SENIOR COMMENDED FOR HUMAN-RIGHTS WORK IN THAILAND

People affected by the dam built a temporary protest village.

Study became action for Robin Reineke '04 when her interviews with protesters in a village in Thailand revealed that police had regularly intimidated and beaten them. Reineke and two classmates in the Council on International Educational Exchange's Thailand program carefully documented these and other human-rights abuses for Amnesty International. Their report was published in an independent Thai newspaper, and in November, CIEE gave them its "student of the year" award in recognition of their work.

Reineke spent the fall of 2002 in Thailand in a CIEE program that focused on public-policy issues associated with development. She and two fellow students, Hannah El-Silimy of Oberlin College and Allyn Steele of Wofford College, undertook an independent study of problems arising from the construction of the Pak Mun Dam, which was built in northeastern Thailand by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) with funding from the World Bank.

The dam has had a devastating impact on the ecology of the region and deprived thousands of people of their livelihoods, says Reineke: "A huge area was flooded out, and they had to move their whole village. Moving didn't save the village, though: its whole economy depended on fishing, and the dam decimated fish populations."

As economic prospects disappeared from the region, so did many working adults, leaving villages populated primarily by children and elderly people. The exodus has damaged social structures in the area, compounding the cultural loss of a whole system of traditions and rituals associated with fishing and the river.

Those affected by the dam have been protesting it for more than a decade, says Reineke. Since its construction was completed in 1994, the protesters have been urging officials to decommission the dam. Studies have shown that taking the dam offline would not have an impact on the stability of energy distribution in the region, she says.

Mae Nong was severely beaten by police at a protest.

"Pak Mun Dam generates only about one-eighth of the power it was supposed to generate, so it costs more to run it than the power is worth," Reineke says.

In 1995, villagers from Pak Mun joined Assembly of the Poor, a coalition of groups that have been negatively affected by large-scale development projects nationwide. In 1999, Assembly of the Poor established a protest village of more than 5,000 people right next to the dam.

The research Reineke and her colleagues did for their independent study included fieldwork — personal interviews with the villagers at the protest village.

"When we first visited, one woman started opening up about being abused by the police while protesting at the local government offices," Reineke recalls. "We didn't get the whole story, but we determined that we'd come back to learn more."

Next Page >>

<<Back to Bryn Mawr Now 1/22/2004