Myanmar’s pursuit of foreign-backed industrial development has repeatedly collided with a deeper problem: the state’s failure to protect land rights.

The issue is particularly sensitive in Rakhine State, where the military’s 2017 campaign drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingya from their homes and left behind thousands of acres of abandoned and confiscated land. At the same time, Chinese-backed infrastructure projects have expanded in the same state, raising questions over who controls the land and who benefits from its development.

The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) reported in September 2025 that Myanmar authorities destroyed and seized Rohingya homes, farms, mosques and other property during the 2017 clearance operations. It found that more than 411 acres had been burned and flattened by 2018 and that security bases and other infrastructure were later built on some of the seized land. The report also identified Asia World Company and other corporations as having taken part in construction on confiscated Rohingya land.

The findings expose a central failure of Myanmar’s authorities. Land was not simply abandoned after the Rohingya fled. In many areas, it was repurposed in ways that made the refugees’ return more difficult. The IIMM said the redevelopment, militarisation and repopulation of former Rohingya areas appeared consistent with a policy aimed at erasing their presence and severing their ties to the land. 

China’s role raises a separate but closely connected concern.

The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor includes the Kyaukphyu deep-sea port and Special Economic Zone in Rakhine State. The project is strategically important for Beijing because it provides access to the Indian Ocean and links China’s Yunnan province with Myanmar’s western coast.

But the land acquisition process surrounding Kyaukphyu has long faced criticism.

The International Commission of Jurists said around 20,000 residents of Kyaukphyu Township were at risk of losing land and livelihoods because of the SEZ. More than 1,800 acres were targeted for acquisition across nine village tracts. The ICJ found that Myanmar authorities had failed to comply with key requirements of the country’s land acquisition law and had not adequately addressed resettlement and human rights concerns. 

The problem is not simply Chinese investment. It is the way Myanmar’s state institutions handle land when major economic interests are involved.

The ICJ found that authorities had moved ahead with land acquisition preparations while local residents had limited information about the project. In some cases, farmers struggled to establish formal land rights, leaving them vulnerable to losing land without adequate protection. 

That weakness has allowed a pattern to emerge: the state treats land as an asset for strategic development while communities are left to negotiate from a position of weakness.

Japan’s experience offers another important example, although it should not be confused with the Rohingya land issue in northern Rakhine.

Japan has been a major partner in Myanmar’s Thilawa Special Economic Zone near Yangon. Through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Japanese private-sector participation, Thilawa became one of Myanmar’s flagship industrial projects. JICA itself acknowledges that land relocation, resettlement and income restoration were major issues surrounding the project. 

Rights groups, however, raised serious concerns about the process. EarthRights International said land confiscation and resettlement connected to Thilawa violated Myanmar law and fell short of JICA’s own standards. JICA documents also record disputes over compensation, replacement farmland and the loss of farming livelihoods. 

The contrast is important. Thilawa was not built on Rohingya land and is not a Rakhine project. But it demonstrates that land disputes have been a structural problem in Myanmar’s industrial development model, including projects backed by Japan.

The Kyaukphyu case is more directly connected to Rakhine’s political and ethnic crisis. The Thilawa case shows that the problem cannot simply be blamed on one foreign investor.

The larger responsibility lies with Myanmar’s state institutions.

Myanmar’s land system has historically given the state extensive power over land while providing weak protection for customary and informal landholders. JICA’s own preparatory study for Thilawa noted that Myanmar lacked a comprehensive policy for involuntary resettlement and that its land laws were outdated and inadequate for modern resettlement problems. 

That institutional weakness becomes far more dangerous in conflict zones.

In Rakhine, the destruction of Rohingya villages and the seizure of their property occurred alongside military operations. In Kyaukphyu, industrial development has involved contested land acquisition. In Thilawa, residents and farmers faced relocation and disputes over compensation.

These cases point to the same fundamental question: development for whom, and on whose land?

China may have strategic interests in Kyaukphyu. Japan has invested heavily in Myanmar’s industrial development through Thilawa. But foreign investment does not remove Myanmar’s responsibility to protect land rights.

Nor can economic development become a justification for permanently changing the ownership and demographic character of areas from which displaced communities were driven out.

For the Rohingya, the land question is therefore not only about compensation. It is about the right to return to their homes, recover their property and rebuild their lives with security and legal recognition.

Any future investment in Rakhine should be judged against that standard. Otherwise, infrastructure and industrial development risk becoming another mechanism through which displacement is made permanent.

Myanmar cannot credibly speak of development while refusing to confront the land dispossession that accompanied the country’s worst human rights crisis.

BOB Post