Farmers in southern Burma in Catch-22 situation

Lawi Weng

Farmers in southern Burma in Catch-22 situation

February 26, 2008 (IMNA) - The Burmese Army has confiscated 200 acres of paddy fields in Southern Burma, thumbing its nose on the Mon people's decade's long struggle for land rights.

According to Aung Min, a farmer in Doe-mar village, Mudon Township, Mon state, the army simply puts up a sign board announcing that it now controls this land. Over a hundred farmers suffered the same fate.

Until recently, the army in Mudon had only confiscated a small number of rubber plantations and had never permanently taken land from farmers. This stands in marked contrast to nearby Ye Township, where thousands of acres of rubber plantations have been seized.

After the recent spate of land confiscations, farmers in Mudon have begun worrying that they will begin suffering like people in Ye.

While farms in Mudon have been seized during harvest time, the land had always been returned after the army had taken the crops.

This time, the people do not seem to have any hope that their land will be returned. A Mon human rights worker in the area says that farmers are selling their cattle and carts, which they have no use for without land to cultivate.

The army claims that the land seizures occurred because the farmers had planted no crops during the summer season. Farmers explained that they had planted no rice because they could not get enough water for the crops to grow.

In earlier years they had always tried and failed to farm during the summer season because they feared the army's wrath if they did not.

People in Mudon are frustrated as they are forced to grow rice but they cannot get enough water from the government controlled Win-pa-non dam. The dam was built as a government development project in 2000, and is located near Ah-bit village, along the Moulmein to Thanphyuzayart Road.

The goal of the development project was to enable farmers in the area to grow two crops, but government officials ignored the input of people in the area as the dam was being built and it holds insufficient water for farming during the summer season.

The local authorities are well aware that the dam has not enabled people to farm in the summer season, but rather than report the failure to Naypyidaw they continue to force the people into an impossible task.

"They called us to meetings more than ten times after the winter harvest and said that we had to grow rice again in the summer. We did not dare to refuse them; we could only nod our heads," said a farmer.

The farmers in Mudon seem to be stuck in a three-way Catch-22: work hard at farming when they know they will fail, refuse and risk losing their land or turn to corruption, said a village headman.

Farmers planting rice can bribe the dam authorities into giving them extra water, and those who do not want to grow rice can save their land with bribery as well.

Adding insult to injury, the army is free to order dam officers to release enough water to cultivate their fields and farmers whose land has been seized will have to watch it flourish in their absence.

Just as the Win-pa-non dam is not large enough to store sufficient water in the hot season, it is too small to handle the inflow of water during the rainy season.

Water overflowing the dam embankments floods fields, and farmers lose nearly 1800 acres of crops as they rot in too much water. The land has produced less rice every year since the dam was built, say farmers, and they have to plant two or three times to reap one harvest.

The regime has implemented similar development projects throughout the ethnic areas in Burma. Some projects have succeeded, and others have been such utter failures that they displace the local people.

In spite of their mixed success, the government continues to force people to carry out the projects, even when there is little prospect for anything but failure.

According to a political analyst inside Burma, the projects are designed not to help the people but to keep them busy. The government worries if the people have time away from their fields, they will have time to mobilize politically.

Over ten thousand acres of farmlands with paddy, rubber, betel nut and orchards in Mon state were confiscated according to local human rights groups.