Thousands of Waingmaw Residents Call For Complete Halt to Myitsone Dam

Thousands of Waingmaw Residents Call For Complete Halt to Myitsone Dam

More than 9,000 villagers from 40 communities voiced opposition to the hydropower project.

More than 9,000 residents of Kachin State’s Waingmaw Township protested the Myitsone hydropower dam project on Monday, calling for an end to all other dams along Burma’s Irrawaddy River.

Civil society organizations in Waingmaw led the protest, with locals from 40 villages participating, according to Bawm Sau, who helped organize the event. Demonstrators held signs declaring that their goal was the “complete halt of all dam projects along the Irrawaddy River.”

According to another campaign organizer Tang Gun, the protest was held to affirm the community’s rejection of a January statement by the Chinese embassy in Burma declaring that locals in Kachin State were not opposed to the China-backed Myitsone project.

If the dam were to go ahead, Tang Gun said, “the whole nation would suffer” and compared the project to the “execution” of the Irrawaddy River.

“If the government continues to implement the Myitsone dam project despite opposition from local residents and the whole country, the government would be acting like a dictatorship,” he told KNG.

The Myitsone dam is proposed to be built on the confluence of the Mali and N’mai rivers in Kachin State, which are also the source of the Irrawaddy River. Tang Gun described the Irrawaddy as a part of the heritage of all the people of Burma, and said it belongs to the whole country.

The project, which would export electricity to China’s Yunnan Province, was suspended by Burma’s former President Thein Sein in 2011. Under recent pressure to re-start the dam construction, the Myitsone’s future is uncertain.

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