Adi activist and engineer Katon Moyong has strongly challenged the national security arguments put forth by the Centre and the Arunachal Pradesh government to justify the proposed Siang Upper Multipurpose Project, asserting that local indigenous communities have opposed damming the river for nearly five decades and will not yield. Moyong warned that the indigenous Adi people are prepared to resist the mega-project at all costs, emphasizing that local consent cannot be bypassed under the guise of strategic defense.
Addressing Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu directly, Moyong declared that the window for negotiations has closed. While he indicated that local communities would not object to hydropower development on smaller tributaries, he reiterated that any dam on the main stem of the Siang remains unacceptable. His remarks come as both the central and state governments defend the multi-billion-dollar project as a strategic buffer against potential downstream risks posed by China’s planned 60-gigawatt Medog hydropower project on the upstream Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet.
Moyong dismissed the cross-border security rationale as a false narrative designed to wrest control of ancestral lands for commercial and political interests. Pointing out that indigenous communities have guarded the frontier long before the modern borders of India and China were established, he argued that if New Delhi is genuinely concerned about Beijing using water as a geopolitical weapon, it should engage the Chinese leadership diplomatically rather than pressuring tribal populations into accepting environmental devastation.
The resistance against damming the Siang dates back 47 years to 1979, when the community’s traditional councils rejected an initial flood-mitigation dam proposal with a pledge not to surrender an inch of land or a drop of water. The current iteration took shape after NITI Aayog proposed in 2017 to merge two separate phases into a single massive storage project. Moyong accused successive governments of steadily altering their justifications and commercializing natural river systems extending from Myanmar to Bhutan to generate party funds and corporate profits.
While Chief Minister Khandu has acknowledged that landowners must be taken on board for the national project, community leaders warn that patience is wearing thin. Moyong cautioned against attempting to enforce the project through intimidation or militarization, citing recent security deployments in the valley and the transfer of Director General of Police Shiv Darshan Singh Jamwal to the state. He concluded that indigenous goodwill has limits, demanding that authorities respect traditional territorial boundaries and prioritize the self-determination of the local population over resource exploitation.
Original Source: https://nenow.in/north-east-news/arunachal-pradesh/you-have-to-exterminate-adi-people-arunachal-activist-katon-moyong-warns-govt-against-siang-dam.html
Category: Arunachal,Northeast News,Top News
Tags:
Publish Date: 2026-11-06 09:31:00
