Burmese Rohingya farmers arrested and their farms seized

Aug 17, 2005 (DVB) - 10 Rohingya farmers from Buthidaung Township, Arakan State in western Burma, were arrested on 24 July by local Burmese authorities who accused them of being dacoits.

The farmers who were used as ‘whipping boys’ were then told to pay 2 million kyat each for their freedom or they would face a 12 year prison term each if they failed to do so, according to Kaladan News.

Meanwhile, an acute shortage of rice within Arakan State is causing untold miseries to local people because of restrictions on the sale of rice within the region which cause inflation and slowdown in sale. Rice has been smuggled into the state from Bangladesh by bootleggers who make big profits.

Similarly, local authorities at Ma-U Pin District in the delta region of Irrawaddy Division, confiscated more than 70 acres of paddy fields from farmers with the excuse that natural gas was found on them. The landless farmers received no compensation from the authorities and some of them had moved to Rangoon to be day labourers.

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