The eyewitness report was prepared by a long-time observer of the Three Gorges Project. Because of the lack of freedom of speech in China, the researcher is writing under the pen name of Yi Ming. Some of the main findings of the IRN report are :

• the land and the jobs which were promised to resettlers from rural and urban areas are no longer available
• where land has been offered, it has often turned out to be of inferior quality
• the resettled people are forced to buy housing at a cost which far exceeds the compensation they have been offered.

According to the report, there is a "widespread belief that local officials have used the project as an opportunity to fill their own pockets." Many cases of embezzlement of resettlement funds have been documented. Local authorities also appear to have diverted a large part of the resettlement budget into unrelated investments like luxury hotels and roads.

No independent grievance mechanism exists and the resettlement process is conducted "in an atmosphere of officially orchestrated secrecy and intimidation." The police have used "excessive force" to quell the numerous protests against the resettlement problems and the Three Gorges Project has become "an instrument of repression with widespread human rights abuses."

Civil society recommendations
The Three Gorges Project is being built with major financial support from government export credit agencies and private banks. The export credit agencies of Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Brazil and Canada approved more than $1.4 billion for the project. In a letter to the governments that fund the Three Gorges Project, NGOs from around the world have put forward the following recommendations:

Affected people must be resettled, compensated and rehabilitated in line with acknowledged international standards such as World Bank operational policies. As long as the problems of resettlement have not been resolved in line with international standards, the submergence of the reservoir area must be suspended.

The state should create independent grievance mechanisms for the people affected by the Three Gorges project. People should not suffer repression for protesting peacefully, or for seeking redress for damages they have suffered. The governments who share responsibility for the Three Gorges Project should monitor the implementation of the project and the resettlement efforts during this critical stage.

Export credit agencies should carry out human rights and social impact assessments before taking decisions on credits and guarantees in the future. They should also adopt the recommendations of the World Commission on Dams, which integrate human rights aspects into the planning and decision-making processes of dam projects. These recommendations have been endorsed by 106 NGOs from 34 countries.

Background :
With a planned capacity of 18,200 megawatts, the Three Gorges Dam on China's Yangtze river is the world's largest power project. More than 1.2 million people and according to some estimates, up to 1.9 million people will have to be resettled for the project. Submergence of the reservoir area will start in April 2003 and will continue to 2008. So far, more than 640,000 people have been resettled and tens of thousands will still need to be moved before submergence starts.

Box :
Resettlement in Gaoyang township Yunyang county has a population of 1.23 million, of which 120,000 will have to be resettled for the Three Gorges Project. Resettlers from Yunyang were sent as far as Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Hainan Island. The poor township of Gaoyang, from where about 13,000-15,000 peasants will need to be removed, was early on chosen to serve as a model for resettlement. Yi Ming visited Gaoyang township in August 2002 and reports that the resettlement efforts have run into massive problems. Some of the main problems are :

There are wide discrepancies in the compensation offered. Those who organized their own resettlement received 20,000 Yuan ($2,400), others received 10,800 Yuan ($1,296) and those who went through a government-sponsored resettlement program received as little as 6,800 Yuan ($816).

7,000-8,000 people from Gaoyang were relocated to Tongliang in Sichuan province. There appears to be widespread discontent because they cannot find work. Other people who were resettled to Hubei province say they were not given the land or compensation they were promised. Hundreds of peasants from Gaoyang used their compensation to buy housing in suburbs of Wanxian. After three years, most of them complained that they had not found any work and wanted to go back.

People complain that resettlement funds are being embezzled by local officials. A petition from Hongmiao village in Gaoyang township claimed that 2,300 outsiders were added to the list of inhabitants requiring compensation and that officials issued fake resettlement certificates for bribes of 500 Yuan.

Peasants from Gaoyang began organizing themselves quite early to fight for adequate compensation and contributed to a fund to allow leaders to travel to Chongqing and Beijing to voice their concerns. Some 10,000 peasants supported a petition in July 1997 and there has been a steady stream of protests, petitions and delegations sent from Gaoyang ever since. Some 300 peasants attacked resettlement officials in September 1999. In 2000, over one thousand peasants staged public protests. When Yi Ming visited the township, people were still organizing protests and managed to send another delegation to the Three Gorges resettlement office in Beijing.

Resettlement officials gave public assurances that the complaints of the peasants would be addressed. Yet the township authorities summoned riot police to quell protests and some people claim that petitioners are being punished under the rules to prosecute supporters of the Falun Gong sect. According to one source, the police arrested the delegation that was travelling to Beijing in August 2002, accused them of belonging to Falun Gong and sent them home. In February 2001, two elderly peasants who had helped coordinate the protests were arrested and later given three year prison sentences. At least five other peasants from Gaoyang are also serving prison sentences.

In August 2002, nearly 900 people who had returned from being resettled lived in tents and shacks near the former township and refused to leave. According to sources, local police ascended on them three times, burning their shelters and beating them so they would leave before the area is submerged. Yi Ming reports that people were now afraid of speaking out, but that "everyone in Gaoyang seemed in a state of barely suppressed fury and resentment.

Further information :
Doris Shen, IRN, Berkeley, phone +1 510 848 1155, doris@irn.org
Peter Bosshard, IRN, Zurich, phone +41 1 491 70 21, powerfinance@irn.org

The full resettlement report, background information on the Three Gorges Project, video footage of the resettlement process and photos of the Three Gorges area are available at www.irn.org. The report includes a map of the project area. The NGO letter to the governments funding the Three Gorges Project is also available at www.irn.org.

International River Network is an international coalition