As soldiers and police looked on, bulldozers destroyed more than 100 houses on two streets in Myanmar’s second-largest city, leaving residents – many of whom had been living there for decades – homeless overnight, sources in the country told Radio Free Asia.
The junta demolished the homes on Monday on Mandalay’s Ma Kha Yar street and on 49th street the following day, claiming that the structures had “encroached on land owned by the state.”
According to rights organisations, the junta has forcibly evicted people living in informal settlements as part of a bid to increase its land holdings.
The United Nations estimated in December that the junta had evicted more than 50,000 people since the February 2021 coup, and burned or destroyed 38,000 homes, leading to the displacement of over 1.1 million people.