Harsh lessons: children at Tang Hpre, the centre for the Roman Catholic mission to the isolated Kachin tribes. The village is scheduled to be flooded by a Chinese-built dam. Families are gradually being moved to a new purpose-built settlement. Retrieved from: irishtimes.com
“In northern Burma up to 15,000 subsistence farmers and fishermen will be displaced from their homes when the Myitsone Dam, being built by China to provide electricity to China, is flooded. A special correspondent reports from a village that is to be wiped out
“IN A REMOTE part of Kachin state in northern Burma, or Myanmar, lies the village of Tang Hpre, one of a series of villages that will be underwater in a few years’ time. Nestled between the mountainous Chinese border and the banks of the mighty Irrawaddy River, it is home to
“Fr Jing Paw and his congregation of ethnic Kachin hill people. His redbrick church, built by Irish missionaries in 1952, towers above the shallow banks of the Irrawaddy, a stone monument in a jungle of the wicker-walled thatched houses that radiate from the church compound.
“The nearest big town, Myitkyina, is 45km away, almost two hours via dust roads with sharp bends cut into thick jungle.
“As Fr Jing Paw watches the heavy rain clouds of the wet season gather over hills across the river, he describes the Kachin people’s history, disturbed only by the distant laughter of children. Tang Hpre is a unique village, as the centre for the Roman Catholic mission to the isolated Kachin tribes, and also lying beside the confluence of the N’Mai and Mali – the “brother” and “sister” rivers that are the birthplace of the Irrawaddy. But Tang Hpre is disappearing. Families are being moved to a new settlement that has been built downstream, and in a few years the church, its boarding houses, school and village will be flooded in the name of progress.
“Life is becoming more difficult, in little ways, Fr Jing Paw confides. Do they plant crops for the coming season? Do they build that new school? There is a lot of confusion here, about relocation plans, and also information, compensation and rights. There is fear, too: fear of resisting, of trucks coming in the middle of the night, of labour camps, of speaking out, of the future, of how will they survive in the resettlements, of where they will find food, of how they will earn money. “Our people have been here for years,” explains the elderly Kachin priest. “These are our farms, our mountains. Here we know how to survive, but what will we do in a new place?”
read more: IrishTimes
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