Kokang army detains nine protesters against mining, land confiscation outside Lashio

The Kokang ethnic armed group Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) this week detained and abused residents of rural Lashio Township protesting the group’s use of land for mining projects, according to local sources. Villagers gathered on Sunday to demonstrate against and attempt to block the expansion of an MNDAA-managed gold mining site onto lands the villagers claimed as their own and planned to use for farming. In response, armed members of the MNDAA—also commonly called the Kokang army—arrested 35 male protesters and brought them to Hseni (Hsenwi), a town under the group’s control some 30 miles northeast of Lashio. Although 26 of the 35 detainees were released the following day, nine remain in MNDAA custody, according to locals. “They arrested the villagers, accusing them of filming the protest to post the footage online. They took them to Hseni,” said a man from Nawpang village. “When village elders went there to negotiate, they released some of the detainees, but nine are still being held.” Local sources said the remaining detainees, who were all over 30 years old, were beaten during questioning. “They are beating the people they’re still holding and asking who the protest’s ringleaders were,” another local man said. “They have also tightened security and the village entrance and exit. They are stopping villagers at the checkpoint, looking for two people they believe to be responsible.” The protesters are from Man Sei, a large village of around 300 people mostly inhabited by ethnically Shan people, on the Lashio-Mongyai road around 28 miles from Lashio. Nampawng village tract, Man Sei village tract, and other nearby villages in Lashio Township are gold-producing villages. Small-scale gold extraction plots began operating around these villages as early as the mid-1990s, according to locals. After the MNDAA captured Lashio Township in 2024, they solicited investment in local gold mining from Chinese businesses. Since the villages along Nampawng Creek rely primarily on agriculture, villagers are worried that their farmlands will be destroyed if gold mining businesses move in. Worried for the wellbeing of their detained neighbours, the Man Sei villagers said that they had informed the locally active, ethnically Shan armed group Shan State Army (SSPP/SSA) as well as Shan political organisations about the arrest. The civil society group Shan Students Union released a statement on Tuesday alleging that three of the nine detainees had life-threatening injuries after being beaten and demanding that the MNDAA release them without delay. A similar incident occurred last Saturday when a 63-year-old ethnically Shan man walking to his farm in Hsipaw Township’s Nawngkaw village was arrested and beaten during his interrogation by the Kokang army. He returned home after village officials negotiated his release, but reportedly died of his injuries the following day. A Shan resident of Hsipaw Township said the perpetrators were members of the MNDAA’s Brigade 511, and the MNDAA had paid two million kyat (US $505) in compensation for the man’s death. “We are afraid it will end like in the Hsipaw case. No one can help. And with the language barrier, it doesn’t work even if we go and try to explain,” said another resident, who is closely acquainted with the detainees. Most civilians in MNDAA-controlled areas speak Shan as their first language, while the predominantly Kokang members of the MNDAA speak a dialect of Mandarin. Another dispute arose on January 12 when the Kokang army cleared around 100 acres of land near the village of Man Li to make it available for leasing to Chinese businesses, despite claims from the inhabitants of nearby Pang Hpat village that the land was theirs. A protest by the Pang Hpat villagers on January 16 had little effect. “They cut down trees, saying it was to make way for planting tissue-culture bananas. Then they kept clearing the land using backhoes. When villagers went to speak to them, they wouldn’t listen,” said a villager from Man Li. The MNDAA was one of two allied ethnic armed groups active in northern Shan State who, with help from resistance allies, seized vast swathes of territory from junta forces in the region between 2023, during a massive, sweeping offensive against the Myanmar military called “Operation 1027.” When the government of China began to exert pressure for the MNDAA to negotiate peace with the Myanmar military, the Kokang armed group agreed to return the 12 captured urban wards of Lashio—northern Shan State’s largest city—to junta control. However, the MNDAA has since continued to govern the rest of Lashio Township as part of its administration of “Hseni District”, one of four areas designated as “districts” in northern Shan State that the group continues to control. China is implementing or preparing infrastructure projects as part of its transnational Belt and Road Initiative in northern Shan State, including roads and railways that will pass through Laukkai, Chin Shwe Haw, Hseni, and Lashio townships. As a result, Chinese businesses have invested in agriculture and construction in these townships as well as leasing locals’ homes and land, contributing to growing tensions between the Mandarin-speaking Kokang army and the mostly Shan-speaking local population. Myanmar Now sent queries to the MNDAA about the detention of villagers near Lashio but has not received a response.

Kokang army detains nine protesters against mining, land confiscation outside Lashio

The encroachment of mining and infrastructure projects onto land claimed by northern Shan State locals has caused tensions with the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the armed group controlling parts of the region

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