THE Kayin State Minister for Agriculture and Irrigation has urged farmers to prepare land ownership documentation in order to avoid land disputes with agribusinesses, a growing issue in Myanmar.

In September 2011, residents of Je--- village, Kawkareik Township told KHRG that they feared soldiers under Tatmadaw Border Guard Battalion #1022 and LIBs #355 and #546 would soon complete the confiscation of approximately 500 acres of land in their community in order to develop a large camp for Battalion #1022 and homes for soldiers' families. According to the villagers, the area has already been surveyed and the Je--- village head has informed local plantation and paddy farm owners whose lands are to be confiscated.

This report includes a situation update submitted to KHRG in September 2011 by a villager describing events occurring in T'Nay Hsah Township, Pa'an District during September 2011. It details an incident in which a soldier from Tatmadaw Border Guard #1017 deliberately shot at villagers in a farm hut, resulting in the death of one civilian and injury to a six-year-old child.

... Myanmar’s forest and timber sector has been central to the country’s economy and society, particularly over the last century. Since the colonial era, timber has been a major export revenue earner to Burma/Myanmar and thus subject to much political debate (Bryant 1996). In addition to timber export revenues, the forests of Myanmar have always provided timber and non-timber forest products for domestic consumption as well as a range of environmental services including water catchment, habitat for flora and fauna, carbon storage, and soil nutrient recovery in rotational agriculture.

FARMERS from Alwan Sut village in Yangon Region’s Thanlyin township are seeking the right to continue to farm land they were forced to sell 15 years ago for a dormant building project...

Executive Summary: "In the context of transition to a more open form of
government, the Myanmar government has
begun to liberalize land markets and, in 2012, enacted two major land-related laws.
Implementing these new land laws has proven challenging, however, as it has been difficult to
integrate these laws with the existing customary practices of various ethnic minorities. To
address these and other issues UN-HABITAT Myanmar is assisting the Myanmar government in
developing a
Land Administration and Management Program
(LAMP).

This report contains the full transcript of an interview conducted during April 2012 in Ler Mu Lah Township, Mergui/Tavoy District by a community member trained by KHRG to monitor human rights conditions. The community member interviewed 40-year-old G--- village head, Saw K---, who described abusive practices perpetrated by the Tatmadaw in his village throughout the previous four year period, including forced labour, arbitrary taxation in the form of both goods and money, and obstructions to humanitarian relief, specifically medical care availability and education support.

Land grabbing is an urgent concern for people in Tanintharyi Division, and
ultimately one of national and international concern, as tens of thousands of people are being displaced
for the Dawei Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Dawei lies within Myanmar’s (Burma) southernmost
region, the Tanintharyi Division, which borders Mon State to the North, and Thailand to the East, on
territory that connects the Malay Peninsula with mainland Asia. This highly populated and prosperous

Land grabbing and speculation, which can both manifest in a multitude of forms, are
unfortunate, often-inter-twined, yet common practices in countries undergoing structural
political transition. If unchecked, unregulated, or unintentionally encouraged by the very
governments that replace formerly authoritarian regimes, these two land realities can serve to
undermine democratic reforms, entrench economic and political privilege and seriously harm
the human rights prospects of those affected, in particular internationally recognised housing,

The complaint letter below, signed by 25 local community members, was written in July 2011 and raises villagers' concerns related to the construction of the Kanchanaburi – Tavoy [Dawei] highway linking Thailand and the Tavoy deep sea port. Villagers described concerns that the highway would bisect agricultural land and destroy crops under cultivation worth 3,280,500 kyat (US $3,657). In response to these concerns, local community members formed a group called the 'Village and Public Sustainable Development' to represent villagers' concerns and request compensation.

အစီရင်ခံစာအကျဉ်းချုပ်
ရှမ်းပြည်နယ် အရှေ့ပိုင်း တာချီလိတ်မြို ၏့ မြောက်ဖက် တောင်တန်းဒေများတွင် ဒေသခံများကို ထိခိုကေ် စသည့်
ရွှေဖြူတူးဖော်ခြင်းလုပ်ငန်းကို ၂၀၀၇ခုနှစ်မှ စတင်ခဲ့ကာ ယင်းကြောင့် လားဟူ၊ အာခါနှင့် ရှမ်းရွာ ၈ရွာမှာ လူပေါင်း ၂၀၀၀ကျော်ကို
ထိခိုက်စေခဲ့သည်။ ရွှေဖြူတူးဖော်မှုကို မြန်မာကုမ္ပဏီများက ဆောင်ရွက်နေပြီး တရုတ်နှင့် ထိုင်းနိုင်ငံသို့ တင်ပို့လျှက်ရှိသည်။
တာချလီ တိ ြ်မို ့ မြောကဖ် က ် ၁၃ကလီ မို တီ ာအကွာရ ှိအားရဲခေါ် အာခါရွာအနီးတငွ ်ကမု ဏ္ပ ၅ီ ခကု လပု င် န်း လပု က် ငို လ် ျှကရ် သှိ ည။်

Burmese and Chinese companies are pushing aside Akha, Lahu and Shan villagers
in eastern Shan State in a grab for platinum (“white gold” in Burmese). Women are
facing particular hardship due to the loss of livelihood and the contamination of water
sources. The Lahu Women Organization is calling for an immediate halt to these
damaging mining operations....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