At least 4 villages are being forced to pay high taxes to an armed Mon rebel group in Kalein Aung Sub-township, Yebyu Township, Tenasserim Division. According to local sources, low betel nut and rubber prices mean villagers are struggling to meet the rebel’s demands.
According to a local resident, Mon rebels led by Nai Chan Dein, locally known as the “Nai Chan Dein group,” demanded each village pay taxes of millions of kyat per village, depending on its size. All but one of the villages have already paid.
The second largest of the affected villages, home to 500 households, was required to pay 5 million kyat while a nearby village of just 130 households had to pay 4 million. IMNA could not confirm the amount paid the largest village.
Village headman have been dividing shares of the tax among villagers based upon their income, said the local source, collecting the money and secretly passing it to Nai Chan Dein.
Residents have struggled to pay, however, as the area is dependent on its abundant betel nut and rubber plantations. The value of both products, which can take a year of labor to earn just a few harvests, have dropped precipitously. According to a betel nut plantation owner in one of the affected villages, 1 viss of betel nut is now fetching just 800 kyat. At the same time last year, 1 viss sold for nearly 2,700 kyat. A viss is a unit of measurement used in Burma, equivalent to 1.6 kilograms.
“This year, rubber and betel nut prices are down. So we have a difficult time making money,” a headman from one of the villages told IMNA. “We demanded Chan Dein decrease the amount of money he is asking, but he did not agree.”
Another villager echoed the headman’s sentiments: “In this year the rubber price has decreased, also betel nut. We have to pay money to the Chan Dein group. We have a big problem, we don’t know how we are going to survive for this year.”
A third villager agreed, and lamented the impact the taxation is having on a wedding he hoped to have soon. “I planned to be married this year,” said the source. “But I am not so sure I can because I will have to spend 2 million kyat, and my family will have to pay this money to Chan Dein instead.”
IMNA sources said that the Nai Chan Dein group has collected taxes of this sort almost every year in recent memory. The normally profitably rubber and betel nut crops had kept the villages from feeling strained by the taxation, they said, and this is the first year his demands have caused serious economic hardship.
His presence has, however, created security problems for local residents as battalions of the Burmese army seek to eliminate the Nai Chan Dein group. According to a report issued by the Human Rights Foundation of Monland in November, area residents face a variety of human rights abuses related to this counter-offensive. Abuses include interrogation, assault and summary execution, as well as travel restrictions, punitive taxation and looting. Villagers have also been subject to considerable forced labor demands, and they have been conscripted as sentries, porters and human minesweepers.
