Section: Causes and Background

Sub-section: Other states

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Kachin state: land confiscation leads to displacement (June 2005)

• Estimates suggest that there were around 67,000 internally displaced in the Kachin State prior to the signing of a ceasefire
• While conflict-related displacement has decreased, the impoverishment of many rural dwellers following three decades of strife have led to significant rural displacement
• Following the ceasefire, villagers have continued to be displaced by the Burmese Army, and as a consequence of natural resource-extraction
• However, local groups have been formed in many displaced communities, and have started to work with local and international NGOs to reconstruct Kachin society
  
  

BERG September 2000, "Kachin State":
"While the situation of internal displacement is not reported and hence the scale of the problem not well known in Kachin state, 30 years of internal conflict between the various Kachin independence movements and the Burmese army has resulted in large-scale displacement of the Kachin population. Figures from Kachin State suggest that perhaps 100,000 were forcibly relocated from their homes by counter-insurgency operations between the 1960s and 1990s, while other estimates suggest that in 1994 - prior to the signing of a cease-fire - there were around 67,000 internally displaced. More recent estimates suggest that although conflict-related displacement has decreased, the impoverishment of many rural dwellers following three decades of strife have led to significant rural displacement. As no peace dividend followed the cease-fire agreements, leaving the issue of resettling previously displaced groups obscure, many rural populations in Kachin State have become landless and forced to seek a livelihood in the extractive natural resources (mining) sectors or in the service sector in urban areas.

Indeed despite the negotiated cease-fire arrangements between the central govemment and the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) and the Kachin Democratic Army (KDA) there continue to be problems of displacement and land confiscation. As has been remarked by numerous civilians in Kachin State, cease-fires have allowed the different armies to retain their arms and territory, controlling and taxing the populace, while basically prioritising business for themselves through the extraction of natural resources. These complaints are not solely levied at the rebel groups, but more importantly at government, as the army has claimed much farmland, principally to grow food. Recently the government put up 27,000 acres of fallow land for paddy production and has opened a land-title registration office in Myitkyina to facilitate the transfer of such land to new owners."

Ratana Tosakul-Boonmathya, 28-8-2002:
"During the civil war, many rural inhabitants were forced to relocate. They were deprived of their home communities, farmlands and other property. The majority of them today are poor, illiterate, and plagued by fatigue and famine.
[…]
The cease-fire between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Burmese military on February 24, 1994, has brought a moment of peace and political stability to Kachin State and its people, particularly to the majority in the rural countryside.
[...]
During the civil war, villagers had moved from one place to another for their survival. They have been displaced and lost their occupations, education, health and self-esteem. After the cease-fire in 1994, many returned to resettle in relocation areas near and around Myitkyina, the capital city of Kachin State, but have no security in life. In relocation areas, members are from diverse ethnic and religious groups and from different home communities. The majority are Christians and very few are Buddhists and animists. Generally, people form their own factions of kinsmen and close friends whom they have met regularly at local religious services. Different ethnic and religious factions tend not to unite or trust each other easily. Villagers are generally very poor and live from hand to mouth. They have uncertain employment. They have hardly enough food or money to live on.
[…]
To avoid confrontation with the military, many of them fled from the relocation settlements and hid themselves in the San primary forest. After the cease-fire agreement in 1994, villagers were not allowed to return to their home villages. They had to rebuild their lives, families, communities and cultures from scratch. In relocated communities, there were no roads, no schools and no public health stations.
Villagers in the vicinity have relied on the San forest for their livelihood. They have hunted wild animals and collected forest products, such as mushroom, bamboo, vegetables, medicinal herbs, rattan and fuel woods for home consumption and use and for market. They cut down trees and converted about two to three hundred acres of the forest area into farmland for shifting cultivation yearly. Since villagers have no knowledge of alternative occupations and in any case lack capital to invest in any other occupational alternatives or permanent paddy fields, they find it difficult to give up their traditional methods of shifting cultivation. As a result, the San virgin forest protection project became a local initiative for halting shifting cultivation, which was originally believed to be the prime factor contributed to deforestation in the San forest area.
[…]
To help escape this vicious cycle of poverty and pattern of exploitation [local development workers] have initiated diverse small-scale community development projects such as micro credit unions (MCUs), rice banks, and buffalo banks in their respective areas.
[…]
The case of the micro-crediting system has initiated alternatives to borrowing from private moneylenders who charge exorbitant interest rates. The Kachin Rural Women Development Center has provided a new economic and cultural space for rural women from remote areas to rebuild their collective identities as being dignified women with capabilities to sustain their lives and families, communities, and culture. Lastly, the virgin forest protection project has demonstrated how villagers can sustain their economic livelihoods in a sustainable environment."

HRW, June 2005, Kachin State:
"The main cause of post-ceasefire displacement in Kachin State is land rights. Although counter-insurgency motivated forced relocations have stopped, communities continue to still lose their land, due to:
· Post-ceasefire militarization, and farmland confiscated by the Tatmadaw. Before the ceasefire, there were four battalions in Bhamo District, southern Kachin State; by 2004, there were eleven, each of which had reportedly confiscated three hundred-four hundred acres of land.
· Up to four thousand people have been displaced by large-scale jade mining around Hpakhant in western Kachin State. Increased post-ceasefire logging and gold mining activities have also brought environmental damage to several areas, as well as charges of corruption against officials of different ceasefire groups.
· Large-scale agriculture projects have also often involved unlawful land confiscation, as has development-induced displacement, such as road, bridge, and airport construction in the state capital of Myitkyina, all of which have been carried out without regard for international standards on forced eviction.
All of these factors have been causes of continued forced displacement since the ceasefire––people are still being displaced, although the reasons have changed. In many cases, the abuses outlined above––particularly land loss, plus the prevalence of forced labor––have undermined villagers’ livelihoods so severely that they have had little choice but to migrate either within Burma, or to a neighboring country. Indeed, food insecurity, loss of livelihood, and lack of access to basic services (such as education and health) are probably the most widespread and chronic causes of forced displacement in Burma."

GW, October 2003, p. 97:
"The ceasefires have led to a vast improvement in the human security of the average person in Kachin State. This includes a very significant decrease in the loss of life and significant decreases in the most serious human rights abuses such as forced portering, rape, and torture. In addition for the first time in three decades of war many families were able to plant crops again and come out of hiding in the jungle. There have also been small improvements in education and healthcare, freedom of movement and trade. A small number of Burmese and a handful of international NGOs have been allowed to operate in a limited way to implement health and development work. The KIO is said to have prioritised resettlement programmes for tens of thousands of displaced Kachin people but it is not certain how much resettlement has actually taken place.

However, forced labour as well as indiscriminate killing still takes place in Kachin State. There are also manifold problems with the way that the ceasefires have been implemented, that go a long way to undermining the immediate benefits derived from the cessation of fighting and may ultimately lead to the breakdown of the ceasefire agreements themselves. For instance, there are serious problems of natural resource depletion, health and land rights issues. Since the ceasefires the nature and scale of natural resource extraction has changed radically. Some of these changes may have been written into ceasefire agreements, whilst other changes have resulted from power struggles within and between ceasefire groups and the SPDC. There is also concern about the increasing number of SPDC troops based in Kachin State.
[…]
It has also been reported that the NDA(K) [ceasefire group] has a policy of moving villagers down from the mountains towards roads, so that they can be resettled in larger villages. Whether this is to facilitate logging, or if it is a crude method of social control is unclear. The NDA(K) has claimed that this is done to ‘protect’ the forest from shifting cultivation carried out by the villagers. A logger from Pian Ma told Global Witness investigators that the Chinese government is helping these displaced villagers with agriculture."

See the ‘The Kachin Post’ internet site for further information on the background to displacement issues in Kachin State
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