For both would-be investors and the genuine reformers in Myanmar’s new government, conflict over land is a great spectre overshadowing their plans. A committee set up by parliament in 2012 to explore so-called land grabs since 1988 said in November that it had received about 17,000 complaints. Activists say these are a fraction of the number of actual disputes. Most of the alleged victims are farmers, in a country where as many as two-thirds of the population are estimated to depend directly or indirectly on agriculture.
Land disputes cast a pall over the landslide win last year by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. One of her first acts was to launch a litter-picking drive, in a symbolic beautification of a long-neglected country. But her party, and the old military elite that still looms large above it, have the much harder task of dealing with old grievances over land and finding ways to avoid creating new ones. The sustainability of the country’s internationally-lauded but fragile transition may depend on it.
Myanmar’s land battles are also deterring investment in a country that wants more of it. They form one of the most significant risks identified by businesses coming in. That includes past land-grabbing by the state. Investors fear the horrors of contested ownership, with all the legal complications, financial penalties and bad publicity that it can bring.
The battle for land is also a theme that resonates well beyond Myanmar. The country’s difficulties may be extreme, but its themes of speculation, tensions between big companies and local communities, and the loss of long-established livelihoods have a universal aspect.
In a poor, mainly agrarian nation with many remote regions and areas outside government control, land is both a priceless material asset and an emotional entity that feeds into people’s sense of self. It is a crucial glue in society and clashes over it create a risk of unrest.
“Land is not just a matter of a map or an area,” says Shwe Thein, head of the Land Core Group, an NGO focused on smallholder land rights in Myanmar. “Land rights are the basic requirement to ensure livelihoods and food security for people in this country. They are important for their culture, traditional practices and also their social cohesion. Land is their life.”
The activity in Kyaukphyu (roughly pronounced Chaw-pyoo) has made it a hotspot for Myanmar’s international development and a crucible for its land disputes. This town, set on rugged coast, is one hour’s flight north-west of Yangon. Once a port developed by the British colonialists and the site of a late second world war battle between Allied and Japanese forces, Kyaukphyu now feels like frontier territory. Gas and oil workers passing through the tiny airport are diverted to immigration officials who check their passport details, even though they have arrived on a domestic flight.
The town itself projects a sense of slowgoing charm. But beyond the fishermen, beach footballers and beer-and-seafood shacks by the shore, Kyaukphyu is also a way station on a trade route that is geostrategically priceless to China. This littoral sliver of Rakhine state feels like the edge of something, looking out on to the open Indian Ocean.
Kyaukphyu links the Middle Kingdom to seaways towards south Asia, Africa, the Gulf and beyond. It cuts the long and sometimes perilous journey round the Strait of Malacca, which has long been a piracy hotspot. It also reduces China’s reliance on this crucial channel, to which the US Navy has access through its Southeast Asian regional allies.
Both the pipelines that start at Kyaukphyu run almost 800km through Myanmar territory to China’s Yunnan province. Each pipeline, about a metre wide, is hidden underground, the only sign of them a narrow cutting that ploughs through the surrounding vegetation. Signboards give passers-by a telephone number to call in case they notice problems.
The gas pipeline project started operations in 2013 and is the product of co-investment from the Myanmar government and five companies from China, Korea and India, including CNPC and Daewoo. South East Asia Gas Pipeline Company, as it is known, did not respond to questions from the Financial Times.
Chinese state media had reported that the company created more than 6,000 jobs and provided work for more than 200 companies in Myanmar. The joint venture also donated $10m to improve the electricity network in Kyaukphyu. The oil pipeline, owned by another consortium that also includes CNPC, started pumping in 2015.
Beyond Kyaukphyu and the trail of the pipelines, the road narrows and leads to a village. In the morning, young men huddle in a dark tea shop watching an undubbed Hollywood movie on a flatscreen television.
A little farther down, villagers are sitting on a long bench by houses that overlook a clearing. Many of them are angry about what they say was the poor deal they received from the developers of the nearby gas terminal. Ms Hla Ohn May describes being approached in 2009 or 2010 by an official from that consortium, which is majority-owned by Daewoo. Ms Hla Ohn May says she was not given a choice to say no to the purchase, but was promised wealth and work instead.
“They said I will get a lot of money,” said Ms Hla Ohn May, whose five sons are aged between 11 and 26. “They said I will get a job. No one from other places will get a job, they said.”
She says a government official from the local land department came and measured her plot at 1.4 acres. But her payment, when it arrived, appeared to be for only half that area. She says she was promised the balance the following year, but never received it. She has been protesting since.
School fees and other expenses soon sucked up what she had been paid, but no job with the company appeared. So instead she had to work for Kt3,000 to Kt4,000 a day (about $2.40 to $3.20) as a casual labourer for another farmer.
“I can only eat when I work now,” she says. “I have to wish that someone will ask me to come and work for them. When I had my own land, I didn’t have to feel that way.”
Other villagers tell the same story of being hustled into deals. The country was still under military rule, when activists were still mostly underground and protest of any kind could cause problems. Nue Phyu, 43, says she received a little more than Kt280,000 ($230) in compensation for 0.21 acres. She was not happy, but did not feel she could say no, nor ask for purchase documents. She says she was never given copies.
“It wasn’t transparent and we didn’t know the law, so we just did it out of fear,” she says.
Other locals who were given company jobs say these took a long time to arrive and were precarious when they did.
Win Naing, 42, is one of the lucky ones. Wearing a white Daewoo shirt, orange jumpsuit and yellow wellies, he is preparing to start a shift planting flowers at the terminal complex. But he says he is only six days into the job, which pays $3.60 a day, and has no idea how long the work will last. “I work as a casual labourer on my own land,” he says. “I am doing it just to survive.”
Life in the village has improved in some ways, partly because of investment brought directly or indirectly by the companies. The community now has a basic primary school and clinic. But the villagers note that the electricity is not free and say that the amenities do not make up for their lost livelihoods.
“Before the land was captured we could still survive at least,” says Ms Nue Phyu. “But since we became manual labourers, we struggle really hard. We are farmers; if we lose our land, there is nothing we can do.”
Land disputes have triggered public protests by farmers around Kyaukphyu, including a 150-strong demonstration in June, according to Myanmar media. The conflict has also prompted a report critical of the pipeline project by the Myanmar-China Pipeline Watch Committee, a coalition of activists. It published research in January that concluded “growing discontent against large-scale projects . . . could lead to social instability and affect the economy”.
CNPC’s website says the pipeline project team paid compensation for acquired land in a “fair, transparent and legal manner”, based on local land prices, villagers’ demands and a quotation from the government. The results were mutually accepted and subject to government review and approval.
Daewoo, which operates the Kyaukphyu gas terminal, told the FT in emails that most villagers were satisfied with their payouts and only two had officially contested their deals. Ms Hla Ohn May asked for a reassessment and the consortium remeasured her property in the presence of village leaders. The size was found to have been recorded properly, although Daewoo acknowledged that the government’s land records department had failed to give the villagers the agreement documents. The company said it later tried to give those papers to community members directly, but the villagers refused to take them.
Daewoo said it had offered 10 villagers affected by the land acquisition the chance to work as gardeners for a contractor on the terminal compound. The jobs would last up to nine months, the time the contractor was engaged. Only half of the villagers took the work, Daewoo said.
Land conflicts pepper the hills and fields of Shan state. Perhaps the most disturbing is that of Myint Aung, a farmer who burnt himself to death last year after his land was seized by the army. Relatives in his village point to the spot in front of his house where he set himself alight.
“They [the military] took the land … they just took what we worked so hard for,” said Myint Aung’s niece, Ma Maw, pictured.
That story and others cross the desk of Kaung San Oo, who works in an office in the hilltop Shan state capital of Taunggyi. A former army captain, he is the top civil servant in the state government and an adviser to the governor. He blames political opponents and the media for what he says are unfounded rumours that the present government is denying people compensation or forcing them to sign away their land to make way for projects such as a vast hotel zone next to Inle Lake.
Things are different since the junta stepped down, he insists. The law does not allow for land grabs any more. He says some people whose land is bought use the money well, such as to start businesses, while others just gamble it away.
“There are some people who lived in a palm leaf shelter before, now they live with a nice house,” he says. “It all depends on their knowledge and their education.”
Mr Kaung San Oo says that the government passes along complaints about alleged land seizures during the junta rule to the ministry of defence. But he also justifies the military’s role, saying that in some cases the army is taking back land to which it is legally entitled. He says Myint Aung was probably “cheated” by someone who sold him holdings owned by the military. Mr Kaung San Oo is sorry for Myint Aung’s family, but he has little else to offer beyond fatalism.
“I don’t think I can do anything,” he says. “These cases will always happen.”
Back in Kyaukphyu, the quest for land has left the villagers experiencing something like the capitalist ideal in reverse. From being property owners with independent means to sustain themselves, they are now landless peasants dependent on piecemeal work and their employers’ whims. Instead of providing a life-changing lift out of poverty, the sale of their holdings has left them with little sense that tomorrow will be better than today. That is a threat not only to the smallholders of Myanmar, but to anyone who wants to do business on their land.
The government has promised to return some land, but it is unclear if any has actually been given back. Of the 10,000 disputes listed as resolved by the parliamentary commission by November, under 10 per cent were to receive land or compensation.
Ms Hla Ohn May says the fields she gave up had been in the family for generations. While the industrial modernity of the Kyaukphyu gas terminal offers a sight of Myanmar’s possible international future, she feels she has been thrown back on to the road to serfdom. “I was depending on that land,” she says. “Because I’ve lost it, I won’t survive.”
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