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ILISU DAM SCANDAL: MPs BACK CAMPAIGNERS

12 Jul 2000

Campaigners against the proposed Ilisu Dam in Turkey [1] were “delighted” today by a hard-hitting report from the House of Commons International Development Committee,which slams the Government over its plan to give dam builders Balfour Beatty a $200 million export credit to build the dam. FOE Policy Director Tony Juniper said that the report“vindicates every criticism we have made of this miserable project” and called on the Prime Minister to announce at once that the dam would not get ECGD backing.

The Report (“ECGD, Developmental Issues and the Ilisu Dam”) states (all quotes from Summary of Conclusions and Recommendations):

• “the Ilisu Dam was from the outset conceived and planned in contravention of international standards and it still does not comply. For that reason, cover should not be given”
• “We have no sense that the ECGD and UK Government have at any point considered what repercussions the construction of the Dam will have on the prospects for peace ... and the rights of the marginalised in this region of Turkey”
• “We are astonished that the Foreign Office did not raise any questions about the proposed Ilisu Dam and its effect on the human rights of those living in the region”
• “ECGD should not provide cover for any project which infringes the human rights of workers, local populations or other affected persons”
•  “We recommend that ECGD blacklist companies convicted of bribery or corruption,at least those found on the World Bank Listing of Ineligible Firms” [2]
• “The debate over the Ilusu Dam has however provided a welcome opportunity to consider how issues of development, human rights, conflict and corruption and conditionality are handled by ECGD. In all these areas we conclude that improvements must be made.”
  

Commenting, Tony Juniper, Policy and Campaigns Director at Friends of the Earth, said:

“This report vindicates every criticism we have made of this miserable project. The UK Government announced before Christmas that it was 'minded' to give Balfour Beatty an export credit. Sources have confirmed to us that this decision was made after the personal intervention of Tony Blair. But now the Prime Minister's own MPs are telling him what we have known all along: the Ilisu Dam is an environmental disaster, a human rights scandal and a threat to peace.

The time for spinning and evasion is over. Mr Blair must announce today that the Dam will not get backing from the British Government.”

NOTES

[1] The proposed dam site is on the Tigris River, forty miles upstream from the Turkish/Iraqi/Syrian border. It will flood 15 towns and 52 villages and displace up to 20,000 Kurdish people. The Ilisu project is part of the South East Anatolia Project (GAP), which has already displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurdish people, many without compensation. Because of the war between the Turkish army and Kurdish guerillas,local opposition to such schemes cannot easily be voiced for fear of state reprisals. Towns which will be lost include Hasankeyf, the only Anatolian town to have survived since the Middle Ages. In 1978, the Turkish Government's Department of Culture gave the town “complete archeological protection” (decision A-1105).The dam and its proposed sister a few miles further upstream will control water flows from the Tigris into Syria and Iraq, threatening regional conflict (described by defence analysts as a “water war”).

[2] Balfour Beatty faces prosecution in Lesotho for corruption. Its Boston offices were raided by the FBI in June this year.

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