Untermensch with nowhere to go: Myanmar farmers under siege from land law
Tony Gosling
tony at cultureshop.org.uk
Thu Apr 4 13:40:44 BST 2019
Nowhere to go: Myanmar farmers under siege from land law
The Myanmar government has tightened a law on
so-called 'vacant, fallow and virgin' land, and farmers are at risk.
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/myanmar-farmers-siege-land-law-190328003658355.html>https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/myanmar-farmers-siege-land-law-190328003658355.html
by
<https://www.aljazeera.com/profile/jacob-goldberg.html>Jacob
Goldberg - 04 April 2019
The law puts farmers at risk, mostly in territories that are ho
The law puts farmers at risk, mostly in
territories that are home to ethnic minorities
[File: Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP Photo]
MORE ON <https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/country/myanmar.html>MYANMAR
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<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/campaigners-target-firms-business-myanmar-military-190327061055016.html>Campaigners
target firms doing business with Myanmar's military last week
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for human rights': Punks, monks and politics in Myanmar last week
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Yangon, Myanmar - Han Win Naung is besieged on his own land.
Last September, local administrators in Myanmar's
southern Tanintharyi region put up a sign at the
edge of his 5.7-hectare farm that read "Under
Management Ownership - Do Not Trespass".
They felled the trees and started building a drug
rehabilitation facility and an agriculture
training school on opposite ends of his plot.
He was eventually informed that the
administrators were challenging his claim to the
land and had filed charges against him under a
controversial law that could see him jailed for three years.
"I didn't know what this law was," the
37-year-old farmer told Al Jazeera. "I didn't
understand what was happening to us. They also
asked us to move. We don't have anywhere else to go."
Han Win Naung is accused of violating the Vacant,
Fellow and Virgin (VFV) Lands Management Law
which requires anyone living on land categorised
as "vacant, fallow, and virgin" to apply for a
permit to continue using it for the next 30 years.
According to estimates based on government data,
this category totals more than 20 million
hectares or 30 percent of Myanmar's land area.
Three-quarters of it is home to the country's ethnic minorities.
The law has sparked outrage among land-rights
activists, who say it criminalises millions of
farmers who do not have permits and lays the
ground for unchecked land seizures by the
government, the military and private companies.
[]
Han Win Naung's farm was seized by the Myanmar
authorities under a new land law and his crops
are now untended [Han Win Naung/Al Jazeera]
Struggle to survive
"The more people learn about this law, the more
they will use it against farmers who cannot
afford lawyers," said a lawyer who is
representing Han Win Naung. She asked to be
identified only as a member of Tanintharyi
Friends, a group that represents several farmers
who have been sued under this law.
Now Han Win Naung's farm is in disrepair. Because
of the lawsuit, he has been unable to tend to the
mango, banana and cashew trees that have
sustained his family since his father set up the farm 28 years ago.
"We haven't been able to do anything on the farm
since September
We are facing a lot of trouble
getting food on the table," he said.
The VFV law is modelled on a British colonial
policy in which land occupied by indigenous
people was labelled "wasteland" in order to
justify seizing it and extracting its revenue.
After independence, Myanmar's military rulers
adopted the strategy as a way to ensure they could feed their ranks.
In 2012, the nominally civilian government under
former general Thein Sein enshrined the strategy
into law, referring to the targeted land as
"vacant, fallow, and virgin" instead of "wasteland".
Last year, despite coming to power on a platform
of protecting the land rights of smallholder
farmers and promising to reverse all military
land grabs within a single year, the government
of
<https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/people/aung-san-suu-kyi.html>Aung
San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy
(NLD) made the VFV law stricter.
With the NLD's endorsement, arrests and evictions
of farmers like Han Win Naung are accelerating.
In September 2018, Myanmar's parliament, which is
controlled by the NLD, passed an amendment that
imposed a two-year prison sentence on anyone
found living on "vacant, fallow, and virgin land"
without a permit after March 11.
This gave millions of farmers, many of them
illiterate or unable to speak Burmese, just six
months to complete a Kafkaesque process of
claiming land they already consider their own.
According to a survey conducted by the Mekong
Region Land Governance Project, in the month
before the deadline, 95 percent of people living
on so-called VFV land had no knowledge of the law.
[]
Han Win Naung's family outside their home in
Myanmar's southern Tanintharyi region [Han Win Naung/Al Jazeera]
'Torn up'
As the deadline approached, local land-rights
activists jumped into action, sending petitions
to the government demanding that the law be repealed.
In November, 300 civil society organisations
signed an open letter denouncing the law as "an
effort to grab the land of ethnic peoples across
the country", especially land belonging to
hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally
displaced people who have no ability to apply for permits.
In December, the Karen National Union (KNU), a
powerful ethnic armed organisation that had
recently withdrawn from the national peace
process, called for the VFV law to be "torn up",
raising the spectre of future conflict.
But these petitions fell on deaf ears, and as the
deadline expired, millions of people, many of
whose families had been on the same land for generations, became trespassers.
Saw Alex Htoo, deputy director of the Karen
Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN),
blames the NLD's pursuit of foreign investment for the policy.
"The NLD is pushing for investment to come into
the country without really looking at what's
happening on the ground," he said. "That's the
only way they could support this VFV law, which
is inviting conflict and will displace millions of farmers across the country."
When asked why the party would pass an amendment
that could harm so many people, NLD spokesperson
Myo Nyunt said that while land disputes might
arise, the purpose of the law was not mass dispossession.
[]
A sign on what was Han Win Naung's family farms
warns against trespassing, while a drug rehab
facility and agricultural training facility are
being built there [Han Win Naung/Al Jazeera]
"The purpose of the law is to promote the rule of law," he said.
"When we implement the new law, those affected
have the responsibility to understand and follow
it. If they have grievances, they can report them
to the relevant committee addressing land grabs.
There will be some people who are affected
negatively by this law, but that is not the intention of this law.
"The government is working to improve the
livelihood and quality of life in Myanmar and the rule of law."
Ye Lin Myint, national coordinator for the
Myanmar Alliance for Transparency and
Accountability (MATA), said enforcement of the
VFV law actually calls the rule of law into
question because it contradicts several earlier
government commitments, including the 2015
Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) between the
government and eight ethnic armed organizations.
"The NCA clearly states that during the peace
process, there should be no land seizures," he
said. "This law will start a domino effect of ethnic conflict."
Conflict over the VFV law has already begun. At
least one activist has been arrested for
protesting against it and observers say the NLD's
role in generating conflict risks a backlash in next year's election.
"The ruling National League for Democracy party
are really shooting themselves in the foot with
the VFV law," said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia
director for Human Rights Watch. "This will be a
human rights disaster that goes to the doorstep
of millions of farmers across the nation, and
it's a fair bet they will punish those they
consider responsible in the next election."
Han Win Naung attests to this. Since he was sued,
his 80-year-old father has stopped eating and
cannot sleep. His children, nieces, and nephews
are embarrassed to go to school.
"People like us have been suffering since this
government came to power," he said. "We don't
think we will be voting for the NLD in 2020."
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