The Myitsone dam project site in Kachin State, northern Burma is set to see demographic changes with the arrival of Chinese workers, where local residents are increasingly threatened with relocation in less than a month after the serial bomb blasts, said people near the dam site.

The meeting of the Burmese military authorities on May 16 in Tang Hpre village at the confluence, or Myitsone in Burmese, 27 miles north of Kachin’s capital Myitkyina came up with the new relocation plan for residents, who are refusing to shift, locals told Kachin News Group today.

The meeting was jointly conducted by the administrations of Myitkyina Township and Waingmaw Township, added villagers.

The meeting decided that at least 10 persons from each quarter in Myitkyina and Waingmaw towns must join the relocation activities in the dam site after authorities inform them.  Their duties are taking down the residents’ houses and churches if they refuse to shift even after several months, said sources close to participants.

The regime is yet to decide the exact dates for relocation but it will forcibly relocate all villages, according to participants.

Now the four Kachin villages around the dam site--- Tang Hpre, N-gan, Dawng Pan and Gwi Htau are up for forced relocation, said sources in the villages.

The Baptist and Roman Catholic Church leaders in these villages are seen as the most influential people, who can persuade their followers to accept relocation.  

Church leaders are under orders and are increasingly pressurized to see to people accepting relocation by the junta authorities in the wake of the serial bomb blasts in the project on April 17, according to church sources.

Meanwhile, new Chinese workers of the Chinese state-owned China Power Investment Corporation (CPI) have begun arriving in the dam site since last week, said local residents. They replace workers, who returned home on the day of the bomb blasts in the dam site, added local residents.

Many local people and anti-dam groups believe the bomb explosions in the dam site is the handiwork of the Burmese junta to initiate tough action against residents, who refuse to relocate and to tighten security by deploying more troops in the project site.

People in the dam site and Kachin people as a whole are against implementing the hydropower project at the river confluence because it is one of most beautiful places for tourists to the country and it has historical links with Kachin civilization in northern Burma. Again, if the dam collapses floods will kill hundreds of thousands of people downstream of the river.

The construction of the Myitsone hydropower project was officially started on December 21, last year. The project is being jointly implemented by Burma’s Asia World Company, Ministry of Electric Power 1 of junta and CPI.

The project will generate 6,000 MW of electricity and it will be sold to neighbouring China.