Residents of Nyaung Bat Village in Hopong Township say they are facing a final indignity in an ongoing land confiscation campaign: being forced by the Myanmar military junta and the Pa-O National Organization (PNO) militia to pay 500,000 kyats per household to demolish their former homes.

The demand follows a systematic campaign of displacement that began in the second week of February, when more than 200 homes were seized. Residents say they were labeled as “squatters” by land brokers allegedly working with the PNO, stripped of their property rights, and ordered to relocate to the Phaya Phyu area of Hopong Township by the end of May.

For many families, the situation has become increasingly desperate.

“They already forced us to pay 5 million kyats for the new plots where we are now living in temporary shelters,” one resident told SHAN. “We are rebuilding our lives from nothing, with little food and no proper housing. Demanding another 500,000 kyats to demolish the homes they took from us is completely heartless.”

Residents say the PNO and the military have used both administrative pressure and force to suppress opposition to the land seizures.

On March 30, military-backed police officers and PNO soldiers reportedly entered Nyaung Bat Village with bulldozers, escalating tensions and intimidating residents who opposed the confiscations.

The same day, authorities arrested six villagers, including the village head, under local land management laws after they attempted to protest the seizures.

“Because they have weapons, they can do whatever they want,” said a local woman in her 50s. “They imprisoned the people who stood up for us. We have no farmland left, and we haven’t even finished building our new homes. That land was our livelihood and our security.”

The dispute is rooted in a decades-long history of land confiscation in southern Shan State.

In 1992, the Myanmar military seized nearly 20,000 acres of land along the Hopong–Loilem highway. In 2015, the military transferred the land to the PNO, reportedly with the intention of redistributing it to local residents.

However, villagers allege that the land was instead parceled out and sold by land brokers working with the PNO. As a result, residents who have lived on or cultivated the land for years now face eviction and are being treated as illegal occupants on territory they consider their ancestral or long-held land.

Affected villagers are urging people in the region to exercise caution when purchasing land, particularly plots linked to armed groups or lacking clear and verifiable ownership records.

They also continue to call for the restoration of their land rights and an end to forced displacement.