Ta Sang: a weapon of war
"People are being tortured and killed on a mass scale," warns Sai Sai, a member of Burma's Shan ethnic minority, currently living in Thailand as a refugee. "Tens of thousands of people are being forced from their homes at gunpoint, and entire areas made into free-fire zones." For Sai Sai, who escaped from Burma in 1988 and now runs a human-rights group, the Rangoon government's construction of the Ta Sang dam marks a new level of violence and ethnic cleansing against the Shan. "About 400,000 people have been forced from their homes to make way for the dam," says Sai Sai. "The Burmese army has orders to shoot on sight anyone entering the depopulated areas."
Located on the Salween River, the last free-flowing Himalayan river of Burma, Ta Sang will eventually generate an estimated 7100 megawatts of power. Around 90 percent of this will go to Thailand, from where nearly all of the funding is coming. The dam will be massive: almost 750 feet tall, and costing more than USD 6 billion to build; when completed, it will be the largest hydroelectric project in Southeast Asia. For the isolated Burmese junta, Ta Sang will also bring in much-needed hard currency, which many believe will come at the expense of the country's ethnic minorities.