An Open Letter in Support of the President of Myanmar’s Decision on the Suspension of the Myitsone Dam Project and a Call for a Review of the Hatgyi Dam Project in Kayin (Karen) State

We, the members of Karen Rivers Watch wish to express our appreciation of your government’s decision on the suspension of the Myitsone Dam project in Kachin State . Karen Rivers Watch sees this decision as an important step towards […]

Irrawaddy Dam Suspended, Shwe Gas Project should be Next

Last Friday, Burma’s President announced the suspension of the Chinese-backed Myitsone dam project on the Irrawaddy River, in response to “the desire of the people.” Following this announcement […]

Dam-Induced Floods Spur Calls to Suspend New Chinese Dams in Burma’s Karenni State

Unprecedented releases of water from Burma’s first major hydropower dam at Moebye due to heavy rainfall have caused severe flooding around the Karenni capital, Loikaw, spurring calls by community groups to suspend construction of three large hydropower dams planned by Chinese investors in Karenni state […]

Chinese Official Threatens Myanmar

The head of a major Chinese company behind a controversial dam in Myanmar said the project’s suspension by the Myanmar government last week was a surprise that “will lead to a series of legal issues,” in the latest sign of frayed relations between the two countries […]

Burma Rivers Network Demands Official Cancellation by China Power Investment of not Only Myitsone but all Seven Irrawaddy Dams

Burma Rivers Network demands official cancellation by China Power Investment of not only Myitsone but all seven Irrawaddy dams […]

Burmese President Halts Myitsone Dam Project

Burmese President Thein Sein has called for a suspension of work on the controversial Myitsone dam project, in response to a mounting public outcry over the project, which critics say threatens the source of the Irrawaddy River.

Thein Sein said in a letter to Parliament on Friday that construction of the 6,000-megawatt hydropower dam in Kachin State should be suspended because the project is against the will of the people and lawmakers […]

China Speeds Ahead with Myitsone Dam Despite Civil War in Northern Burma

Seven hundred Chinese laborers are working day and night shearing off hilltops, laying tunnels, and building embankments at the Myitsone, the source of Burma’s Irrawaddy River, in a race to complete the country’s largest dam on schedule despite ongoing […]

Diverse Groups Raise Concerns About Development Projects on the Irrawaddy River

On 12 August, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi met with the regime’s minister of social welfare, relief, and resettlement, Aung Kyi, in Rangoon for the second time in less than a month. After the meeting the two issued a joint statement noting that they had agreed to cooperate and “to work in reciprocal basis by avoiding the contradicting attitudes.” However, it is clear that Daw Suu intends to continue to operate independently on behalf of the people of Burma, even where doing so contradicts the position of the regime. Just two days after the 12 August meeting Daw Suu defied the regime, traveling outside of Rangoon to meet supporters in Pegu and neighbouring Thanatpin despite the regime’s warning that such a trip could trigger “riots.”

Additionally, the day before her meeting with Aung Kyi, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi issued a letter expressing her opinion on one of the most contentious issues currently facing Burma, the issue of development projects, in particular dams along the Irrawaddy River […]

မိခင္ ဧရာဝတီျမစ္ၾကီး ထာဝရ ရွင္သန္ေစေရး ျမန္မာတမ်ဳိးသားလံုးအေရး

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေျမာက္ပိုင္း ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္တြင္ ျမစ္ဖ်ားခံျပီး အိႏၵိယသမုဒၵရာထဲသို႕ စီးဝင္ေနေသာ ဧရာဝတီျမစ္ၾကီးသည္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြက္သာမက အာရွတိုက္ၾကီး တခုလံုးအတြက္ပါ အေရးပါေသာ […]

Statement of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Personal Appeal to Save the Irrawaddy River

Today, the lrrawaddy is under threat. tack of sound planning, the failure to enforce necessary conservation laws, and a poor ecological awareness have created diverse problems. The plains forests on the banks of the river are in danger of disappearing as illegal logging and charcoal production proceed at an alarming pace […]