Desperate 'ploughing protesters' to get legal assistance
Farmer activists and lawyers in Yangon are offering to help farmers who are facing the trial or who have been imprisoned for joining a "ploughing protest" in Ayeyawady Region's Kyaiklatt Township in July, farmers said.
Eighteen farmers from three villages in the township were charged with trespassing and damaging land under the Farmland Law for staging the protests in which farmers attempt to till land they say had been stolen from them. Six of the 18 are already behind bars, and they have been fined as well.
They participated in a ploughing protest in July and the township court sentenced six farmers to jail and fined them in November, farmers in the area told Eleven Media.
A farmer facing trial said the dispute dates back to 2001. He said authorities from the Ward Peace and Development Council confiscated their land and gave it to other farmers.
Since then, they have had to work as day labourers for other farmers, he added, saying that for the past 13 years they have been struggling to survive. “We can’t even feed and clothe our families. Some of us no longer have homes,” he explained
Desperation drove them to stage the ploughing protest, in an effort to regain land they once farmed, he said.
Farmer activists say they will offer the 18 legal assistance and bring the case to the attention of the President Thein Sein and Parliament. “We will link them with the lawyers in Yangon because they have no legal assistance,” one farmer activist said. The sentences of the farmers already jailed will be appealed, he added.
“We will send a complaint letter to the president and Parliament asking for clarification about the charges against them,” the activist said.
