Curse of the dammed

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Anchor Moy
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Re: Curse of the dammed

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Villagers in Stung Treng province displeased local authorities on Saturday by holding a traditional ceremony calling upon a powerful local spirit to curse those behind the construction of the Lower Sesan 2 dam.

During the ceremony, some 300 members of the Lao and Bunong ethnic minorities marched about 10 km to a shrine dedicated to the local deity Neak Ta Krahomkor, or “Red Neck Spirit,” in Sesan district’s Srekor commune, asking him to protect the villagers from harm and curse the officials and investors behind the dam.

“The villagers…prayed to the spirit of Neak Ta Krahormkor to use magic to stop the construction of the hydroelectric dam,” said Bun Thann, a program coordinator for the 3S River Protection Network, which has been campaigning against the dam.
It's all very well calling them superstitious simpletons, but they have already tried calling on the govt, local leaders and
NGOs to help them - this has had zero result on the dam construction.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.

(They can stick a pin in for me while they're at it. :whip: )
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Re: Curse of the dammed

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Maybe the curse is starting to work ? New studies to be done and a bit of back-pedalling by the construction company.
Rights advocates have called for construction of the Lower Sesan II hydropower dam in Cambodia’s Stung Treng province to be halted until new environmental and social impact assessments can be carried following changes allegedly made to the project’s plans.

Hydrolancang International, which is building the dam with Cambodia’s Royal Group, has redesigned it with the aim of improving sediment management, NGO International Rivers has learned.

The planned changes include lowering the height of the dam and installing sluice gates, which will affect the size of the reservoir and the dam’s downstream impacts.

Hydrolancang has yet to publicly confirm the redesign and company representatives did not return calls or respond to emailed requests for comment yesterday.
Hex 'em again Neak Ta Krahomkor :evil:
Members of the National Assembly’s Environment Commission will leave Phnom Penh today for a four-day fact-finding mission to the dam site.

Fort Kheun, a representative of the communities that will be affected by the dam, said he would tell the commission that many people were unwilling to be resettled for the project.

“It is very important for us to let them know that we are not agreeing to go; we want to live in our homes.”
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/new-sesan-new-study-ngo
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Re: Curse of the dammed

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World Bank Helped Fund Controversial Dam: Report
by Zsombor Peter | October 10, 2016 | អានជាភាសាខ្មែរ

The World Bank Group is using poorly regulated intermediaries to help finance the Lower Sesan II hydropower dam and other projects in Cambodia evicting—or threatening to evict—hundreds of families, according to a new report that calls the practice “appalling.”

The report, released last week by a team of rights groups, accuses the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private lending arm, of secretly funding 91 projects across Asia—including three in Cambodia—causing “severe” environmental damage and human rights abuses in breach of its own standards.
The IFC said it was making efforts to pick its investment partners more carefully and to help those partners vet the projects they back.

“These are extremely harmful projects that have or will displace tens of thousands of Cambodians and cause serious environmental damage,” David Pred, managing director of Inclusive Development International (IDI), one of the groups behind the report, said in an email.

“It’s appalling that the IFC, an organization ostensibly committed to sustainable development, is funding projects that are causing so much destruction.”...
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/worl ... rt-119055/

Report here: http://www.inclusivedevelopment.net/wp- ... t-2016.pdf
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Re: Curse of the dammed

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Following the recent report revealing the role of the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) in lending to controversial development projects, such as the construction of the Lower Sesan II hydropower dam in Stung Treng province, rights groups are exploring the possibility of recourse for Cambodian evictees.
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/evic ... fc-119213/
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Anchor Moy
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Re: Curse of the dammed

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More on the prospective Sesan River dam... "I will never move out from my river'.



Rural Cambodian villagers defiant in face of looming hydropower flood
By Jack Board Posted 27 Nov 2016 13:04 Updated 27 Nov 2016 13:10

STUNG TRENG, Cambodia: “I will die here.” These are the words, emblazoned in red, now painted across the front of several wooden homes in a remote Cambodian village.

Sre Kor is a peaceful place. But turmoil and uncertainty flow through this community with the same power as the adjoining Sesan River.

Soon, the hundreds of families living here, many of them for generations, will be moved elsewhere. About half have already agreed to relocate. Others have said they will not. Not for anything...

Full article: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asi ... 93410.html
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Re: Curse of the dammed

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With Waters to Rise, Ministry Tires of Families’ Concerns
by Aisha Down | March 10, 2017

Disdain and pain flooded a meeting on Thursday between government officials and families whose villages are set to be submerged by a dam’s reservoir.

Representing families affected by the construction of the Lower Sesan II hydropower dam site, about 10 indigenous villagers traveled from Stung Treng province to Phnom Penh for the chance to plead their case to officials from the Mines and Energy Ministry.

Facing the loss of his village, Srey Ybek said he had taken the government’s compensation offer of a house in a new village along a highway.
On Thursday, he stood up to say that it was almost impossible to support his family there. All his life, he had lived using trees and the resources of the forest, he said. Now he had to find money.
“We’ve lost the living we had before. The animals—we’ve lost them, and the rice land.” He said he had no place to raise his water buffalo and cows, and the land he had been given for rice was 23 km from his house—too far to walk.

At this point, Norn Sameth, a representative of the ministry, cut him off.
“Don’t talk so much,” he said. “I’ve had meetings on this issue five or six times already.” ...

Environmental groups have said that the 400-megawatt dam will ultimately affect about 5,000 people living in the Mekong River basin and devastate fisheries.
But there were no indications on Thursday that the villagers’ messages had got through to the government officials.

https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/with ... ns-126356/
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Anchor Moy
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Re: Curse of the dammed

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More on the role of the World Bank and the IFC [International Finance Corporation] in the funding of development projects in Cambodia. Consensus opinion is that the main problem is a lack of oversight and responsibility by the IFC; money is lent to companies without appropriate controls on environmental damage or regard for human rights. Projects that look great on paper are often hurting the people they are supposed to be helping.
Lending money blindfold for development in Cambodia is not the best way forward for so many reasons - where to start ?

World Bank hurting locals, report says
Tue, 21 March 2017
Leonie Kijewski

The World Bank indirectly fosters evictions, land-grabbing and environmental destruction by investing in conflict-driven projects in Cambodia through private equity funds and banks, a new report by the NGO Inclusive Development International argues.

Reckless Development: The IFC’s Dodgy Deals in Southeast Asia documents how the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private-sector arm, invested in banks and other companies that then allegedly engaged in human rights violations.

According to the report, the IFC also indirectly invested in the Lower Sesan II dam project through its $307 million investment in Vietinbank, which signed a cooperation agreement worth $2.85 billion with Electricity Vietnam – a part owner of the hydropower project.

Bun Thann, a coordinator for the 3S Rivers Protection Network, said many residents around the dam in Stung Treng province have been forced to move from the river, causing them to lose their fishery-based jobs. “The World Bank should open their eyes wider to see what happens to the local communities,” he said, before calling on it to conduct an investigation.

Transparency International executive director Preap Kol said via email that, although the World Bank does not intend to cause human rights abuses, it is “important that the Bank utilizes [its accountability mechanism] whenever their investment has caused significant harms”...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/w ... eport-says

Of course the IFC doesn't agree with that assessment.
Report ‘misleading’: IFC representatives
24 March 2017
The IFC’s head of communications for East Asia and the Pacific, Tina Taheri Moayed, said in an email on Tuesday that there were “many factual inaccuracies” in the report, which she said were “misleading”.
“Many of the sub-projects mentioned either pre-date or fall outside the scope of IFC’s investment with the financial institution mentioned,” she said.

However, IDI’s managing director David Pred maintained in an email that his organisation stands by its findings “100%”.

“IFC should have never made those investments in the first place, or it should have required remedial action as a pre-condition of its investment,” he said...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/r ... sentatives
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Re: Curse of the dammed

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Complaint filed over villagers’ dam protest
Thu, 4 May 2017
With several villages downstream from the Lower Sesan II dam expecting to be inundated this rainy season, Stung Treng provincial authorities filed a complaint yesterday against seven ethnic Lao villagers who participated in a protest in March to block the clearing of a forest where the reservoir will be, though the exact source of the suit was unclear yesterday.

The seven protesters from Sre Kor village are among 93 ethnic Lao families refusing to abandon their homes in the face of flooding. The $816 million 400-megawatt project, which is a joint venture between China’s Hyrdrolancang International and Cambodia’s Royal Group, is expected to go online by the end of this year.

A total of 100 villagers participated in the protest, during which they blocked bulldozers from clearing land that they believe has spiritual properties. The villagers, said Sre Kor Commune Chief Siek Mekong, conducted their demonstration in the presence of a working group that included provincial police and provincial military police.

“One hundred protested, but they sued only the seven activists who are nature and environmental protection volunteers,” Mekong said, adding that the villagers called for just part of the forested area, not the entire 2,250 hectares of forested land, to be cleared and flooded.
Mekong argued the lawsuit seeks to pressure defiant villagers into leaving their homes...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/c ... am-protest
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Re: Curse of the dammed

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Soi Dog wrote: Tue Mar 03, 2015 7:14 amAfter praying to the Neak Ta spirit, promising to sacrifice two buffalos for him if he stopped further construction of the dam, the villagers set up four effigies known as “ting moungs,” representing Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem, construction company owner Chip Mong, Hydro Lancang company officials and local authorities who helped green-light the project ... “We stabbed the ting moungs with a sharp stick, meaning that we killed the people involved with the construction of the hydroelectric dam, then we burned the bodies of those people,” he said.
The villagers are very close to carrying out an effective procedure that will indeed kill all the persons mentioned. Instead of cursing them, they should GAMBLE when exactly these people will die. This platform type is called a Jim Bell Assassination market. Game theory says that if enough people gamble on when exactly a target will die, and the total money gambled exceeds the fee that the assassin requires to carry out the assassination, the assassin will also "gamble" on what date the target will die, kill the target on exactly that date, and collect the entire pile of money.

So, yes, if enough people GAMBLE that someone will soon die, this person is indeed quite likely to die soon! ;-)
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Re: Curse of the dammed

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Officials say Sesan dam will cause floods in September
22 May 2017
Stung Treng provincial authorities say they have warned villagers living upstream of the Lower Sesan II dam to expect floods in September as one of the dam’s 50-megawatt turbines goes into operation.

Stung Treng Provincial Deputy Governor Duong Pov said yesterday that the provincial hall issued the announcement by letter two weeks ago, informing local authorities that the Hydropower Lower Sesan 2 Co will test one of the dam’s eight turbines in September.

Pov explained that the statement was sent to local authorities by letter so that they would relay the information to the villagers, particularly those who refused to relocate from villages in the dam’s reservoir area.
One hundred and ten families in the villages of Sre Kor and Kbal Romeas still refuse to move, Pov said...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/o ... -september
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