Conflict, powerful companies stoke land disputes in Kachin

Myanmar: La Laung Daung Nan vividly remembers the last day of April 2015. Alone in front of the two-acre plot of land her family had been allocated in a United Nations-led project, she waited for fellow villagers to turn up.

They had been sent by officials and were coming to take down the barbed wire that protected her rubber saplings from the trampling of cows and buffaloes.

"When they came, I pleaded with them not to do it, that we are from the same village," she recalled, sitting on the bamboo floor of her stilt home with three other aggrieved farmers. Her words fell on deaf ears.

The next day, roaming animals seeking pasture left few traces of the 11-month-old saplings.

Daung Nan, her husband and 16 others in Naung Chain, a dusty village a 40-minute motorbike ride away from the state capital Myitkyina, are in a legal tussle with village authorities over land they consider theirs, but which officials say is part of 1,600 acres designated as grazing ground.

The villagers say they were not consulted about plans to turn their land into grazing grounds and believe it was a ploy by officials who planned to profit from renting out 300 acres to a Chinese company for a banana plantation.

Their battle is an illustration of land rights disputes engulfing Kachin state and the whole country, a largely agrarian nation emerging from decades of military rule where rights are fragile and victims of injustice have little recourse.

Sa Yaw Haung Khaung, the village administrator, defended the land seizure in an interview with Myanmar Now, an independent news service supported by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, saying officials acted according to the law.

He played down the impact on villagers, saying the Chinese concession covered only 70 acres for growing watermelons.

It would have generated income for the whole village but was abandoned following protests, he added.

Campaign group "Land In Our Hands" said in a 2015 report Kachin, Myanmar´s northernmost state bordering China, has the second largest number of land confiscations after Shan state. "Land confiscations in Kachin have been so rampant there is little vacant land left," Bawk Ja Lum Nyoi, a fiery political activist known for taking on powerful interests, said.

"Villagers are too scared to speak up. There are more landless people now and many are struggling to survive."

Land disputes have been fuelled by the outgoing semi-civilian government of President Thein Sein´s liberalisation policies that have driven up land prices and attract foreign and domestic investment, analysts said.  Fighting between ethnic insurgents and the army, which flared up again in 2011 after a ceasefire fractured over long-held grievances, has weakened communities´ rights and driven more than 100,000 civilians from their homes.

Many worry whether they will still be able to access their farmland when peace returns and accuse the army of seizing swathes of land.

Meanwhile, junta-era issues such as a heavy military presence across the state, oppression of ethnic minorities and the unchecked exploitation of natural resources persist.

If land disputes remain unresolved they will be detrimental to the peace process and overall stability of Kachin, activists said.

"Many farmers do not dare to demand the return of land confiscated by the military," said Lahpai Zaw Tawng from Kachin State Farmers Network, who has been helping the Naung Chain villagers.

Many are hoping the new government and parliament led by the National League for Democracy (NLD) will keep its election promises, including fair resolution of disputes, establishing land tenure security and support for the landless.

Changes in land ownership and use are among key issues in Myanmar´s political and economic transition, with deep resentment and protests over acquisitions for infrastructure, development or large-scale agricultural projects.

Up to 70 percent of Myanmar´s labour force is estimated to work in agriculture.

The sector accounts for 44 percent of economic output, according to consulting firm McKinsey & Co.