Myanmar authorities tell residents to relocate away from Magway’s air force base*

Myanmar authorities in Magway have informed residents that they must relocate their homes from the vicinity of the air force base by May 20 under the pretext of land encroachment, locals said Friday.
Residents said municipal officials first notified about 100 families in the city’s Aung Zayar ward adjacent to the base on March 25 to relocate, and then convened a meeting at the township hall five days later and told them to move by May 20. 
Most of the affected residents are tricycle rickshaw drivers, carpenters and masons who have been living there for the past 15 years in small two-story houses and huts, with the exception of about 10 large houses, residents said. Retired military sergeants and about 15 other veterans also live there, as well as parents whose children are stationed at the base. 
“Because of the order, they now are facing housing problems,” said the friend of a resident who must relocate. “They have built their houses there, but now they have to tear them down and move.”  
The notice said the houses encroached on roads, causing traffic jams, were prone to fires, and that the area’s layout was not in line with the city’s characteristics. Municipal authorities said they would take legal action against any residents who defied the order. 
The junta has cited land encroachment to clear out neighborhoods in other areas of the country, including Yangon’s Mingaladon township, where more than 4,000 buildings on over 500 acres of land were removed. It also removed houses in three townships in Mandalay for the same reason.
Some residents say the junta is forcing them to move to persecute ordinary citizens, who have largely opposed military rule following the February 2021 coup, in which the national army seized power from the elected government and unleashed a torrent of violence on peaceful protesters. 
“In such a difficult time like now when people are facing various hardship and livelihood problems following the military coup, forcing people to move their hard-earned homes has placed more of a burden on existing despair in their lives,” he said. 
“They will have to look for new land and build new homes that will cost a lot of money,” he said. “That’s why I think that it is another act of the military junta to further torture people.”
Door-to-door inspections 
Other residents believe Myanmar’s ruling military junta is behind the move, fearing that the Magway base may be targeted next by anti-regime People’s Defense Forces after opposition fighters launched rocket propelled grenades against Mingaladon Air Base in the commercial city of Yangon on April 6.
“As far as I know, the junta forced them to be removed as they feared that resistance forces would launch rocket attacks at the air force base from the neighborhood, which has occurred repeatedly as of late,” said a local who declined to be named out of fear for his safety.
People’s Defense Forces have fired missiles at the Magway Air Force Base more than twice in 2021, in one case hitting a weapons storage facility, he said.

Radio Free Asia could not reach the junta’s spokesman in Magway region for comment, though he previously said the military council was handling the encroachment issues that previous governments avoided because it was trying to ensure law and order. 
The military tightened security on Yangon’s Mingaladon township on Friday following the rocket attack on the base during which some junta members were injured and an aviation fuel tank and the aviation headquarters building were hit and damaged, local sources said. RFA has not been able to confirm this.
Soldiers are blocking and checking the entrance and exit roads to the bases, nearby Mingaladon Airport and in front of the main market, said a resident who declined to be identified out of fear for his safety. 
Other Mingaladon township residents said troops and ward administrators have been conducting door-to-door inspections in some neighborhoods.
Translated by Myo Min Aung for RFA Burmese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.

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