19th August 2008
I’m tired of hearing the voices of cars engine and the smell of car smoke. I want to go back to my hometown where there are a lot of mountains, big trees, green forests, the song of animals and river wave, but it is difficult for me to go back to my home. I was born in Mong Pan Township, in Southern Shan State, at a place 31 miles from the Salween River. The livelihood of residents of Mong Pan is based on agriculture and fishing.
The Salween River is 2,800 Kilometers long and the longest free-flowing river in Southern Asian. The Salween River has some of the world’s richest biodiversity with one hundred different fish species. It supports many local people who rely on the river for transportation and their economy. They all depend on the Salween River for their livelihoods. The Salween River runs through Shan State and along Thai-Burma border, many ethnic groups, including the Shan, Pa O, Karen, Kareni, Lahu, Akha, Wa, Mon, Padang, Lisu, Palaung, Yindalay and other ethnic groups live in traditional communities along the river. Unfortunately, we have not been able to live on our land in peace. Dams in many countries are used to provide water for farming and to control flooding. Many big hydropower dams are producing the electricity for development of the country but they also have a lot of negative impacts on the ecosystem, river and society.
Burma’s military regime, the Thai energy companies and Chinese companies have signed agreements for the development of the Ta Sang Dam on the Salween River. Thai Contraction Company MDX has been preparing for the construction of the Ta sang dam. It will produce 7,100 megawatts, and will be 288 meter high and it will be the highest dam in South East Asia. These projects have not benefited the local people because the SPDC has sold all of the electricity that is being produced to Thailand. The SPDC is able to get money from selling the electricity to make their military stronger and for cleaning ethnic people from their land and human right abuses.
In 2007 Thai company and the SPDC celebrated the building of the Ta Sang Dam. For security of their planning, SDPC forced our village and other villages around the dam area to move out of our farms, homes and must move to military controlled relocation site near main town and SPDC camp. SPDC gave orders to us to move; also they gave us the date we must leave. After that SPDC burnt down our villages, houses and farms and killed our animals. Most of us are farmers, so we depend on this area to farm. When SPDC came and forced us, we had to run for escape with our family so we couldn’t take our home, farm, animals and the main food like rice was left behind. We had no money to move in the city for new lives. We lost our property and also suffered from severe depression and helplessness, so we went into the deep forest. In the forest we didn’t have shelter, medicine, equipment and mosquito net to protect us in the night time. Some of us were killed by malaria disease and other problems. In the forest it is difficult for living. We were afraid to use fire because SPDC will see the smoke and will follow us so every second we felt not safe. Many unlucky villagers were arrested, tortured, raped or killed.
SPDC cut down the teak trees to reconstruct roads and for their worker’s houses so we didn’t have more places to hide. If we heard SPDC entered the forest we had to move again and again until we migrated to Thailand. I lived in Thailand for many years and I had a chance to study more about environment. In the training, I focused on the dam projects that are close with my home town. At that time I knew more about our situation in Shan State that many people suffer from hydropower project. Before 1996 Mong Pan Township had about 43 villages and 30,000 villagers. Between 1996 and 2007, SPDC forced people to move out and just left only 21 villages and about half the population was gone. I had never known about many people will suffer abuse from SPDC. Before, I thought this only happened in my hometown, but it also happened around different parts of Shan State, other people lost their land. Over 1300 villages have gone and over 300,000 villagers have migrated to Thailand. We don’t have power to go against the SPDC military but I will try to tell my hopeless experiences to NGOs and UN community so they know our situation and pressure the SPDC to stop the human rights abuses and to conserve the environment.
Before I came to Thailand, I was hopeless and I had never known “What are Human rights”. Also many people in Burma didn’t know that they had rights to stay on their own land and to be safe. I am lucky that I have chance to study, so I will try hard to do my best. After I graduate from the training, I am going to go back to my hometown and give training to our people as much as I can and help our Salween River to flow free again.
By Hseng Jom
I wrote this diary when I was studied at SSSNY (School for Shan State Nationalities Youth). This is the first english diary in my life so I would like to express to our mekong friends and happy seed group to know what happen in Burma and let help us to see the freedom light.
