Junta administrators destroyed 200 homes in a neighborhood in Myanmar’s Yangon Division on charges of trespassing, residents told Radio Free Asia, the latest in a series of evictions to clear squatter communities in urban centers.
The homes in Mingaladon township’s Pale neighborhood were bulldozed on Thursday by municipal officers and troops, they said.
Officials sent residents letters in late April telling them they had to leave by an early May deadline.
Myanmar’s military has cleared tens of thousands of homes across the country, accusing people of squatting. The neighborhoods are usually in the suburbs of Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, crammed with makeshift dwellings made from tarpaulin, scraps of wood and corrugated iron.
A resident who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons told RFA that only 18 households left willingly. The rest were destroyed.
“They brought a bulldozer to completely flatten them,” he said.
In the eviction notice, signed by the junta chairman of Mingaladon township’s Planning and Administration Board, residents were told “all squatter buildings” in the area had to be dismantled and removed by May 10.
People who have lost their homes have had to find rented accommodation, neighbors said.
RFA telephoned Yangon region’s junta spokesperson, Htay Aung, for information about the incident but he did not answer the phone.
On April 26, junta forces and municipal officials ordered district authorities to remove 600 houses in Yangon’s Mayangone township, residents said.
According to data compiled by RFA, nearly 20,000 houses in Mayangon, Dagon Myothit (Seikkan), Dagon Myothit, Dawbon and Mingaladon townships, have been removed in the more than three years since the military seized power from a democratically elected government in a February 2021 coup.
In addition to Yangon, the second city of Mandalay and some other centers have seen forced evictions.
On Dec. 2, 2022, the United Nations called the removal of residential homes by force without providing replacements for those evicted a war crime.
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.
