damning human rights at china's three
gorges
international rivers
network
“To struggle against the heavens is
endless joy. To struggle against the earth
is endless joy. To struggle against people
is endless joy”, Chinese Communist Party
Chairman Mao Zedong once famously
exclaimed. The Three Gorges Project on the
Yangtze River is marked by this outdated
contempt for the environment and human
rights. The gargantuan dam project will
create a reservoir with a length of more
than 600 kilometers and produce as much
power as 15 large nuclear reactors
combined. It will displace up to 1.9
million people, destroy invaluable
archeological treasures, and turn the
Yangtze River into a toxic waste
dump.
“If we only had one free newspaper in
China , the Three Gorges Project would not
go ahead,” the noted dissident journalist
Dai Qing often remarked. After all
opposition was squashed in the 1989
Tiananmen massacre, conservative government
factions bulldozed the project through a
skeptical state apparatus.
When criticism could no longer be safely
expressed in China , International Rivers
Network (IRN) and other environmental
groups called on foreign governments and
financial institutions not to support the
Three Gorges project. The World Bank and
the US Ex-Im Bank both decided to stay
away, but the governments of Germany,
Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, France and
Brazil approved official export credits of
more than US$1.5 billion for the scheme so
that their companies would get large
contracts.
repression and environmental
refugees
Dam construction has meanwhile been
completed, and the Three Gorges reservoir
is partly filled. In 2003, IRN commissioned
an independent researcher to investigate
the human rights impacts of the project.
The researcher found that the land and jobs
promised to the displaced residents were
not available, compensation funds were
routinely being diverted into other
projects and private pockets, and any
opposition against the inadequate
resettlement provisions was being met with
heavy repression. The Three Gorges project
has become “an instrument of repression
with widespread human rights abuses”, the
investigative report concludes.
In a letter supported by 105 other
organizations, IRN called on the
governments funding the dam to ensure that
the project and its resettlement program
complied with international human rights
norms, and for construction activities to
be put on hold until these standards were
met. NGOs also proposed that governments
draw up strict human rights guidelines for
their export credit agencies. In a joint
briefing with Human Rights in China and
Friends of the Earth International, IRN
presented these demands to the UN
Commission on Human Rights in Geneva in
2003.
In a rare public comment, the Chinese
government called the findings of the
investigation “recklessly distorting gossip
and rumors”. Most western governments did
not bother to give any response to the
criticism and concerns. Only the Swiss
government carried out its own
investigation, and the Swiss foreign
minister raised the human rights violations
when she visited China .
Governments often justify their support
for destructive dam projects by claiming
that through their involvement they can
improve the environmental and human rights
standards of the project under question. By
their inactivity, most governments that
fund the Three Gorges Dam have demonstrated
that such claims are empty promises.
more information:
Human Rights Dammed Off at Three Gorges,
International Rivers Network,
www.irn.org/programs/threeg/3gcolor.pdf
