The nation has deployed hundreds of additional security personnel in its remote northeast, authorities said, after youth protesters clashed with police last week over a plan to build a mega-dam to counter a Chinese hydropower project upstream.
Protests in Arunachal Pradesh’s Siang Valley, which borders Tibet, turned violent last week, triggering clashes with police, who made at least 21 arrests.
Police fired tear gas shells, while youth protesters pelted stones and set fire to a police station and an office of the state-owned National Hydroelectric Power Corporation, authorities said.
“Forces are being increased in the places where it is required. We do not want any law and order problems,” SD Singh Jamwal, police chief of Arunachal Pradesh, said on Tuesday.
Sporadic protests have taken place in the Siang Valley in the last two years, the location of the proposed 11,200-megawatt Siang Upper Multipurpose Dam Project, which will be developed by the state-run National Hydroelectric Power Corporation.
Villagers who oppose the project fear that the dam would submerge ancestral villages belonging to the Adi tribe.
“We will keep opposing this dam till they cancel it. If it is constructed, 27 of our ancestral villages will be completely submerged. At least 40 or 50 more will be affected,” Gegong Jijong of the Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum said.
The Siang River flows into Arunachal Pradesh from Tibet, where it is known as the Yarlung Zangbo. China announced plans in December 2024 to build the world’s largest hydropower dam upstream. — Reuters
