Thein Win, 60, a farmer from Kyaunggon Township in the Ayeyarwady Region, said he had 12 acres of land seized from him by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) military government in 1992. They used the lands they took from him and other villagers for fishponds. When he complained about the land confiscation, authorities threatened to arrest him. Eventually, the government required him to “volunteer” to dig his own land up to create the fishponds. He said he never received any compensation for the land taken from him: “We got nothing. We literally got nothing for our land.”
© 2017 Patrick Brown for Human Rights Watch