With international donors preparing to significantly increase humanitarian and development assistance in order to promote peace in Burma, we are very concerned that cross-border aid to marginalized and vulnerable populations is being limited or cut at this crucial time.
Even while the cease-fire process is being carried out with separate ethnic armed groups, fighting is still taking place with the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), resulting in fresh displacement of tens of thousands of people internally and outside the country. Even though some level of agreement has been reached with some ethnic armed groups, human rights violations are continuing in all ethnic areas under the new Army-backed government of U Thein Sein, including land confiscation, forced relocation, forced labour, extortion, and restriction of movement, rape and intimidation.

For immediate release
Despite the suspension of Burma’s Irrawaddy Myitsone Dam by the country’s president, on March 28 a Chinese border office requested the Kachin State government to allow 500 road construction engineers to enter Kachin State and to import necessary materials for the Myitsone Hydropower Project.

The letter requests the Chief Minister of Kachin State to allow temporary ID cards for the engineers as well as tax-free import of 10,000 tons of cement, trucks, bulldozers and excavators “as CPI is planning to restart the Myitsone Hydropower Project.”

The letter is signed and stamped by the Tengchong-Myitkyina Road Liaison Office.

On September 30 last year, President Thein Sein announced that the Myitsone dam project would be suspended for the length of his term. Since then, however, two hundred Chinese workers have remained at the Myitsone dam site. Over 2,000 villagers that were relocated have not been allowed to return home.