August 22, 2002
Chixoy Dam reparations

While I'm looking for the link, here's a history of another dam, a massacre, and the role of the World Bank. From IRN via CS.

IRN's Chixoy Reparations Campaign
A Debt Unpaid

Never hesitant to exact loan repayment in perpetuity
for projects it has funded (even failed projects), the
World Bank balks at paying its own debts. In the case
of the Chixoy dam, it is a blood debt.

In 1982, the World Bank was teamed with a brutal
dictatorship in Guatemala known to be waging a war of
annihilation against Mayan communities. The village of
Rio Negro stood in the way of the Bank's plans to
construct a hydroelectric dam. After villages refused
to relocate from their ancestral lands, the Bank
averted its eyes when the army massacred some 400
Maya, mostly women and children.

Despite sending numerous missions to oversee the
project during construction, the Bank kept silent
about the massacre until 1996, when human rights
groups forced the issue. The Bank's own internal
investigation then absolved it of responsibility.
Further, Bank officials claim that a program providing
inferior lands more than a decade after such massacres
sufficiently mitigated the survivors' trauma, on the
grounds that their 1980 standard of living has been
restored.

An international campaign is holding the World Bank
accountable to pay reparations for the disasters it
has caused by financing dams and other "development"
boondoggles. This is debt repayment we can endorse!

Posted by Dave at August 22, 2002 12:10 PM