One hundred farmers from a village in eastern Myanmar’s Shan state appeared in court on Monday after the national army filed a lawsuit against them for planting on confiscated land, RFA reported on 26 July.
The army’s Eastern Command confiscated 2,000 acres of land in Ye Pu (Hot Water) village in Taunggyi Township in 2004, RFA quoted a villager as saying.From 2010 to 2015, the command allowed local farmers to plant on the land if they paid an annual fee of 10,000 kyats (U.S. $8.40) per acre, the villagers told RFA’s Myanmar Service.
In May, army officials asked the farmers to sign documents saying that the land belonged to the military, one villager said.About 100 farmers from Ye Pu village refused to sign the documents and continued planting on the land, prompting the army to file the lawsuit charging them with trespassing, according to the report.