With China-backed Myitsone project, Aung San Suu Kyi is damned if she does ...
- If Myanmar’s leader goes ahead with the long-stalled, multibillion-dollar dam she will face the wrath of displaced communities at the ballot box
- Back out, and she risks driving away the Chinese investment on which her country has become increasingly reliant
For Lu Ra, 55, growing up in Tanghre village, on the eastern banks of the Irrawaddy River in Kachin State, meant a life relying on Myanmar’s biggest waterway for most of her daily activities.
“I had lived my whole life there, and that village was very special to us,” she said. “My father made his living from fishing at the river, and we grew many crops and sold them in the local market.”
But in 2011, Lu Ra was told she would need to leave her village and move 8km south to Aung Myithar, to make way for the Myitsone Dam, a multibillion-dollar China-backed project that was being planned on the river. “Nobody here wants that dam,” said Lu Ra, speaking at her neighbour’s home in Aung Myithar. “Where it is located is a very special place for our people, at the joining of two rivers to form the Irrawaddy. That river is the bloodline of our country, and will be ruined if this project goes ahead.”

The Myitsone Dam, the largest of seven hydropower projects planned on the Upper Irrawaddy, has been shrouded in controversy since it was first mooted in 2009 when Myanmar was under military junta rule.
Estimated at an initial cost of US$3.6 billion, the project was announced as a joint venture between the China Power Investment Corporation (CPIC; now State Power Investment Corporation) and Myanmar conglomerate Asia World Company.