La Laung Daung Nan vividly remembers …[a]lone in front of the two-acre plot of land her family had been allocated in a United Nations-led project, she waited for fellow villagers to turn up. They had been sent by officials and were coming to take down the barbed wire that protected her rubber saplings from the trampling of cows and buffalos. …Daung Nan, her husband and 16 others…are in a legal tussle with village authorities over land they consider theirs, but which officials say is part of 1,600 acres designated as grazing ground. The villagers say they were not consulted about plans to turn their land into grazing grounds and believe it was a ploy by officials who planned to profit from renting out 300 acres to a Chinese company for a banana plantation.

Campaign group “Land In Our Hands” said in a 2015 report Kachin…has the second largest number of land confiscations after Shan state. “Land confiscations in Kachin have been so rampant there is little vacant land left,”…“Villagers are too scared to speak up….”Fighting between ethnic insurgents and the army, which flared up again in 2011 …has weakened communities’ rights and driven more than 100,000 civilians from their homes. Many worry whether they will still be able to access their farmland when peace returns and accuse the army of seizing swathes of land.

… Changes in land ownership and use are among key issues in Myanmar’s political and economic transition, with deep resentment and protests over acquisitions for infrastructure, development or large-scale agricultural projects.