A global civil rights coalition has strongly condemned what it describes as an escalating campaign of arrests, criminal cases and paramilitary deployment against Indigenous Adi communities in Arunachal Pradesh, amid continued resistance to the proposed Siang Upper Multipurpose Project.
The International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL) said communities defending the Siang River are being targeted for opposing the planned 11,000 to 12,500-megawatt dam, a project critics claim could displace around 150,000 people from their ancestral lands in the Siang River valley.
More than a year of blocking surveys
According to the coalition, valley residents have for over a year blocked survey efforts and pre-feasibility studies for the project, staging peaceful protests against what they describe as the forced conduct of surveys on their land. The confrontation centres on one of the largest hydropower proposals in the country — a project the state government describes as being of national importance, while villagers argue it threatens their homes, farmland and cultural heritage. The long-running dispute has been tracked by Abotani TV in earlier reporting on the Siang dam controversy.
Clashes, a bandh and preventive detentions
The coalition said protests intensified amid a heavy deployment of police and paramilitary personnel in the project area. Villagers clashed with paramilitary forces in Geku, while protesters in Uggeng village were allegedly subjected to a lathi-charge, according to reports cited by the group. News broadcasts from the protest sites were reportedly blocked, and the Adi Students’ Union staged a 12-hour bandh to protest the heavy security presence in the region.
The crackdown has also extended to detentions. The Upper Siang district administration ordered the preventive detention of Omak Paron, Oson Paron, Adum Tayom and Okut Paloh under the Arunachal Pradesh Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 2014 — a move local groups say makes meaningful dialogue impossible when community advocates are locked up.
The water contest with China
The project has taken on strategic weight as India responds to hydropower development by China on the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet — the same river that enters Arunachal Pradesh as the Siang. Supporters of the dam cite national security and clean-energy arguments. Opponents, including the state Congress which has opposed the project as a looming ecological disaster in a seismically active zone, counter that China’s upstream activity cannot justify overriding the free, prior and informed consent of local communities — a position the Congress reiterated in its recent memorandum to the party leadership.
With the valley’s communities refusing to allow surveys and the administration refusing to loosen its grip, the Siang impasse remains one of the most combustible issues in the state. Whether dialogue or force decides the outcome will shape not just the fate of a dam, but the future of the Adi homeland itself.
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