Australian involvement and the Shan?s resistance: "SMEC, an Australian-based services company that morphed out of the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation, was recently handed a petition containing 23,717 signatures opposing a giant dam on the upper Salween River at Mong Ton that would effectively divide Myanmar?s warshocked Shan state in half. It was not the first time it had been told the idea stinks. Undeterred, SMEC went back to the protest ing villages and continued its work. Later the Burma Army took five protesters, later releasing them. Some were beaten and slapped. SMEC is the public face of a consortium planning the dam. Its task, conducting the Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (EIAs and SIAs), takes it into potentially affected villages. SMEC finds itself heroically taking one for the gang: the disaster-prone Three Gorges Corporation; Sinohydro, which has been involved in several controversial dam projects in the past; the Myanmar Electricity Power Enterprise; and state energy monopsony Thai Electricity Generating Authority. There are rumours that a UK team of engineers, Malcolm Dunstan and Associates —involved in dam building in Myanmar in the past and, because of human-rights violations on the sites, placed on the UK Burma Campaign?s ?Dirty Company? list— might also be involved, but those could not be substantiated. SMEC has been meeting the people of Shan state, seeking agreement to build the Tasang dam at Mong Ton. It has faced serial rejection (a story detailing that rejection, with a critique of SMEC?s procedures, was removed from Asian Correspondent after legal threats from SMEC). Meetings have been cancelled due to local hostility. Shan women have risen to their feet, their voices rich and challenging, telling the SMEC representatives that, having survived years of war, they refuse to let their ancestral lands be drowned to produce unneeded electricity for China and Thailand..."