{"id":6673,"date":"2026-07-03T07:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T07:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/?p=6673"},"modified":"2026-07-03T09:08:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T09:08:02","slug":"my-thoughts-worries-and-advices-about-restarting-myitsone-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/2026\/07\/03\/my-thoughts-worries-and-advices-about-restarting-myitsone-project\/","title":{"rendered":"My thoughts, worries and advices about restarting Myitsone Project"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>My thoughts, worries and discussions with Claude AI, after reading the news report <strong>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.freemalaysiatoday.com\/category\/author\/reuters2016\">Myanmar set to restart contentious US$3.6bil China-backed dam project\u201d<\/a><\/strong>, [Reuters] Free Malaysia Today about the Re-Construction of the Myitsone dam was suspended in 2011 after rare public outrage over the hydropower project that would have been Myanmar\u2019s largest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What the reporting actually says<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Myanmar&#8217;s post-election government (Min Aung Hlaing, now president after an April 2026 vote widely criticised as unfree) wants to finish Myitsone within about eight years. Key facts from the article:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The original 2009 deal aimed to send <strong>90% of the power to China<\/strong>; Reuters says it <strong>could not confirm whether that split has been renegotiated<\/strong>. Myanmar&#8217;s presidential spokeswoman says the dam &#8220;could provide more than half&#8221; of the country&#8217;s 10 GW need \u2014 but that&#8217;s a claim, not a signed term.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Original 2009 cost was around $3.6bn; independent estimates using IRENA&#8217;s current per-kilowatt costs put a realistic 2026 rebuild closer to <strong>$11.5bn<\/strong> \u2014 over three times the original price.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A <strong>7.7-magnitude earthquake killed thousands in central Myanmar last March<\/strong>, and the dam sits in a seismically active zone. Officials say &#8220;new Chinese technology&#8221; will handle this; that&#8217;s an assurance, not an independent safety review.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Local consultation is contested: the government cites 26 &#8220;public meetings&#8221; in Kachin State as support, while <strong>49 civil society groups<\/strong> are calling for the project to be scrapped entirely.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>This is happening in an area now under military control, amid an ongoing civil war, with the elected government that originally suspended the dam having been overthrown in 2021.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">On the Rohingya-genocide rumour<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>I want to be straight with you here rather than just validate or dismiss it. The genocide against Rohingya Muslims \u2014 the 2016\u201317 military &#8220;clearance operations,&#8221; mass killings, and forced displacement of over 700,000 people \u2014 has been investigated by the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission, the ICJ, and others. Their findings trace it to decades of statelessness under the 1982 Citizenship Law, long-standing military doctrine toward ethnic and religious minorities, and specific 2016\u201317 military decisions. Although there were rumours and some suspects, <strong>I&#8217;m not aware of any direct evidence, tying China&#8217;s secret advice to that campaign. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"850\" height=\"730\" src=\"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-40.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6678\" srcset=\"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-40.png 850w, https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-40-300x258.png 300w, https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-40-768x660.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 850px) 100vw, 850px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The cross-border China-Myanmar oil and gas pipeline: from Kyaukpyu to Kunming through Ruili.&nbsp;Credit to Xiangming Chen in ResearchGate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>That doesn&#8217;t mean that after Myitsone postpone because of the Myanmar People&#8217;s pressure, back-channel pressure or advice by Chinese to create the Racial Riots so that Chinese projects like O&amp;G Pipelines could finished without people&#8217;s notice, never happened \u2014 I simply have no basis to confirm it, and I&#8217;d be not treating an unconfirmed rumor as established fact.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"946\" height=\"631\" src=\"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-41.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6680\" srcset=\"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-41.png 946w, https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-41-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-41-768x512.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 946px) 100vw, 946px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrw.org\/news\/2026\/01\/29\/rohingya-genocide-case-moves-to-judgment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Rohingya Genocide Case Moves to Judgment | Human Rights Watch<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My underlying fear \u2014 that resisting a China-backed project could trigger a violent similar state response is not sure. Myanmar&#8217;s military has a documented pattern of extreme violence against civilians, most visibly in Kachin, Rakhine, Rohingyas, Myanmar Muslims and now nationwide in the post-coup civil war. The realistic risk isn&#8217;t &#8220;China orders ethnic cleansing to distract from a dam&#8221; \u2014 it&#8217;s that a military government with no electoral legitimacy has few restraints on how it handles local protest, and Kachin State is already an active conflict zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What&#8217;s documented<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The <strong>UN&#8217;s Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM)<\/strong> published a report finding that after the 2017 clearance operations, the military-dominated government handed contracts to at least nine companies to clear and develop land where Rohingya villages had stood. It specifically named <strong>Asia World<\/strong> \u2014 the same company that&#8217;s the 5% Myanmar-side partner in the Myitsone dam \u2014 as having built Border Guard Police bases, roads, and security outposts on the razed land.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Myanmar&#8217;s government (under a body chaired by Aung San Suu Kyi) also <strong>harvested and sold crops from Rohingya farmland<\/strong> after the expulsion \u2014 tens of thousands of acres \u2014 with proceeds going to the state budget, and later leased confiscated land to Rakhine farmers and private companies.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Separately, and predating 2017, China&#8217;s <strong>Kyaukpyu oil and gas pipelines<\/strong> (operational 2013\u20132014) and the<strong> Kyaukpyu Special Economic Zone\/deep-sea port (led by China&#8217;s state-run CITIC Group from 2015) were both built in Rakhine State, <\/strong>and researchers have documented that<strong> local land for these projects was confiscated, sometimes forcibly and without compensation, <\/strong>in the years before the genocide.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>A 2012 communal riot in Rakhine has been linked by some researchers to land seizures tied to Myanmar&#8217;s fossil fuel expansion plans in the area.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why this is real, but doesn&#8217;t establish what the rumor claims<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>This is solid evidence of <strong>who benefited from land seized during and after the persecution<\/strong> \u2014 the military, Asia World, various domestic and foreign companies including Chinese state-linked ones. That&#8217;s different from evidence that <strong>China advised or incited the 2017 genocide<\/strong> to clear the way for those benefits. The pipelines we&#8217;re referencing were largely built and operational years <em>before<\/em> the 2017 clearance operations (2013\u20132014), and the SEZ\/port bidding also predates it (2015) <strong>BUT we must note that THE FIRST Thida Htwe incidence and Rohingya Genocide was in 2012. <\/strong>Beneficiary-after-the-fact and instigator-beforehand are two different claims, and the documented record supports the first much more than the second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/2025\/09\/03\/mr-bertil-lintner-predicted-about-the-myanmar-militarys-planning-of-2012-rohingya-massacre-10-months-in-advance\/\">Mr Bertil Lintner predicted about the Myanmar Military\u2019s planning of 2012 Rohingya Massacre 10 months in advance<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/2026\/04\/18\/my-encounter-with-bertil-lintner-who-revealed-the-plot-ten-months-before-the-rohingya-massacre\/\">My Encounter with Bertil Lintner, who revealed the plot Ten Months Before the Rohingya Massacre<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What the record actually suggests is closer to opportunism than a Chinese-orchestrated plot: Myanmar&#8217;s military has a decades-long, well-documented pattern of confiscating land from many groups \u2014 Rohingya, Kachin, Rakhine Buddhists, Shan farmers \u2014 for military bases, mining, agribusiness, and infrastructure, with China&#8217;s state companies among the many domestic and foreign parties willing to invest in land the state made available, regardless of how it became &#8220;available.&#8221; That&#8217;s a serious problem in itself \u2014 it means state and foreign capital has an incentive not to ask hard questions about how land was cleared \u2014 but it&#8217;s a different mechanism than &#8220;China told the generals to commit genocide.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Timeline, accurately<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>September 2011<\/strong>: Myitsone dam suspended by President Thein Sein.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>May 28, 2012<\/strong>: Ma Thida Htwe, a 27-year-old Rakhine Buddhist woman, was raped and murdered, reportedly by three Muslim men, in Ramri Township.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>June 3, 2012<\/strong>: In apparent retaliation, a mob stopped a bus in Taungup and killed 10 Muslim passengers \u2014 with police and soldiers reportedly standing by without intervening.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>June 8, 2012 onward<\/strong>: Riots spread to Sittwe, Maungdaw, and other townships; a second wave hit in October 2012, this time explicitly organized \u2014 Human Rights Watch found the October attacks were &#8220;organized, incited, and committed by local Arakanese political party operatives, the Buddhist monkhood, and ordinary Arakanese,&#8221; at times with direct state security backing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>So yes \u2014 chronologically, the Thida Htwe murder and subsequent riots sit about eight months after the Myitsone suspension, which is closer in time than the 2017 clearance operations (five years later). That&#8217;s a fair thing to flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What the documented record actually attributes the 2012 violence to<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The investigations that exist \u2014 HRW&#8217;s 2012\u20132013 field research, the UK parliamentary evidence from the Institute for Statecraft (ISCI), and others \u2014 trace the trigger and organization of the 2012 violence to specific, named domestic actors: the murder itself, then <strong>inflammatory pamphlets<\/strong> circulated locally, <strong>the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party<\/strong>, <strong>the Buddhist monkhood<\/strong>, and <strong>letters sent to village administrators instructing households to send men to join organized attacks on Rohingya neighborhoods<\/strong> \u2014 with <strong>police in some documented instances explicitly authorizing or joining the attacks. <\/strong>This sits on top of decades-older tension: colonial-era land dispossession of Buddhist Rakhine farmers by Indian moneylenders in the 1930s, demographic-minority anxiety among Rakhine Buddhists that predates 2011 by generations, and the unresolved statelessness created by the 1982 Citizenship Law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>None of the investigative bodies that examined 2012 \u2014 HRW, the UN Fact-Finding Mission, ISCI \u2014 found or alleged Chinese involvement in triggering or organizing it. That doesn&#8217;t prove a connection didn&#8217;t exist somewhere in the background;<\/strong> it means that after real investigative effort, the trail leads to local political and religious actors with their own longstanding motives, not to a foreign dam investor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The honest way to hold both things at once<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;d separate two claims that are easy to blur together:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>&#8220;The timing is suspicious enough to warrant scrutiny&#8221;<\/strong> \u2014 reasonable, and <strong>worth keeping an eye on given how much <em>land<\/em> mattered to both the Rohingya persecution and the Chinese-backed pipeline\/dam projects in the same period.<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>&#8220;China advised or caused the 2012\/2017 violence to clear the way for its projects&#8221;<\/strong> \u2014 this is the part with no evidentiary support from any investigation to date, and asserting it as established fact would misattribute what multiple independent bodies did document (local political incitement, decades of statelessness policy, security-force complicity) to an unproven actor.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>The genuinely useful version of my concern isn&#8217;t &#8220;prove China caused it&#8221; \u2014<strong> it&#8217;s &#8220;does land cleared through violence or coercion, anywhere in Myanmar, keep ending up in the hands of large domestic or foreign investors with no accountability for how it was cleared?&#8221; <\/strong>That&#8217;s the pattern the IIMM report and the Asia World findings do support, and it&#8217;s a legitimate standard to hold <em>any<\/em> future Myitsone contract to, regardless of who&#8217;s investing<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why this matters for the Myitsone concern<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>My instinct to watch for this pattern is reasonable, just recalibrate what to watch for: not <strong>&#8220;will China order violence to force this dam through,&#8221; but &#8220;will foreign and state capital keep flowing into a project regardless of the human cost of how the land was or will be secured, because no one in the chain has an incentive to ask.&#8221; <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>That&#8217;s a due-diligence and accountability problem, and it&#8217;s actionable <\/strong>\u2014 it&#8217;s exactly why the IIMM report matters, and <strong>why demands for a truly independent land\/resettlement audit for Myitsone (not just an EIA on flooding and seismic risk) belong on the civil society coalition&#8217;s list.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">My Advise For Myanmar people \/ civil society<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Document everything now, while attention on Myitsone is high \u2014 meeting attendance, coercion, land surveys, environmental assessments (or their absence). International scrutiny is a real check on this project; the 2011 suspension only happened because domestic and international pressure was loud, sustained, and specific.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Push demands that are hard to dismiss as &#8220;anti-development&#8221;: an independent seismic safety review post-earthquake, published contract terms (especially the power-export split), resettlement and compensation terms in writing, and genuine free\/prior\/informed consent processes \u2014 not government-organized meetings.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Coordinate with the 49 civil society groups already publicly opposing it; a fragmented response is easier to route around than a unified one.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If safety is a live concern, international humanitarian and human rights monitoring bodies (UN OHCHR, human rights orgs already tracking Kachin) are worth engaging regardless of whether this specific rumor is true \u2014 because the underlying conflict risk in that region is real independent of Myitsone.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">My Advise For the Myanmar government<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The credibility gap is the core problem: a military-aligned government elected in a vote critics called unfree, reviving a project the <em>elected<\/em> government (under Aung San Suu Kyi) had opposed, is not well positioned to claim public buy-in from &#8220;26 meetings.&#8221; An independent, verifiable consultation process would cost little and would defuse a lot of the &#8220;history repeating&#8221; fear.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Publish the actual power-sharing terms. The ambiguity Reuters flagged \u2014 nobody can confirm if the 90\/10 split changed \u2014 is itself fueling suspicion. Your 50\/50 electricity idea isn&#8217;t unreasonable to demand publicly, but it should be a negotiated, published number, not an assumption.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Given the March earthquake, an independent (non-Chinese-contractor) seismic and environmental review isn&#8217;t optional if you want anyone to trust &#8220;there is nothing to worry about.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">My Advise For China<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>China&#8217;s own energy data cuts against economic urgency here \u2014 China&#8217;s generation capacity now vastly exceeds peak demand, so this isn&#8217;t primarily about Chinese power needs; it&#8217;s about an unfinished strategic\/political project. Being honest about that motivation, rather than framing it as mutual benefit, would probably reduce suspicion, not increase it.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>China has previously shown it will recalibrate when Myanmar public opposition is loud (that&#8217;s part of why the project stalled 14 years). Continued flexibility on the power split, transparent financing terms (given the project may need fresh Chinese loans at $11.5bn), and staying out of how the Myanmar government handles domestic dissent would matter a lot for its regional reputation, especially given the reputational cost it already knows this project carries.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">If we look back The original 2009 contract terms<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Ownership<\/strong>: China Power Investment \/ SPIC held <strong>80%<\/strong>, Myanmar&#8217;s Ministry of Electric Power <strong>15%<\/strong>, and Asia World Company (owned by Stephen Law, whose father was US-labeled a &#8220;drug warlord&#8221; tied to money laundering) held <strong>5%<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Power split<\/strong>: Myanmar received <strong>10% of output free<\/strong>, with an option to buy another 20% at cost; the remaining ~90% went to China&#8217;s Yunnan grid.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Compensation trap<\/strong>: SPIC has told the government that formally cancelling the project would trigger roughly <strong>$800 million<\/strong> in compensation claims, while indefinite suspension costs Myanmar an estimated <strong>$50 million\/year<\/strong> in standby\/interest costs \u2014 meaning the contract itself was structured so that walking away is expensive either way.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Process<\/strong>: CPI commissioned and funded its own environmental impact assessment through a Chinese state institute, and construction on resettlement began three months before that assessment was even finalized. The joint-venture partner on the Myanmar side, Asia World, is controlled by a family flagged by the US government over drug trafficking and money laundering links \u2014 not exactly a transparent local counterparty. <a href=\"https:\/\/riverresourcehub.org\/resources\/the-myitsone-dam-on-the-irrawaddy-river-a-briefing-3931\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">International Rivers<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Jobs promise vs. reality<\/strong>: Chinese state media promised over 40,000 construction jobs, but Kachin organizers say before the original suspension, the workforce was overwhelmingly Chinese, down to cooking staff, with Myanmar workers limited to a handful of low-skill physically demanding roles.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Nobody outside the deal ever saw the full contract \u2014 only excerpts CPI released for PR purposes in 2017. The president&#8217;s office as recently as this year has still not published full terms.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How the 49 civil society groups are organizing now<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>It&#8217;s a coalition of <strong>49 Kachin civil society organizations<\/strong>, joined by local residents, who issued a joint statement on May 4\u20135, 2026 demanding total and immediate cessation of the project, condemning the regime for staging what they call sham public consultations, and calling for an end to lobbying and intimidation of civilians.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They report that residents are currently unable to publicly criticize the dam plans because of pervasive fear of arrest \u2014 the regime announced in December that it would take legal action against anyone opposing its infrastructure projects, which is precisely the coercive backdrop your original fear was pointing at.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Their argument isn&#8217;t purely environmental: organizers explicitly link the dam to the peace process, arguing that forcing a major project into a militarized, contested region will make political dialogue harder and could worsen the conflict.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The May 5 statement specifically calls on the Chinese state developer to respect local will and not proceed without genuine consent, regardless of which government is in power in Naypyidaw \u2014 notably addressing Beijing directly, not just the junta.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Separately, there&#8217;s a longer-running <strong>&#8220;one-dollar campaign&#8221;<\/strong>, where civil society leaders, writers and artists crowdfund small donations specifically earmarked to help cover any compensation Myanmar might owe China if the project is formally cancelled \u2014 a clever move that removes &#8220;we can&#8217;t afford to say no&#8221; as an excuse.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>As of this year, no official details have been released on the revised contract, ownership rights, or operational framework \u2014 even the dam&#8217;s capacity, quietly reduced from 6,000 MW to 5,600 MW &#8220;for safety reasons,&#8221; was disclosed informally rather than in a published document.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">My Advise From The Myanmar-public standpoint: What fairer new contract terms would need to look like-<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Given the above, <strong>&#8220;50\/50 electricity&#8221; is a reasonable opening demand<\/strong> but arguably not sufficient on its own. A contract that actually reflects Myanmar people&#8217;s interests would need to fix the structural problems, not just the ratio:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Publish the full contract<\/strong>, not excerpts \u2014 ownership shares, power split, compensation clauses, dispute resolution, all of it, before construction resumes, not after.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Renegotiate ownership<\/strong>, not just power output. 80\/15\/5 gave Myanmar almost no equity or decision-making leverage; a fairer deal would give the state and\/or an independent Kachin-representative body real ownership stake and board seats, not just a share of electrons.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Independent, non-developer-funded EIA and seismic review<\/strong> \u2014 given the March 2026 earthquake and the site&#8217;s proximity to the Sagaing Fault, this can&#8217;t be an assessment CPI\/SPIC commissions and grades itself on.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Decouple compensation clauses from public consent<\/strong> \u2014 a contract clause that fines Myanmar $800m for listening to its own citizens is itself the core problem; any new deal should tie cancellation rights to failure of a genuine, monitored consent process, not treat consent as a cost to be penalized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Binding local hiring and procurement quotas<\/strong>, verified by third parties, not company press statements.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Legal protection for opposition<\/strong> \u2014 repeal or suspend the threat of prosecution for people opposing the project; a &#8220;consultation&#8221; conducted under threat of arrest isn&#8217;t consent, and no contract term fixes that; it has to be addressed in law\/policy, not the dam deal.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Independent third-party monitoring body<\/strong> with Kachin civil society representation, empowered to inspect construction and dam safety on an ongoing basis, not just the pre-approval stage.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>The one-dollar compensation fund and the direct appeal to SPIC (not just the junta) are probably the two most strategically interesting things civil society is doing right now \u2014 they&#8217;re both aimed at removing the leverage points (debt, &#8220;who do we negotiate with&#8221;) that made the 2009 deal so lopsided in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My thoughts, worries and discussions with Claude AI, after reading the news report \u201cMyanmar set to restart contentious US$3.6bil China-backed dam project\u201d, [Reuters] Free Malaysia Today about the Re-Construction of the Myitsone dam was suspended in 2011 after rare public outrage over the hydropower project that would have been Myanmar\u2019s largest. What the reporting actually [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6674,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,133,2,1,10,25,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-human-rights-constitution-federal-democracy-social-nets-minority-rights","category-international-news","category-local-news","category-news","category-science-it-ai-military-war","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6673"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6685,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6673\/revisions\/6685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}