Representatives of thousands of people forced from their homes by an industrial park in Mandalay have called on foreign firms to withhold further investment in the project until a more equitable deal is reached with the area’s displaced farmers.

More than 1,000 households from 14 villages had their land confiscated after the Mandalay Region government approved the Myotha Industrial Park project in 2013, said a report by the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights.

FIDH and local residents allege the 4,000-hectare development in Ngazun Township, about 60 kilometres west of Mandalay, has been dogged by judicial intimidation, corruption in land title surveys, and a lack of due diligence on behalf of the project developer, Myotha Mandalay Industrial Development…

An MMID spokesperson told Frontier the developer was doing its best to cooperate with villagers in the project area, and that “very few people” believed they had not received enough compensation for their land...