Yuzana company destroys farm road in Hugawng valley

Yuzana company farm in Kachin state's Hugawng Valley

Staff from the Yuzana company, one of Burma's largest conglomerates, destroyed a road constructed by local farmers in Wa Ra Zup village in Kachin State's Hugawng (also Hukaung) valley last Friday.

Eye witnesses told the Kachin News Group that the Yuzana employees intentionally damaged the road which served as short cut connecting their hill top farms, on 14th November in broad daylight as angry farmers looked on.

Local residents believe that the firm opted to rip up the road because it was used to circumvent Yuzana controlled roads and a Yuzana run checkpoint where local farmers have to pay 3,000 Kyats to cross. The road which is 3 miles away from their village was also quicker and more direct than using the Yuzana road on the other side of the village which followed the old Stillwell road and has many twists and turns.

“We opened the road which was blocked by them (Yuzana) and now they are worrying about not being able to collect money from us anymore so they destroyed it,” Hugawng farmer Lagau Gun told the Kachin News Group.

Yuzana staff who were ripping up the road told villagers that they were acting on orders issued by their superior, Mya Kyaw, who is in charge of the lucrative local Yuzana checkpoint. The villagers told the KNG that they are angry with what Yuzana did and that they plan to protest.

The Yuzana company led by USDP MP Htay Myint, a close ally of retired General Than Shwe, is no stranger to controversy in the Hugawng Valley where, beginning in 2006, the firm with the support of Maj. Gen. Ohn Myint, then northern military commander, expropriated thousands of acres from small scale farmers to make way for large scale sugar cane and tapioca plantations. Htay Myint and Ohn Myint were both elected to Burma's parliament in 2010.

More than 200,000 acres of land has been seized by Yuzana in the Hukawng Valley over the last 7 years according to a report issued by Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG).

Farmers who lost their land did not receive proper compensation after Yuzana stole their land, according to Bawk Ja, a land rights activist and politician who currently serves as the National Democratic Force’s Kachin State Chief. Bawk Ja has helped the farmers try and sue Yuzana to get their land back.

In 2001, General Than Shwe’s military regime in collaboration with the US NGO Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) officially created a large tiger reserve in the Hugawng Valley. In 2004 the Burmese regime, with the very public endorsement of WCS extended the tiger reserve’s total area to include the entire valley of 21,890 sq-km, creating what has been claimed is the largest tiger reserve in the world.

Environmentalists and critics of the Burmese the regime have called the tiger reserve a complete sham, they point out that since 2004 the central government has actively encouraged large scale gold mining and monoculture plantation farming to take place in much of the valley.