Burmese Army confiscates land for brick kiln
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Sittwe: The Burmese Army has confiscated over seven acres of farm land from two farmers in Siittwe Township to set up a brick kiln. No compensation was paid for the land, said a relative of a farm owner.
"The farm lands were forcibly taken by an army battalion based in Sittwe for a brick kiln. The bricks produced will be used for construction of army buildings," he said.
The farms owners whose lands were confiscated are U Tha Maung and U Tun Maung from Tha Ya Gon village, four miles north of Arakan state's capital Sittwe.
"The lands included four acres of pastures and three acres of paddy farms. They were confiscated by the power and engineering battalion of the army stationed in Sittwe cantonment.
“The families are suffering severely following the loss of farms in the wake of the seizure," he said.
A village chairman confirmed the seizure but he told Narinjara that the army will return the lands to the owners after three years. The army will work the land for that period.
However, the land owners are worried because the lands will not remain fit for cultivation once used as a brick kiln.
"Some farms near our village were abandoned after being used by the army for brick kilns. So the lands no longer remain cultivable even though army returns it," he added.
Such confiscation of land by the Burmese Army takes place among the Arakanese people to force them to leave their homelands for neighbouring countries in search of jobs after they face a crisis in Arakan.
A human rights organization based in Thailand said that half the agriculture lands in Arakan State were confiscated by the army for its own purposes. In Arakan state nearly 60 army battalions are stationed at present.
U Saw Hla Kyaw, Secretary of Human Rights Defenders and Promoters (Arakan), based in Sittwe said nearly one million Arakanese people have already left the state for Thailand and Malaysia as well as northern part of Burma near China's Yunan province due to business crisis and other human rights violations by the Burmese Army.
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