Just after dawn, plainclothes Myanmar naval officers entered a wooden shack and roused a young rice farmer from his sleep. They marched him to their nearby barracks and locked him up without explanation.
By the time The Khaw Lu Maw was released, the shack that had been his lifelong home was gone, his belongings scattered amid the debris. One by one, other homes in the riverside community of Dala were bulldozed. Residents had farmed the land for generations, but the navy took it over this year to expand a base.
"They want to show us they're the ones with the power," he said, his eyes welling with tears. "That they can do what they want."
Recent political reforms have won Myanmar widespread praise and the lifting of international sanctions, but for farmers who happen to be in the way of military or business plans, land rights have improved little since a half-century era of military rule ended in 2011. It is a recipe for strife in a country where 70 per cent of the labour force depends on agriculture, and where foreign investors, often working with current or former military officials, are scrambling to build roads, factories, power plants, bridges and industrial-sized plantations.
The government has made it tougher in some cases for land to be seized from farmers, and has formed a commission to handle land confiscation issues. But that has not helped many farmers, like those in Dala, who have been working land that was formally taken from them years ago under the old junta. Rising prospects for foreign investment are inspiring many owners to take possession and evict the farmers.
Though the new government has intervened at times, it often does not, and it has even passed laws that have been used against those attempting to resist.
Legal experts in Myanmar said a new law on peaceful assemblies is being used regularly to arrest, try and imprison people who stand up against land grabs by the rich and powerful. In addition, recent legislation has given the government the authority to seize
land in the name of "national interest."
"The problem is, when the government tries to address a hot-button issue," said Murray Hiebert of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "officials simultaneously introduce reformist policies as well as ways to retreat to the behaviour of the old days."
Other experts say that after 50 years of military administration, those drafting the laws continue to be driven by security concerns.
The most high-profile case has been in the northwest's Sagaing region, where thousands have joined protests over plans to give 8,000 acres of farmland to an expanding Chinese-run copper mine, a joint venture with a Myanmar military-run conglomerate.
Arrests have been common.
Naw Ohn Hla, who started fighting injustice during the days of dictatorship, was hauled away for the 10th time in as many years in August while seeking permission to protest the mine.
She was sentenced to two years in prison for disrupting public tranquillity, said her lawyer, Robert San Aung. That is an old law, but she's also awaiting charges under the peaceful assembly law that was adopted last year.
http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/poor-farmers-still-forced-from-homes/
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