Residents Voice Concern Over Waekalee Military Base Expansion

January 14, 2014

Thanbyuzayat: In early January 2014, the Military Advanced Training School No.(4) in Waekalee, in Thanbyuzayat Township, Mon State announced its plan of extending the size of its base by 300 acres, in order to increase taxation of surrounding rubber plantations. The military plans to tax residents 108,750 kyat in 2014, and residents who cannot pay will be banned from their plantations. Local landowners voice their concern over land right violations.

the Military Advanced Training School No.(4), Waekalee, Thanbyuzayat Township, Mon State.

In the past ten years, the military training school has already extended its base in Waekalee by 400 acres. Including this most recent plan of expansion, the military will have extended its base by a total of 700 acres.

The Waekalee military training school had stopped collecting taxes from 2012-2013, but now, the military is attempting to extend the size of its base in order to increase the tax of local residents in early 2014.

Earlier this month, Litunent Coloneal Thouk Htun from the Waekalee military training school called for all landowners whose plantations are located around the military base to meet to discuss the extension plans. According to one resident who attended the meeting, out of the sixty land owners with plantations in the affected areas, only seventeen attended the meeting. Among landowners who did not attend are those whose land has already been confiscated by the military, as well as those whose land will be newly incorporated by the proposed 300 acre extension. Residents “who did not join the meeting will be informed at home [of what transpired at the meeting]”.

One local landowner in attendance details that the military “will take 25 pounds of rubber per acre, and will collect for six months of the year; the tax will be 150 pounds of rubber per acre for one year. [As] one pound of rubber is 725 kyat, residents will be taxed 108,750 kyat”. The deadline to pay the tax is March 15, 2014. The resident goes on to explain that the military will allow those who can afford to pay to work on the rubber plants, “but ban those who can’t”.

Landowners also describe how military officers were rude toward them when they voiced their concern for their land rights during the January meeting. As one resident explains, when the landowners “told [the military] that our rubber plants were the ones that got less liquid, they asked us to cut down those useless [ones] and to replant new ones. Our plantation has been grown by parents, grandfathers, and great grandfathers, so it is not related to them, but the military said all land belonged to the state [rather than private landowners]”.

The resident goes on to explain that “[in the past] Waekalee based military troop confiscated 400 acres of land for military training, and military buildings, and now want to extend another 300 acres, totaling a sum of 700 acres of land. Land three miles from the base has been specified for military training, but can’t be used for training anymore, as the rubber plants are growing. Some land included in the expansion is as far as five miles from the base”.

Although the military is attempting to extend its base, landowners in affected areas are still pursuing reclamation of their land from past military expansion.

Written by HURFOM · Filed Under News