Human Rights Issues
The three gorges dam in china has caused involuntary resettlement throughout the area. Reservoir resettlement in China has a long history, often of misery and hardship for those displaced. There is more priority given to building the dam to provide electricity, flood control and navigation. The rural population here have been discriminated against by national policies. In a debate in the 1980's there were arguments and studies were published and sooned banned in mainland China. According to the latest statistics 294,000 people have been relocated by the end of 2000. Estimates have fortold a resettlement of over 1.2 million people.With the raising of the water level about 106 towns will sink permanently under the reservoir water.Wanxian, Fuling, Zhongxian, Changshou, and thirty four other towns will be partially inundated. Inundated basically means flooded or swamped. There will be approximately 1599 industrial enterprises will be relocated.
According to an Chinese Currpution article written by Geoffrey York he has had contact with many peasants and workers that wanted to tell journalists about the injustices that they had suffered. It also told about one 50 year old woman said that she was offered 100 square metres of housing to replace her 280 square meter house.Two years after her house was supposed to be ready she was still waiting. Many of the people that were relocated were promised compensation. The article goes on and talks about the corruption of the Chinese Government. There are journalists that have went to the area and have been detained and questioned for hours on what they were doing in the area.
news.nationalgeographic.com |
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Worker
Shoulders Materials at Dam Site |
Another Worker at The Dam |
Resettlers |