Bombing and displacing

As described in the beginning of this two-part article series (Kiik Reference Kiik2025), fourteen bombs exploded by the Myitsone Dam construction offices in early 2010. After several years of peaceful anti-dam resistance, someone tried to stop the dam construction by violence. The Burmese military-state leaders responded by speeding up the forced resettlement of the project area residents.

Villagers on both the western and eastern sides of the large Irrawaddy River experienced the bombing and its immediate violent aftermath – as part of the dangers of life under a dictatorship and in an armed conflict area. A Western bank youth told me:

After the bomb blasts, the military arrested, beat up, and interrogated villagers, tens of youths, and anti-dam leaders, including local church leaders, assuming that the bombs could not have been placed without local villagers’ help. The police announced large rewards to anyone who provided information. Military intelligence took a village leader and his wife “into investigation” for two weeks, torturing them. Eventually, the military-state acknowledged that they could not find who had put the bombs. No one was ever charged. In line with Kachin nationalists’ broader conspiratorial analyses (Kiik Reference Kiik2020b), some Kachin media and activists have kept suggesting – without evidence – that the bombing was a pro-dam conspiracy to justify relocating the villages. According to knowledgeable local accounts that I have heard, that claim of conspiracy is false.

At the time of the bombing in early 2010, a Kachin news site reported four deaths among the project workers. Many other news sites and research publications repeated this claim in the following years. However, actually, only one injury has been confirmed (O’Connor Reference O’Connor2011, 13). Reportedly, “in the panic, a Chinese worker was injured as he fell from a building” (Yang 2012). Project offices and vehicles were damaged; a few hundred project workers were evacuated. A video from the site documented the destruction.Footnote ¹

In response to the bombing, the authorities and companies sped up the forced resettlement – becoming more coercive about resettling a few of the area’s villages into two new company-built “model villages,” to make way for the planned dam’s water reservoir. Kim (Reference Kim2021, 179) describes this:

Most directly in response to the bombing, junta authorities told the residents of a small village – Mazup – that they must move immediately; around 60 households were told to pack up and move the next morning. People were allegedly “chased like animals by the Burmese Army, and sent onto the [Burmese-military-allied] Asia World company’s truck” (Zuo Reference Zuo2012, 35; Kyi Phyo Wai 2012). A village activist described:

In the next weeks, the authorities resettled two villages on the eastern riverbank to a yet unfinished relocation village where people faced much difficulty. A local resident recalled:

In contrast, the largest local village – the western riverbank’s Tanghpre (Tang Hpre) – was relocated more gradually, in 2010–2011. A Tanghpre village religious leader described:

The regime began pressuring Tanghpre residents more indirectly. It bulldozed the Tanghpre school and closed the clinic. By contrast, at the resettlement village, the project companies gave out free rice bags and new houses on a first-come, first-serve basis. Trust among residents eroded, as families worried about others taking the best spots in the relocation village, and increasingly decided to relocate.

A village anti-dam activist recalled:

Finally, gold mining companies seemed to seal Tanghpre’s fate. A resident described:

Many complain that they were never properly compensated. China Power Investment (CPI) released compensation funds, but the Burmese business conglomerate Asia World took charge of calculating and distributing the money (Kachin Development Networking Group [KDNG] 2009). Locals have often alleged that officials from the regional government and Asia World stole compensation funds. A villager detailed:

Families faced difficulty after running out of the compensation money, while also having lost their livelihoods. For example, a middle-aged resident listed her worries to me: “What will happen without the money that my family members send from working in the jade mines? What if the dam breaks? What’s the future of schooling for my children?”

Some residents turned to mining more gold. This was described, for example, by a journalist (Larmer Reference Larmer2011) who spoke with a gold panner at Tanghpre:

Despite being resettled, some people on the western riverbank kept resisting, at least mentally. In mid-2011, prior to the Myitsone mega-project’s suspension, a relocated villager told me:

On the eastern riverbank, too, resistance soon strengthened, ironically because people from its relatively smaller villages had been combined into one bigger relocation village. A local resident recalled:

Thus, local villages experienced the Myitsone mega-project as a land grab or a semi-forced resettlement scheme. Even after almost all the residents had been resettled, some anti-dam resistance continued to simmer, despite the military-state’s repression.

Suspending the villages

The Myitsone mega-project was soon suspended – but so too were the local residents left “suspended”. Life in their “suspended villages” has continued with both old and new divisions and struggles.

The project’s fall in late 2011 – when the Burmese regime one-sidedly decided to halt the Myitsone Dam’s construction – coincided with other dramatic changes in Kachin and Burma. Burma moved forward with democratizing reforms, alongside widespread economic and livelihood improvement. The Kachin nation struggled with the resumed war between Burmese military and the Kachin Independence Organization. This war displaced a hundred thousand villagers – a large fraction of the less-than-a-million Kachin people in Burma.

Despite halting the Myitsone Dam’s construction, the authorities and companies did not allow the two thousand relocated residents to return to their home villages and ordered them to remain in the two new company-built “model villages.” Most residents live in these two relocation villages until now.

The two resettlement villages are on opposite shores of the Irrawaddy River. The relocation village on the western riverbank is Aung Myin Thar. Currently, over two thousand residents live there, mostly relocated from the relatively large Tanghpre (Tang Hpre) village and from the smaller villages of Mazup (Mali Zup) and Lahpye (Lahpre, Kahpre, Padang (Pa)). On the eastern bank is Mali Yang, with several hundred residents, resettled from Dawng Ban (Tawngban), Awng Ja Yang (Shwe Bar), and Nhtan Yang (In Htan Yang), living alongside the site’s original village, Ding Ga Zup (Mali Yang). Figure 1 shows a map of all these villages. (Mungchying Rawt Jat [MRJ] 2013; Hkawn Ja Aung 2014; Transparency and Accountability Network Kachin State [TANKS] 2020).

Figure 1. Map of Myitsone villages. The six original villages are upstream, while the two “model” relocation villages are downstream.

Source: TANKS 2020, 32; modified by an anonymous colleague and the author.

Both “model” relocation villages have tight rows of identical wooden two-room houses, built without much care. A resident described: “They cut the wood from nearby forests but only used low-quality wood to build these houses. They took good-quality wood elsewhere.” Another villager described: “We keep repairing these houses. So much water, wind, and cold come through. When the winds come, the roof falls off.” Straight streets divide the rows of fenced house compounds, as shown below in Figure 2.

Figure 2. A street in a Myitsone Dam resettlement village.

Source: Motlagh 2012.

Before the relocation, resident families relied on farming, gardening, and mining gold. They had hillside shifting-cultivation farms, growing rice. Many earned income by gardening corn, tomatoes, bean, and watermelon, and raising pigs and cows. Many sold bamboo from their plantations. A major income source had long been mining gold. Children, too, mined to help pay school fees. Especially when food and money ran out, women harvested forest vegetables, fruits, and mushrooms (Hkawn Ja Aung 2014, 36). Sometimes, people fished. One villager recalled living as a child in Tanghpre:

The relocation disconnected residents from their agricultural livelihoods (MRJ 2013; Hkawn Ja Aung 2014; TANKS 2020). Asia World company built Aung Myin Thar on rocky wasteland, where a few years earlier a small hydropower dam had flooded and flushed away topsoil and nutrients. Thus, growing food was almost impossible. Residents were made dependent on the Chinese company’s rice donations. The new house compounds had too little space for growing vegetables and fruits. Thus, one had to start buying everything with money. Having no space for cattle to graze, people returned their cows and buffaloes to old pastures near the dam construction. Residents lost their bamboo plantations, with little or no compensation. Moreover, when the people of Aung Myin Thar relocation village cut wood or did shifting cultivation on nearby mountain slopes, they clashed against the Forest Department, especially because, in 2016, the government created a new nature conservation area around the nearby N’hkai mountain.

The relocation divided the village populations in both old and new ways. For example, the relocation preserved the ethnic and religious patterns in village society. The local-minority ethnic Bamars and other Buddhists tend to live in a separate part of the resettlement village from the Christian Kachins, who make up the majority of the local population. Among the Christians, in turn, the Catholics and the Baptists, as well as smaller groups such as the ethnic Lisu Christians, all settle around their respective churches. As in any other village or town, Sundays continue to bring local Kachins together, church-by-church. The dam project financed the building of altogether four Christian churches and two Buddhist monasteries in the two resettlement villages.

A new division among local people stemmed from the junta setting up the two relocation villages on lands that the nearby villages’ residents were already using. This led to land disputes between the original landowners and the relocated people (TANKS 2020). One resettled person described how she felt like “an invader herself” when arriving in Aung Myin Thar, because locals were resisting relinquishing their farmlands, which the Myitsone project had confiscated for the new resettlement villages. In Mali Yang, some original residents whose land had been given to the relocated people proceeded to sell that disputed land to gold mining businesspeople. This led to a land conflict that still continues now. Tensions also remain over the dam project having compensated the relocated people more than the resettlement sites’ earlier owners and residents. For example, in an activist video report (Environmental and Resources Concern Group—Kachin State 2022), an original resident of Mali Yang complains that the resettled people got new houses built for them, with TVs and more, but the earlier residents got nothing; even the land taken for the Chinese worker dorms was not properly compensated. A village activist described such new communal tensions:

A minority of Tanghpre villagers soon began moving back-and-forth between Aung Myin Thar and Tanghpre, despite the government having designated most of the construction areas as off-limits. In 2012 and later, the authorities sometimes briefly arrested and evicted those people. Some residents even began to reoccupy their Tanghpre homes, even though the Burmese military would sometimes harass them. By contrast, the former residents of Lahpye village have continuously been blocked from returning to their original homes. At Tanghpre, people could eventually return, but much original property had degraded or been taken, often uprooted by gold mining companies, for whom locals were working as laborers (Springate-Baginski et al. Reference Springate-Baginski, Forsyth, Tsen and Aung2016, 7; KDNG 2011). A local activist report (MRJ 2013) bemoans that people turned to “sifting through toxic slurry of cyanide laced gold sludge.”

Torn between these two villages, kin were sometimes drawn apart. For example, some older women returned to Tanghpre, including when their husbands had died, and the offspring stayed in the resettlement village, especially with children needing to stay for school there. When parents needed to return to Tanghpre to farm, they sometimes left their children alone in Aung Myin Thar. A church elder blamed both the people themselves and a junta conspiracy for breaking the community:

Alongside the dam project, the junta authorities gave out gold mining concessions, leading to the use and sale of narcotics, with growing addiction hurting the families and villages (Aung and Limond Reference Aung and Limond2015). A church elder recalled: “Before, we only had a few drug users—mostly old men used opium as medicine. But gold mining brought a flood of drugs. People got to buy easily, and our youths got addicted.” A village activist added:

Narcotics have become widely available on both riverbanks. A Mali Yang resident told me: “Because our area is [the Burmese-military-allied militia leader] Lasang Awng Wa’s territory, there is no police. Opium is sold in the banana plantations, in the villages…” A visitor to Aung Myin Thar described: “People kept offering me amphetamine, black opium. Some girls put it inside their drinks to feel good.” An Aung Myin Thar resident recalled:

A village activist described a broader social crisis:

However, as years have passed, people have also increasingly adapted to the life in Aung Myin Thar. Among improvements, permanent water supply began when the dam developers built water storage tanks and pipelines. Residents often point to having a high school, better healthcare, and permanent electricity (Hkawn Ja Aung 2014, 46). Children fall ill less. A minority of residents opened little eateries at the nearby creek-side leisure spot, popular among Myitkyina townspeople. Some have built new stone houses. People from elsewhere have migrated to live in Aung Myin Thar. A church elder summarized: “At first, we Kachins did not know how to live here, on this stony land; now we know.” However, because local farmland and job opportunities remain limited, a minority have returned to Tanghpre to farm, and some have left to earn money in the Kachin area’s famous jade mines or across the border in China.

Compared to Aun Myin Thar, the eastern riverbank has remained more strictly repressed – just as before. The eastern riverbank’s Mali Yang relocation village has better land for farming than Aung Myin Thar does, but unlike the Tanghpre people, its resettled households never got to return to their original villages for farming or mining (TANKS 2020, 26). Their village areas became dam construction sites, with concrete structures still protected by armed guards and a military checkpoint. Having lost grazing pastures, people had to sell their cattle (Hkawn Ja Aung 2014, 42). Residents needed to buy new land plots to farm, and walk a few hours to get there.

Moreover, the eastern riverbank remains less connected and poorer. For example, Mali Yang has weaker road connection to the capital city Myitkyina. Students go to school by passenger boat across the Irrawaddy River to the western riverbank (TANKS 2020, 5). Hkawn Ja Aung (2014, 45) notes the “struggling” of Mali Yang residents, citing some of them:

Thus, everyday livelihood struggles and social disruptions have shaped lives in these “suspended” villages, while debates over the future of the mega-project have continued on the national and international levels.

Caught between nations

Just as the original villages had before, the two new relocation villages have remained somewhat disconnected from various outside forces, including during Burma’s decade of partial democratization. These outside forces include the Chinese state-owned company, the Burmese government, inter-governmental organizations, and the nonresident Kachin activists.

After the sudden project suspension, the Chinese state company remained a presence in the resettled villages, trying to both charm and divide the residents. For years after the project’s suspension, the company has continued distributing free rice, water, and electricity, renovating buildings, organizing clinics, and giving students scholarships. Sometimes, they would come to churches, bringing presents. A local anti-dam campaigner told me: “CPI was doing great organizing: They would donate for or join every village activity, from soccer games to church events.” When delivering the rice, they would give speeches, alongside the village chief. Another anti-dam campaigner recalled:

Diplomacy by the Chinese state and company grew stronger but did not replace violence, fear, and resistance. For example, after two Tanghpre women who had led local anti-dam resistance gave an interview to local media, the company cut their rice rations. A resident told me: “People worry that if they speak up against the dam, their rice supply will also be cut.” A village activist herself has complained that her fellow villagers do not help by sharing rice (Hong Reference Hong2023).

Because the project has only been suspended – not stopped forever – the worry and rumors about whether dam construction might resume have kept occasionally resurfacing in Burmese and Kachin media. Rumors have repeatedly surfaced that the project is about to resume, setting off public alarm. For example, in mid-2012, anti-dam activists and media published “a leaked government document” that revealed that the dam project was to resume. Supposedly, the local Chinese authorities requested the Kachin State government to provide temporary ID cards for “500 road construction engineers” and to permit the import of “1,000 tons of diesel, 200 tons or petrol, 10,000 tons of cement, 5 bulldozers, 6 excavators, 8 trucks, and 20 cars”. This news was widely re-published, but the Kachin State government stated that this “leaked document” was a forgery.

In this uncertainty, the resettled Myitsone residents, too, have been left to observe and speculate. For example, ethnic Kachin staff of the mega-project have often relayed to the villagers whether the Chinese company seems to be giving up on the dam or not. By 2017, a leading Tanghpre anti-dam campaigner concluded to me: “The Chinese gave up.” But then, a closely aligned campaigner expressed surprise at such a statement: “They are still trying to build the dam. See, they restored the military checkpoint here!” In 2019, Myitsone residents noted that the Chinese staff have stopped coming to the church – perhaps the company finally gave up? Rumors spread that the Chinese companies had taken down all their signs at Myitsone. An educator wondered: “Maybe this means that they have given up and are leaving?”

The project’s opponents were hoping that Burma’s beloved “Mother” and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi would cancel the dam project fully, once her party came to power in 2016. She had spoken out against the dam since 2011 and during her 2015 election campaign. Indeed, there was broader faith in her leadership, and some local anti-dam activists voted for her party. Speaking in 2013, a local church elder told me: “If after coming to power, Aung San Suu Kyi still does not speak about the Kachin war, she will have betrayed us.” Right after the historic 2015 election, where the democracy icon’s party won a landslide, another local church elder rejoiced: “Now, the Myitsone Dam cannot be resumed. Aung San Suu Kyi knows that if she resumes it, the 88 Generation [Burmese political activists] will rise up.”

However, the limbo situation continued after Aung San Suu Kyi’s victory. Apparently, Burma’s leaders did not want to clash with Beijing – and face its compensation demands – by outright canceling the project. The Kachin war also continued, with the new government staying largely silent.

Such disconnect from the Burmese central government and its undertakings was seen when a Western-led international development organization entered the Myitsone controversy. Namely, in 2016, the World Bank began a two-year “strategic environmental assessment” of Burma’s hydropower sector (International Finance Corporation 2020).

This international assessment’s final consultation in Myitkyina took place in early 2018 at an upscale riverside hotel. As I arrived in the morning, I saw around twenty Tanghpre village and other protesters standing at the gate of the hotel compound, condemning this workshop for supporting the Myitsone dam project. Security and police did not let them in. In the social-media feeds of Facebook, I saw that some Kachin anti-dam activists had been inviting everyone to come protest.

Workshop participants were largely people who were close to the Burmese government, but a few Kachin nationalist voices dominated the discussion sessions. Across Burma, much civil society had been boycotting this national hydropower assessment, calling it merely greenlighting for big business and government, rather than a real consultation. There was no one from among the Myitsone village leaders or anti-dam activists. The meeting was in Burmese language. The World Bank project staff gave slideshow presentations on the assessment’s objectives and results: biodiversity, river ecology, socio-economics, food security, transportation, climate, and beyond. During discussion times, most participants stayed silent, while only the few outspoken Kachin participants commented. For example: How much hydropower do we, in Kachin State, actually need? Big dams versus small dams. Hoover Dam versus Three Gorges Dam – US federalism versus Mao’s dream. Burma needs Federalism – power-sharing and resource-sharing between the central government and the ethnic States.

During the tea break, the workshop facilitators invited the protestors in. A leading Kachin activist walked in smiling, followed by a few protesters and their videographers, accompanied by a group of Burmese police officers. The protestors spoke and read out Burmese-language letters against the Myitsone Dam at some length. Most workshop participants stayed quiet. At some point, several people left, including a few government staff. Finally, the workshop’s female facilitator gave a female village protestor close hugs and thanked her loudly. The protestors left and the meeting continued.

Some of these village protestors later expressed confusion about what the World Bank was doing. One village activist recalled: “Some people asked us: ‘Why do you protest here? This is not CPI [China Power Investment Company].’ We answered: ‘Because the World Bank is the main funder for CPI.’” A leading Kachin activist had told the village activists so. However, this idea about some “funding” was a misunderstanding. Discussing such disconnects, a Kachin civil-society staff summarized:

This workshop was an example of how the new, democratizing, and internationalizing Burma still kept much distance between the Myitsone residents and the central state discussions – albeit this distance was not as violently created as during the previous military regime. It also showed some continuous distrust, disconnect, and lack of communication between village residents and more distant outside and international forces.

Villagers versus activists

Living in limbo after the project suspension contributed to tensions between the Myitsone residents and outside Kachin activists.

A key point of contention among the diverse anti-dam activists has long been over who is “more grassroots” – who does or does not “talk with the villagers.” Both the local village-based and the outside Kachin activists have been contesting among themselves who was organizing and networking truly based on the villagers’ own plans versus whose activities were merely bringing “outside designs” into the villages.

This contention stems from criticisms emerging from village residents. For example, a Myitsone elder told me that certain organizations and activists are “good, because they support us in our own community made plan,” but criticized others:

A Myitsone-area village activist similarly recalled:

Residents’ attitudes toward lowland Burmese anti-dam campaigners have been mixed, just like they have been toward the Kachin activists and leaders. I document elsewhere (Kiik Reference Kiik2020a, 260–261, 264) both thankful and distrustful views. In contrast to the critical comments toward some outside Kachin activists, a village activist once praised to me a group of lowland Burmese activists who helped the village anti-dam resistors to network widely in Yangon city and beyond:

A few years after the project’s suspension, a Myitsone elder told me:

Interviewing local residents, Kim (Reference Kim2017, 11), too, found some disconnect from outside activists. Only “a handful of villagers” knew personally a prominent city-based Kachin activist. Moreover, some expressed distrust:

Among reasons for such gaps between local residents and outside Kachin activists have been socioeconomic and city–village divisions. For example, Kim (Reference Kim2021, 293) discusses how one young Tanghpre village activist helped bridge such socioeconomic class, activist–villager, and city–village disconnects:

Village anti-dam activists have observed how, in the years after the suspension, Kachin politicians wanted to be seen as if leading the anti-dam movement. One village activist criticized: “Some Kachin CSOs want to take the leading role, but not the high risk.” Another village activist recalled a protest in Myitkyina city:

A Myitsone elder described to me the change of attitude from Kachin leaders, compared to the early 2000s when the leaders ignored Tanghpre villagers’ pleas for help. Speaking, this elder’s eyes filled with tears, voice increasingly expressing contempt:

The above gaps between villagers and outsiders show social divisions beyond ethnicity, such as spatial distance between city and villages, and some continuous differences in priorities between village residents and outsiders.

A golden dictatorship

Reversing a decade of democratization, Burma’s military coup in early 2021 pushed the Myitsone confluence area and its people deeper into a countrywide wave of natural-resource extraction and grabbing, especially into a gold mining boom. This new wave of struggles, resistance, compliance, and divisions has been reshaping the Myitsone villages.

Already before the coup, powerful Kachin business people were gaining more influence in the Myitsone area. Leading tycoons with military-political connections bought up land along the river, road, and confluence. Their activities and stated plans include rubber plantations, ecotourism, and industrialized gold mining. An early grabber of land was a junta-allied Kachin tycoon, Hka Mai Tang, whose company has long dominated in the gold and other mining industries across Kachin areas. A Myitsone resident told me:

The 2021 military coup started a new era of dictatorship, economic decline, and natural-resource grabbing, contributing to a boom of gold mining in Burma – including around the Myitsone confluence. For example, a Kachin activist report (Myanmar Mining Watch Network [MMWN] 2022, 24–25) cites a Myitsone-area resident on why locals turned to mining:

Since the coup, various Kachin, Chinese, Burmese, and mixed-ownership companies have expanded and industrialized dozens of gold mining operations across Kachin areas. As has been the case since the 1990s, the Burmese military, military-allied militias, and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) all tax such mining. The mining has become more intense than before, with companies using backhoes to dig up large areas of riversides, both around the Myitsone confluence and beyond, often employing impoverished workers coming from lowland Burma. The companies tend to destroy riverbanks and fill river water with dug-up soil and toxic waste. Workers use toxic mercury, often with their bare hands, to glean the gold from the soil. Just like happened in the previous few decades, narcotics use has spread among workers, including local youths (MMWN 2022). Figure 3 shows gold mining at the confluence.

Figure 3. Gold mining at the confluence.

Source: 74 Media.

The junta-allied companies have sidelined local residents from the mining. A Kachin activist report (MMWN 2022, 26) cites a local female leader:

Resisting the resource grabs or the environmental destruction became harder again since the coup restored military dictatorship. A local resident explained:

Around the Myitsone confluence, gold mining spread on all riversides. On the Irrawaddy’s eastern riverbank, the leaders of the local Burmese military-allied Kachin militia began mining with large machinery. They have continued to block the dam project’s resettled residents from accessing their old homes (KSPVN 2023). Elsewhere, some businesspeople have been mining gold on land that they reportedly bought under the guise of digging fishing ponds.

The Kachin activist and media outcry has focused especially on a prominent Kachin jade-mining tycoon – not least because his company has been mining right next to the confluence. Some Aung Myin Thar and Tanghpre residents, alongside some Kachin activists and critics, have tried to oppose this operation – saying that nature is destroyed, the river might get diverted onto the village, and people’s lands are being grabbed (Fishbein et al. Reference Fishbein, Tu Hkawng, Nu Lusan and Naw2022; Myanmar Mining Watch Network [MMWN] 2022).

Critics say that this tycoon grabs lands and resources through violent threats. For example, an anti-mining activist report (Myanmar Resource Watch 2024, 15) claims that the company seized “Tanghpre villagers’ horticultural land at a lower price than its current value by threatening to commence mining in those locations.” A local resident has told journalists that the tycoon came to his land to negotiate a purchase price only after the company had already started digging on his property one month earlier (Fishbein et al. Reference Fishbein, Tu Hkawng, Nu Lusan and Naw2022). One local opponent of gold mining was beaten up by a group of people at knife-point.

Supporters of the tycoon dispute such criticism. For example, a local supporter of the tycoon rejected the claim that the tycoon is mining in large areas beyond his official concession:

The tycoon himself promises to restore the landscape after the mining, by filling the pits and planting trees. A supporter of his affirmed: “He is not destroying the confluence the way that the dam reservoir would have.”

The controversy extends beyond gold mining, because this tycoon has accumulated large areas around Myitsone, logged forests, blocked roads, and built fences. He declared some lands his own nature protection area. One opponent of this businessman’s land accumulation described:

As the above quotes suggest, village residents have become divided over the tycoon’s land accumulation and the gold mining rush. Some Myitsone-area Baptist and Catholic church leaders have turned silent or defended the tycoon. One Kachin person observed: “After a few church leaders shut up, the people also distanced themselves from the resistance. Because in Kachin villages, the people always follow the church leaders.” Moreover, “some of our villagers became brokers for the mining companies,” a local village activist condemned. Another local resident described a split in their community:

Opponents of this tycoon’s mining operation have been facing not only the pro-mining local residents and the Burmese military-state but also Kachin business, political, and religious leaders. All Kachin mining tycoons rely on close ties to both the Burmese military and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO). The KIO has officially approved this tycoon’s concession. Some central Kachin church leaders and other ethnonational leaders, too, have defended the tycoon. He is seen as a fellow Kachin, a cultural patron, and an ethnonational hero. He has donated much to the churches, funded cultural, educational, and humanitarian activities, and donated land to the Baptist convention’s theological college. One Kachin observer claimed: “Villagers want to criticize him but are afraid to make such a powerful enemy.”

While unique, this tycoon and Myitsone are also only a part of much wider land and resource struggles across Kachin areas and further across Burma. Well-connected businesspeople have used the post-coup opportunities to grab lands and resources – for mining, logging, plantations, and so on – accumulating wealth mostly only for themselves. Just like at Myitsone, amid the economic decline since the coronavirus pandemic and the coup, countless village communities have split internally over whether to seek much-needed livelihoods from selling and leasing their lands for the resource extraction projects or to resist and protect one’s home and farmland. One Kachin critic summarized:

Thus, Myitsone has become engulfed in a broader wave of gold mining, land and resource grabbing, and ecological destruction in Burma under the new dictatorship. Despite being in a unique and “sacred” (Kiik Reference Kiik2024) location, the Myitsone villages now remain part of broader patterns of rural struggle, resistance, compliance, and division.

Suspensions

Ever since the Myitsone mega-project was suspended, the project area’s resettled rural residents, too, have lived in “suspension.” For over a decade now, the Burmese authorities and Chinese companies have not permitted the two thousand relocated people to return to their original homes and have left them in limbo in the two newly built resettlement villages.

Certain disconnects have been at the heart of this life in limbo. Most broadly, local residents were uprooted and thus severed from their land, home, and long-term livelihoods. Other disconnects were created when residents were pitted against one another during the resettlement process. Around the two “model” resettlement villages, lands were confiscated from original owners to give to the relocated people, creating tensions. Kin were further torn apart after the mega-project’s suspension, when some older residents returned to farm in their original village, while children stayed in the resettlement village for schooling.

Ethnicity matters – but does not define this story of rural repression, resistance, and compliance. For two decades now, the ethnic Kachin village resistors have allied with Kachin nationalist activists to resist the mega-project but have also had their frustrations and different priorities. Some local village residents and elders have appreciated certain lowland Burmese activists more than the fellow Kachin organizations. Moreover, some of the tycoons who have grabbed lands and are mining gold around Myitsone are ethnic Kachins, dispossessing and repressing fellow Kachins. These Kachin tycoons collaborate and ally not only with the Burmese military-state but also with the Kachin revolutionary military-state, diverse church leaders, and other Kachin national leaders.

The experiences of the Myitsone villages are emblematic of military-ruled Burma’s broader history. The violent natural-resource grabbing at Myitsone is only one case among countless such cases across the Kachin areas and across Burma. Under decades of dictatorship, millions of villagers have dealt with fear and a sense of powerlessness, as the Myitsone residents expressed in their quotes in Part 1 (Kiik Reference Kiik2025) of this article series. Despite the autocratic repression, some village residents at Myitsone started anti-dam organizing, laying the foundation for all of the later and much broader Kachin and Burmese anti-dam resistance. The resistance eventually spread widely but could not halt the project amid a repressive military dictatorship. Only Burma’s democratizing reforms, especially since 2010, eased the violence and fear, while creating enough political freedom to create a countrywide outcry and to direct anti-dam lobbying toward senior regime leaders. Thus, the Myitsone mega-project’s suspension became a symbol of the country’s democratization.

The Myitsone villages have remained “suspended” alongside broader Burma. Life in Burma improved greatly for most people thanks to the reforms of the 2010s but, at the same time, many effects of the Burmese military’s repression and resource grabs remained. The Myitsone residents – and a hundred thousand Kachin war refugees – were left waiting. After one decade of partial democratization, the dictatorship resumed. Since Burma’s military coup in early 2021, the Myitsone villagers and their activist allies have found it again much harder to resist the resource grabbing, such as by gold mining tycoons. The gold mining and other resource extraction projects have led to internal conflicts inside villages across Burma, including at Myitsone, amid broader economic desperation. The current Burmese junta’s leaders have talked about resuming the Myitsone mega-project – but the Kachin Independence Organization has recently conquered most territories around where the seven mega-dams were to be built. As with Burma’s long wars, the struggle over the future of Myitsone continues.