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Thursday July 24, 5:32 PMFinal protest as village cleared for China's Three Gorges dam
The last residents in Gaoyang, in central China's Hubei province, were removed from their homes on Tuesday to make way for the reservoir that will expand behind the giant dam that sits astride the Yangtze river. They are the last of the more than 1.4 billion people the government says have been displaced by the dam. "A few hundred people came to dismantle the houses from 18 to the 22nd (of July)," said a resident of Gaoyang by phone, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals by authorities. The final evacuees were deeply unhappy about moving, the resident, who is also a leading campaigner for the rights of the displaced people, told AFP. "Many people have no place to stay now. We have to stay at relatives' places. The compensation is not what we expected, it is not enough," said the campaigner. "One local resident was too upset, she jumped into the water and was rescued by government officials and is still recovering in the hospital." China's official Xinhua news agency said Gaoyang, with 988 households, had been cleared to make way for the water to rise, saying it was the last town to be evacuated. The evacuation will allow the water level behind the 22-billion-dollar dam to rise from 156 metres to 175 metres (512 to 574 feet), and the campaigner said it had already started to climb into the village. At least 1.4 million people have been forced to resettle from now-submerged areas, according to official figures. A further four million have been "encouraged" to move by 2020, officials said last year, although the government now insists those relocations are unrelated to the dam. Critics of the dam have long alleged massive corruption in the resettlement programme, while many displaced people have been forced to leave their rural lifestyles to live in cities without adequate training or compensation. At 2,309 metres wide and 185 metres high, the Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest and is set to become fully operational in 2009. |
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