Despite Myitsone dam suspension displaced villagers barred from returning

Photo of house at the Aung Myin Thar "model camp" built by CPI.  Photo: MRJ

A report released last month by the Kachin human rights group Mungchying Rawt Jat (MRJ) reveals that more than 26,000 people relocated between 2010 and 2012 to make way for the Myitsone dam project have been prevented from leaving the Aung Myin Thar and Maliyang relocation camps to return to their villages. This despite a September 2011 Presidential decree officially suspending the widely unpopular dam.

Located where the Mali Hka and N’Mai Hka rivers merge to form Burma's mighty Irrawaddy, the 152 meter high Myitsone dam was set to be the first in a series of seven dams on the Upper Irrawaddy.  China's state owned China Power Investment (CPI) corporation has pushed hard to restart the dam which if built will export nearly all of the electricity it generates across the border into Yunnan. 

Aung Myin Thar, the larger of the two camps warehousing those displaced by the Myitsone dam project has 317 households, consisting of more than 2,075 people who come primary from three villages Mazup, Tang Hpre and Padang (Lahpe). The Mali Yang camp has a little over 500 people consisting of 120 households from Dawng Pan, Awng Ja Yang and Ding Ga Zup (Mali Yang) villages. Both camps are described by the displaced villagers as being far from clean drinking water sources and consisting of poorly built homes that are literally falling apart.

Nearly all of the structures in the villages which were evacuated to make way for the Myitsone project have been completely destroyed, according to Kachin activists who under took illegal clandestine trips to the area.  Large tracts of valuable farm land located along the river's edge have been uprooted to make way for cyanide intensive gold mining which is directed by local officials and their business allies.

MRJ's report quotes nearly a dozen farmers recounting similar tales of sorrow and despair. According to the farmers prior to their forced relocation they could raise enough crops on their land to support their families. Something they find nearly impossible to do at their respective relocation sites.

All of the farmers interviewed for the report describe growing conditions at the “model villages” as extremely poor.  “We cannot plant any vegetables here because the land is too stony. It is not good
soil like in our old village,” says a destitute farmer now living at Mali Yang camp who previously earned about 1 million Kyat a year from his now abandoned farm at Dawng Pan village.

Meager handouts from CPI and its local partner on the Myitsone dam Asia World are not enough to survive says the farmer.  The loss of land and no steady income has compelled him and many of his neighbors to instead take work sifting through a toxic slurry of cyanide laced gold sludge.

Asia World, one of biggest tycoon controlled firms in Burma is owned by Steven Law and his notorious father Lo Hsing Han or Law Sit Han, a man accused by the US state department of being a major narco money launderer.     

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