A new report ?Warning Signs: An update on plans to dam the Salween in Burmas Shan State” by the Shan Sapawa Organization launched today details how preparations for a giant hydropower dam at Tasang on the Salween River in southern Shan State have been continuing. Among the four dams being planned on the Salween River, preparations for the Tasang Dam, 130 kms north of Chiang Mai, are the most advanced. The report, reveals how, despite a dearth of public information about the dam plans, the Thai contracting company MDX has been building roads, staff buildings and local power generating facilities near the site of the 228-meter-high dam, which will have the largest installed capacity as well as being the tallest in Southeast Asia. The dam site is located in the main area of conflict in Shan State. In the past ten years, the Burma Army has tripled the number of battalions around Tasang, and over 60,000 villagers have been forcibly relocated from areas adjoining the dam site and the projected flood zone. Villagers found in hiding have been tortured, raped and killed. The majority have fled to Thailand. In lieu of consultation with the remaining villagers in the flood zone, MDX have simply been hiring doctors to provide health services to villagers south of the dam-site along the proposed route of the electricity transmission lines to Thailand. MDX signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the Burmese Department of Hydroelectric Power in April 2006 for joint development of a 7,110 megawatt dam at Tasang at an estimated cost of US$6 billion. Sapawa is urging an immediate end to the Tasang dam project. ?We want the Thai government and Thai investors to stop supporting a project which will permanently displace thousands of our people, including Shan refugees in Thailand who will have no home to return to,” said Sapawa spokesperson Sai Sai.