"Mongton Dam Consultations a ‘Rubber Stamp’: Community Groups", 9 June 2015

Civil society organizations in Shan State have called for an immediate halt to a planned hydroelectric dam on the Salween River, accusing an Australian company of helping to push the project ahead without proper public consultation. For the last three months, area villagers have held protests against community consultation meetings organized by Australia’s Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation (SMEC), which has been tasked with assessing the potential environmental and social impact of the Mongton dam...[A]group of 16 Shan civil society organizations claimed that instead of providing a genuine forum to discuss the dam’s impact, the SMEC’s community consultations were being used to expedite the project. “It is becoming apparent that SMEC’s (impact assessment) process is simply a sham, aimed to rubber-stamp the Mongton dam plans, rather than objectively assess the project’s actual impacts...Despite promising to hold ‘comprehensive’ public consultations in impacted townships, SMEC has since last month canceled all public consultations at the township level, instead only holding closed-door meetings with government officials…This appears to be a deliberate strategy to avoid facing community protests against the dam.”