social activists, non-government organisations and journalists.

... Since ceasefire agreements were signed between the Burmese military government and ethnic political groups in the Burma–China borderlands in the early 1990s, violent waves of counterinsurgency development have replaced warfare to target politically-suspect, resource-rich, ethnic populated borderlands. The Burmese regime allocates land concessions in ceasefire zones as an explicit postwar military strategy to govern land and populations to produce regulated, legible, militarized territory. Tracing the relationship of military–state formation, land control

Farmers from Ayeyarwady Region have established an association to strengthen their land use rights and improve technical knowledge.

The Farmer Development Association is based on more than 50 village-level groups, ranging in size from five to more than 30 members, formed recently in Bogale, Kyaiklat and Mawlamyinegyun townships...

Since a new quasi-parliamentary government led by former army officers began work in Burma (Myanmar) earlier this year, some observers have argued that the government is showing a commitment to bring about, albeit cautiously, reforms that will result in an overall improvement in human rights conditions.

Khin Shwe, the chairman of Zay Kabar Company and a member of Burma’s Lower House, will face a lawsuit filed by farmers from Rangoon’s Mingaladon Township whose farmland he allegedly confiscated.

The farmers were previously allowed to continue growing paddy and other crops even after their lands were seized, but they are no longer permitted to do so. Many have been threatened and told to vacate the land, that’s why they are preparing to sue him, said Kyaw Sein, a farmer who lost 50 acres of land...

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is concerned by the case of a group of farmers who lodged a complaint about attempts of an army-owned company and the powerful Htoo Company to acquire their land at a greatly undervalued amount. The farmers' complaint was rejected in court on grounds that the land was being acquired for a government project, even though the company is private. After, the company and army officers involved organized for a gang to ambush and attack a group of the farmers and to have a false criminal case lodged against them.

A VISITING land expert has warned against falling for the “dominant model” of land grabbing, which sees small-scale farmers replaced by agri-businesses that are in many cases less productive.

Mr Robin Palmer, who has worked on land issues for more than 35 years as both an academic and for British NGO Oxfam, said last week that population pressures and the increasing consumption of meat and dairy products in developing countries were often used to justify plantation farming, with peasant farmers and traditional pastoralists dismissed as “romantic nonsense”.

MYLAFF - a forum for sharing information about land, rural livelihoods, forests, fisheries, agribusiness investment and natural resource management in Myanmar...
The main URL given here is the public entry to MYLAFF. For access to more documents, users have to sign up to MYLAFF...
*Members of the forum include government officials, staff of donor agencies and NGOs, project experts, academics and business people...