Kachin News Group

Yuzana Company, which has the backing of the Burmese military junta, has threatened to demolish a Kachin village in Hukawng Valley following a dispute between the company's workers and local youth in western Kachin State, said village sources.

There was a quarrel between Yuzana Company workers and native Kachin youth in Sahtu Zup village on Stilwell Road also called the Ledo Road between Namti and Danai on November 18, said Sahtu Zup villagers.

The dispute went on for several hours and the company's workers entered Sahtu Zup village and threatened to demolish the entire village with 7 farm tractors, according to villagers.

The root cause of the problem between native Kachin youth and alien Burman workers in the valley is yet to be ascertained but people in the valley do not like the company grabbing their land, said residents of the valley.

With political and military support of the junta, the country's former capital Rangoon-based Yuzana Company headed by Chinese-Burmese U Htay Myint bought over 200,000 acres of land in the Valley in 2006.

The land occupied by the company, includes local people's paddy fields, crop plantation and farms along with forests from where traditional wood and bamboo is collected, said locals.

Since late 2006, the company cleared forests in these areas to cultivate crops, cassava plants and sugarcane, said residents.

The company transports tens of thousands of Burman workers from lower or southern Burma to the Valley for cultivation with the support of the ruling junta, according to local residents.

Now two Thai-style factories are under construction in the company's occupied land by Thai technicians, added local residents.

Since the Yuzana Company arrived in the Valley in 2006, social and land related problems have been erupting between local Christian Kachins and Buddhist Burman settlers, said natives of Hukawng Valley. Domestic animals of locals are always secretly slaughtered by the company's workers, added local people.

In Kachin history, the Hukawng or Hugawng Valley was ruled by 12 Kachin Duwas, the ancient rulers of Kachin regions before Burma received independence from the British in 1948.

The Hukawng Valley was declared as the world's largest tiger sanctuary by US-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in 2004.