PASIGHAT (The Thursday Times) — India has sent hundreds of extra security personnel into Arunachal Pradesh after protests against a planned mega-dam near the Chinese border turned violent, and police have arrested 69 people under the state’s anti-terror law.
Inspector General of Police Hibu Tamang told Scroll on Tuesday that 69 people had been arrested and four detained in Upper Siang, Siang and East Siang districts under the Arunachal Pradesh Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, and that 55 cases had been registered. Reuters had earlier reported at least 21 arrests.
The violence broke out on Friday in Pasighat after police fired tear gas at protesters. Young protesters threw stones and set fire to a police station and an office of the state-run National Hydroelectric Power Corporation, which is to build the dam. The homes of two local legislators, Ninong Ering and Oni Panyang, and of the state’s Bharatiya Janata Party chief, Kaling Moyong, were also attacked, a senior police officer said.
“Forces are being increased in the places where it is required. We do not want any law and order problem,” the state’s police chief, SD Singh Jamwal, told Reuters.
‘Our villages will be submerged’
The Siang Upper Multipurpose Project, put at between 11,200 and 12,500 megawatts, has faced on-and-off protests for two years. Members of the Adi tribe fear it will drown their ancestral villages. “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 told Reuters, adding that opponents would keep up their campaign until the project was cancelled.
A dam to answer a dam
New Delhi wants the project as a counter to China’s plan, announced in December 2024, to build the world’s largest hydropower dam upstream on the Yarlung Zangbo, as the river is called in Tibet. Indian officials fear Beijing could use its control of the river as a weapon. China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet, which it calls Zangnan, while India says the state is an integral part of its territory.
Arunachal’s chief minister, from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP, has called the Chinese project an existential threat and said his government would protect national interests while respecting the rights of the people of the Siang Valley.
The unrest adds to tension across India’s northeast, where violence in Manipur has escalated in recent weeks.
