A member of the Karenni Land Plan Drawing Committee (KLPDC) said that 292 acres of land in Loikaw township in Karenni (Kayah) state, was seized by the Military Council for so-called security reasons after the coup in 2021.

The announcement that 284 acres of land around the headquarters of the Loikaw-based 54th Infantry Division was confiscated as military-owned land, was published in the Military Council newspapers this December.

The KLPDC member also said that some of the confiscated lands are plots, where local people are engaged in farming. He explained, “There are still no mechanisms working on the ground.

However they are starting to prepare and reform vacant land management committees in states and regions. So we can say that they are pushing for the mechanisms to start operating”, he said.

Similarly, the Military Council also repossessed 8 acres of land designated for veterans in Pang Ken village.

“In the wake of the coup they are doing whatever they want. If there were houses on the seized land, they would be demolished. We do not have the right to object. Even though they are confiscating the land, the landowners don’t dare to complain at all”, he said.

Between 1990 and 2011, the Myanmar Military seized 8,323 acres of land in Karenni state, and in the period between 2010 and 2019, the amount of military-confiscated land has increased by another 50000 acres, according to a list surveyed by the Karenni Farmers’ Union.

KLPDC is a network that is working towards the emergence of a federal land system in Karenni state, and jointly wrote and published the book “Karenni Land Policy”  with the local community in 2018.