Whose Land is it Anyway?

Jul 7, 2016 | Caitlin Pierce
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The farmers of Kyon Dayel Village were ecstatic to read in the newspaper that Ayer Shwe Wah was releasing 40,000 acres of land that the company had acquired under the military government’s 1990s Lowland Development Project.

The farmers remember distinctly the day in 1999 when big machines arrived in their fields and company representatives told them the land now belonged to the project.

But, after 15 years of waiting, the farmers were dismayed to learn that the land would not be returned to them; instead, the tenant farmers who had leased the land from Ayer Shwe Wah since 1999 had applied to register this released land themselves.