Burma: Farmers Rise Up at Land Grab by Army-Owned Company

The Asian Human Rights Commission has followed closely reports in recent weeks of an uprising by farmers against a takeover of a large area of agricultural land in upper Burma by an army-owned company and a private partner. The land grab, in the Letpadan Mountain Range of Sarlingyi Township, Sagaing Region, is of some 7800 acres of fertile land, to make way for copper mining […]

Defending Human Rights Still a Risky Business in Burma

Last week former political prisoner Wai Lu, who was helping protesting farmers win back land confiscated by a copper mining company in the Latpadaung mountain range, was taken off a bus and arrested on his way back to Rangoon. Family members have been told he is being charged under Burma’s Religious Offenses Act, yet they haven’t had a chance to see him since his arrest and don’t know where he is being held.

Wai Lu is not an isolated case. In the last two months, human rights defenders have been arbitrarily arrested for defending people’s freedom of assembly and for participating in protests. On 7 August, police in Mandalay detained labor activist Aye Thein after he represented vendors protesting against their relocation. In early July, the government harassed and detained student activists in order to prevent them from holding commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the military regime’s crackdown on students. In May, the Police arrested and intimidated more than 40 protesters who took part in the nationwide peaceful candlelight protest for electricity. Naw Ohn Hla, a former political prisoner, claims the authorities continue to spy on her since she led these protests […]

ေျမသိမ္းတိုက္ပြဲ

4,000 local people and representatives of civil society organizations and networks launched a protest against copper mining in Latpantaung area on 5 September 2012 and called for the full termination of the mining project. Protesters included farmers whose lands have been confiscated […]

၅.၉.၂၀၁၂ ရက္ေန႕ ေျမသိမ္းတိုက္ပြဲ (၁၃) ရက္ေန႕ေျမာက္ေန႕တြင္ ေဒသခံျပည္သူမ်ားမွ မံုရြာ-ပုသိမ္လမ္းဆံု၌ ေန႕လည္ (၁၁း၀၀) နာရီမွ စတင္ကာ ဆႏၵျပမႈမ်ားကို စတင္ခဲ့ျပီး လက္ပန္ေတာင္းေတာင္ ေၾကးနီစီမံကိန္း လံုးဝရပ္ဆိုင္းရန္ ဆႏၵကို ထုတ္ေဖာ္ခဲ့ၾကပါသည္။ လက္ပန္ေတာင္းေတာင္ ေဒသတြင္ လက္ပန္ေတာင္းေတာင္ ေၾကးနီစီမံကိန္းေၾကာင့္ […]

Burma’s Military and Economic Elites Continue to Steal the Livelihoods of Rural People

As more and more farmers are losing their lands and livelihoods to corrupt businesses long-associated with the Burma Army, the current government is doing its best to preserve the interests of these wealthy elites at the expense of disempowered rural people. With the onset of the gold rush into Burma, these cronies of the military-backed government are abusing their position to reap the financial rewards of the potential flood of new investment while rural people, who make up 90% of the population, are losing their livelihoods.

One such example is from Bwi Daw Village in Kachin State where residents reported last week of local businessmen confiscating their land at gunpoint and subsequently destroying their crops with tractors to make room for a fish farm. For these villagers, there is no legal remedy and have now lost the ability to put food on the table for their families […]

Farmers Block Tractor to Protest Land Grabs

Three farmers from Mandalay Division, whose land has been confiscated, lay in front of a tractor belonging to the accused company on Wednesday in order to halt work and highlight their claims.

The farmers, from Oh Pyun Kan Village of Wundwin Township, Meikhtila District, accuse Kaungkin Company of illegally seizing land that has been in their families for generations and pledged to fight until death to win back what was stolen […]

MYANMAR: Myanmar at Risk of Land-Grabbing Epidemic

In a written statement during its September 2011 session, the Asian Legal Resource Centre alerted the Human Rights Council to the dangers posed to the rights of people in Myanmar by the convergence of military, business and administrative interests […]

Farmers Square Off with Parliamentarian’s Company

Tensions nearly boiled over between security guards from a company owned by business tycoon and parliamentarian Khin Shwe and local farmers in Rangoon’s Mingaladon township last Thursday over a land dispute.

On May 10, a row broke out between the two sides when employees from the Zaykabar company began to bulldoze land in Shwenanthar village. The farmers in the area responded by taking to the fields with two tractors and standing their ground […]

405 villagers from Maubin Township Reclaim Confiscated Lands

405 farmers from Maletto Village, Maubin Township, Irrawaddy Division sent an appeal letter to President Thein Sein on May 12 requesting help in reclaiming their farming lands confiscated by U Pai company. These more than 1,000 acres […]

Lahu Women Demand End to Destructive Platinum Mining in Burma’s Shan State

A Lahu women’s group is calling for an immediate end to destructive platinum mining operations in Eastern Shan State. In a new report “Grab for White Gold: Impacts of platinum mining in Eastern Shan State,” the Lahu Women’s Organization (LWO) describes how recent platinum mining […]

Grab for White Gold: Platinum Mining in Eastern Shan State

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 […]