Cambodia’s Environment Ministry hit back at a report by Human Rights Watch [HRW] on the social, economic and human rights impact of the Lower Sesan 2 Dam, calling it baseless and damaging for the country.
The 138-page report, Underwater: Human Rights Impacts of a China Belt and Road Project in Cambodia, found Cambodian authorities and the state-owned China Huaneng Group had ignored many of the concerns of indigenous and ethnic minority communities over the construction of the US$782 million [$6.08 billion] project.
Neth Pheaktra, secretary of state at the ministry, said the report “emerged as a dissemination of misinformation to hinder the development of Cambodia and serves a hidden political agenda,” claiming that it misled the public about development in Cambodia rather than producing anything revealing about human rights.
“The 400MW Lower Sesan 2 Dam is positively benefiting Cambodia’s economy and people through electricity supply expansion, and has been designed in a way that will produce clean energy in the long run,” he said in a statement released by Agence Kampuchea Presse.
‘The Lower Sesan 2 Dam washed away the livelihoods of indigenous and ethnic minority communities who previously lived communally and mostly self-sufficiently from fishing, forest gathering and agriculture’
John Sifton, HRW
He further urged HRW “to accept the reality by appreciating the endeavor of the government in developing Cambodia with a clear and well-studied strategy.”
HRW had called on the governments of Cambodia and China to rethink the compensation packages for villagers displaced by the dam in the country’s northeast as well as for all their future projects to be built as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
John Sifton, HRW’s Asia advocacy director, said systemic reforms were needed to avoid abuses in future projects.
“The Lower Sesan 2 Dam washed away the livelihoods of indigenous and ethnic minority communities who previously lived communally and mostly self-sufficiently from fishing, forest gathering and agriculture,” Sifton said.
The HRW report said its conclusions were reached after documenting economic, social and cultural rights violations resulting from the displacement of nearly 5,000 people whose families had lived in the area for generations.
The dam—a hydropower project that became operational in 2017 on the Sesan River in Cambodia, 24 kilometres upstream from where it meets the Mekong—was completed by operator, China Huaneng, in 2018 with state-owned Chinese banks providing most of the financing. UCAN
