(December 21, 2005) Police in eastern China detained 40 people who had demanded to be sent back to their homes in the southwest which they were forced to leave to make way for the giant Three Gorges dam, a rights group said on the weekend.

BEIJING – The 40 petitioned the city government in Qingdao last week on behalf of 1,119 people resettled in the eastern port from the area around Chongqing, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said in a statement. They complained about high food prices, a shortage of farming equipment and difficulties understanding the local dialect in Shandong province, which had about 20,000 migrants from other provinces, many of whom came against their will, it said. A city government official contacted by Reuters denied all knowledge of such an incident. China has begun resettling more than a million people who must leave their homes to make way for the giant dam on the Yangtze River and a 600-km (365-mile) lake behind it, Chinese officials have said. In the last year, there have been sporadic reports of protests by villagers unwilling to leave, unhappy with the compensation offered or outraged over local government officials syphoning off relocation funds. Construction of the dam, the world’s biggest hydroelectric power project expected to cost 204 billion yuan ($24.65 billion), began in 1993 and is scheduled for completion in 2009. China says the dam is needed to contain the Yangtze’s devastating annual floods and to meet future power demand. Critics say the project, first planned decades ago, is not a practical solution to either problem and could cause severe pollution and silting by slowing the river’s flow.

Reuters News Service, December 21, 2005