A farmer in Myanmar’s Shan State has died a day after self-immolating on Thursday to protest the seizure of his land.
Myint Aung, a 63-year-old from Yepu village, was despondent and furious after hearing that he and other farmers in the Taunggyi district area would no longer be able to work on land that was taken by the military to develop housing plots, the Democratic Voice of Burma reported.
The military seized property in Taunggyi district years ago, the report said, but it allowed villagers to stay on as tenant farmers. That apparently changed on May 20, when locals were informed of the new arrangement and told they would have to clear off, DVB reported.
Not long afterwards, Myint Aung went home, wrote notes condeming those allegedly responsible for the land grab, then poured gasoline on his body and set himself alight.
“U Myint Aung was running around in the street covered in flames,” the National League for Democracy’s Taunggyi district chairman Tin Maung Toe told DVB, adding that Myint Aung’s nieces didn’t even realize that the man on fire was their uncle.
Burns over the majority of his body left it virtually impossible for doctors to save him.
Part of his note, which was apparently scrawled on a wooden board in red lettering, says: “Give back our land that the army took.”
Photo: Ko Nay Myo Tgi/Facebook
