Chinese authorities had to drag a woman from the water as she protested the evacuation of the last town to be submerged by the Three Gorges Dam project, a local campaigner said yesterday.
The last residents in Gaoyang, Hubei Province, were removed from their homes on Tuesday to make way for the reservoir that will expand behind the giant dam that sits astride the Yangtze river.
They are the last of the more than 1.4 million people the government says have been displaced by the dam.
“A few hundred people came to dismantle the houses from [July] 18 to the 22nd [of July],” said a resident of Gaoyang by telephone, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals by authorities.
The final evacuees were deeply unhappy about moving, said the resident, who is also a leading campaigner for the rights of the displaced people.
“Many people have no place to stay now. We have to stay at relatives’ places. The compensation is not what we expected, it is not enough,” the campaigner said.
“One local resident was too upset, she jumped into the water and was rescued by government officials and is still recovering in the hospital,” he said.
Xinhua news agency said Gaoyang, with 988 households, had been cleared to make way for the water to rise, saying it was the last town to be evacuated.
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