"When the government in Naypyidaw looks at the Salween River and other rivers in Burma, they don?t see their beauty: they see Thai baht, Chinese yuan, US dollars and Indian rupees. For them, the rivers flowing through the lands of our ethnic communities are nothing more than a potential source of revenue. Not revenue for local people, but for the central government: they want to dam our rivers, sell most of the energy they generate to neighboring countries, and keep the money for themselves. This money will be partly used to continue the modernization of the Burmese military, which is expanding its presence in the country?s ethnic hinterlands and still committing human rights abuses. We ethnic peoples will still be sitting in the dark, and paying for our own repression...Economically, politically and environmentally, dams are not the right choice for Burma. They will continue to provoke conflict, human rights abuses, environmental destruction, and increased marginalization and impoverishment of affected communities. They will not help the development of our country; they will hinder it. Rather than selling our rivers in return for a meager financial reward, our country needs a long-term energy policy based on clean, renewable energy."