200 workers still at Myitsone dam site, Chinese expect suspension to be lifted

IRRAWADDY MYITSONE DAM SITE, 27 MILES NORTH OF KACHIN STATE'S CAPITAL MYITKYINA, NORTHERN BURMA.

IRRAWADDY MYITSONE DAM SITE, 27 MILES NORTH OF KACHIN STATE'S CAPITAL MYITKYINA, NORTHERN BURMA.

IRRAWADDY MYITSONE DAM SITE, 27 MILES NORTH OF KACHIN STATE'S CAPITAL MYITKYINA, NORTHERN BURMA.

A recent article published by the Chinese edition of Bloomberg BussinessWeek, substantiates the claims of environmental activists that a large number of workers from the firm behind the stalled Myitsone dam project remain at the construction site more than 6 months after the project was officially suspended by President Thein Sein.

According to the article by Yang Meng, of the original workforce of 2,000 that was sent to the Myitkyina area to build the dam, 200 workers from the Chinese state-owned firm leading the project China Power Investment (CPI) are still at the site. 700 million Yuan ($111m) worth of equipment also remains writes Yang, who visited the Myitsone project site in April.

The environmental group the Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG), has issued a series of press releases over the past few months highlighting the contradiction between the official suspension of the dam and the fact CPI still has a large work crew at the site, which is located at the confluence of the Mali Hka and N’Mai Hka rivers, a place sacred to many Kachin.

On Thursday, the Hong Kong based South China Morning Post quoted a prominent Chinese backer of the dam, Zhang Boting, predicting that Burma's central government will officially reverse the Myitsone moratorium.

Burma “is expected to lift the suspension of the dam project, and the state government of Kachin should give its support,” said Zhang, Deputy Secretary General of the China Society for Hydropower Engineering.

Although President Thein Sein announced on September 30 that construction of the Myitsone dam would be suspended during his term in office, none of the more than 2,000 residents of the five villages that were forcibly relocated to make way for the dam have received permission to return.

Earlier this month a large group of Burma army soldiers were sent to Tang Hpre (also Tanghpre), one of the villages near the dam site, to enforce an eviction order against residents who tried to reclaim their homes following the official suspension of the project.

The planned 152-meter high Myitsone dam was to be the first in a series of seven dams that CPI will build on the upper Irrawaddy which according to the dam’s opponents would flood an area larger than Singapore and dramatically affect the lives of millions of people who live downstream, including in the Irrawaddy delta, home to two thirds of Burma’s rice production.

To build the series of dams which according to Chinese state media will produce a combined output of electricity that rivals the Three Gorges dam the world's largest, CPI partnered with Burma's state power utility Myanma Electric Power Enterprise (MEPE) and Asia World, a Burmese conglomerate.

As Yang's BussinesWeek article notes 90% of the power generated by the project is slated to go to China with the remaining 10% staying in Burma. According to Businesses Week CPI's dam buildings in Kachin state represent's China's biggest overseas hydroelectric power project.

Asia World's involvement in the project is something that CPI has tried to downplay. The notorious firm is owned by Sino Burmese businessman Steven Law (aka Tun Myint Naing), and his father the firm's chairman Lo Hsing Han (or Law Sit Han). Both men are the subject of Western sanctions due to what the U.S. government says is their long history of involvement in drug trafficking and money laundering.

CPI says view of environmentalists don't matter
Li Guanghua CPI's general manager for China's Yunnan region and neighboring Burma told BussinessWeek that the concerns of environmentalists and others opposed to the Mytisone dam are not important to CPI. "The people who talk about environmental protection, they are not worried about their food and clothes, not the people who really need to get a better life. We needn't talk with them, furthermore, it is unnecessary to talk with them", he said.

Despite Li's claims however, KDNG says that the vast majority of the 2,000 villagers displaced in 2009 and 2010 to make way for the dam are now living in poverty at the relocation centers where they were forced to move. KDNG says that the former farmers now have no way to make a living at their new surroundings.

KIO denies asking CPI for profits from the dam
In an article published on the Irrawaddy website on Friday a leading member of the Kachin Independence Organization's (KIO) armed wing Gun Maw, refuted the claims of CPI's Li that the KIO had previously asked for a cut of the profit from the dam project.

Li was quoted in the BussinessWeek story as saying during preliminary stages of the project the KIO had written a letter to CPI requesting to “hold talks to discuss the distribution of interests”.

“After consideration, the letter was thrown into the dustbin,” Li told BussinessWeek.

Gun Maw however told the Irrawaddy that his group never sent CPI any kind of letter asking for profit sharing.

In March of last year the KIO sent China's government a lengthy and detailed letter requesting that the Myitsone project be stopped. The letter signed by the KIO's chairman Lanyaw Zawng Hra left open the possibility of building other dams along the upper Irrawaddy but warned that the Myitsone project was a major concern for the KIO.

The letter which eventually became public also stated that the KIO had already “informed the military government that KIO would not be responsible for the civil war if the war broke out because of this hydropower plant project and the dam construction”.  A prediction that given the 10 months of fighting between the KIO and the Burmese government appears to have become a reality.

CPI wants to save environment at Myitsone, according to dam supporter
The article in the South China Morning Post quoted the chief scientist for China's Nature Conservancy Dr. Long Yongcheng praising CPI's concern for the environment that surrounds the Myitsone area, an opinion that stands in sharp contrast to the views of many environmentalists from Burma.

In an effort to control logging in the area and stop landslides which could damage the dam, CPI "considered buying all the logging firms [in the area] as an option and we discussed it", Dr. Long said. CPI was also concerned that logging in the area would lead to a build up of silt in the rivers which could seriously affect the dam's operations, according to Dr. Long.

China's central government's recently acknowledged that a massive build up of silt at the Three Gorges dam has seriously affected its output and posed major structural problems.

With this in mind, “CPI may establish a fund - capitalised with 5 to 15 per cent of the project's total investment value - to convert the logging firms to other businesses and create jobs for locals” according to the China Morning Post article.

Dr. Long who acknowledged in his interview that the dam would indeed flood an area larger than Singapore claimed that "construction of the dam may be our only hope of saving rare animals from extinction and the forest from total destruction”.  According to Long "Effective conservation comes with economic development."