Land grab

In an exclusive interview with Karen News, Saw Albert, Field Director of Karen Human Right Group (KHRG), talk about the land confiscation and its impact on the livelihood of villagers, as well as the unfavorable conditions of legal mechanism towards villagers to secure their lands. Peace Process Doesn’t Help Villagers to Secure their Land Land confiscation is serious because 70%…

Karen National Union (KNU) leaders based in southern Burma have called on the parliament speaker, Thura Shwe Mann, to help move forward the the ‘cease-fire code of conduct’ between the KNU and the government. P’doh Saw Beeler, Joint Secretary of KNU’s Mergui-Tavoy District, urged Thura Shwe Mann who visited southern Burma recently to urgently help get both sides to accept…

Driving through the rural roads of the Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) region in Southern Burma, vast plantation of palm oil and rubber trees stretch on either side of the roads. Signboards along the roads and in the town proclaim that, ‘Tanintharyi Division is the Oil Bowl of Myanmar’. Government policy to use vast tracts of farmland and forests for rubber and palm…

Villagers in Htantabin Township witnessed the Burma Army putting up placards claiming their land that was confiscated under the former military regime. Villagers said that the Burma Army put up the placards on the disputed land on July 20. Villagers said the original landowners are currently in negotiations to get back their confiscated farmlands returned to them through the government’s…

Saw Albert, the field director of the Karen Human Rights Group, in an exclusive interview with Karen News, said that since Burma’s 2010 election, changes in the government’s administration has allowed a lot of business and development projects to come into the country that are stealing land from ethnic villagers’. “Many people think that Burma has opened up and the…

Land confiscation of property belonging to villagers by developers and government officials in Tenasserim Division has become a complicated issue for the Karen National Union (KNU) during its peace-building process with the Burma government. Ber Baw Lor, a Karen village in southern Burma, is an example where the entire population was displaced, and its residents now living in a makeshift…

Conflicts over land have increase since last year’s ceasefire signed between the Karen National Union and the government as ‘development projects’ multiply. In a recent incident villagers claim that the village chief from Mayan Tapin village, Tontay Township, failed to mediate on land disputes between two villagers – Saw Pa Way and U Mya Thein. U Mya Thein is alleged…

Htone Bo villagers have demanded that the Shwe Energy (Asia World) Company allow them to work in their lands in the project area of the Thauk Ye Khat 2 hydro-power-dam that is now producing electricity. The Htone Bo village, 14-miles from Taungoo Town, had been relocated due to the construction of the Thauk Ye Khat Dam. Villagers claim that they…