Amay, give us back our mountain…

Letpadaung copper mine, 14 March 2013

Word had travelled fast in the small hamlets around the Letpadaung Mountain. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was visiting the Sar Lingyi Township days after the government-appointed investigation commission chaired by her passed its final verdict on the Letpadaung copper mine. The commission had decided not to close the controversial mining project. Normally a visit by Daw Suu (Aung San Suu Kyi) would be an occasion of jubilation but today the assembled crowd of villagers and monks were grim faced. The dirt tracks which ran through the villages around the Letpadaung Mountain were abuzz with farmers accompanied by their wives and daughters, dressed in their dusty farmhand longyi, brandishing handwritten posters. They sought justice, some protection from being evicted from their homes and the land they had tended for generations. More than angry, they felt a deep sense of betrayal. Amay (mother) Suu (Aung San Suu Kyi) had let them down.

She came later in the day. The sun was bright, yet could not dispel the faint haze of dust rising from the mine debris. Straggly fields of sesame and pigeon pea lay submerged under the rubble spewed out daily by the dump trucks. Against the balding craters of the Letpadaung Mountain the emerald green of her eingyi (buttoned blouse) and sarong, the yellow flowers tucked low in her hair looked beautiful.