About 600 residents of the deep-water port town of Kyaukphyu in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state on Monday protested against Chinese oil tankers moving into the area, as the operation of a long-delayed and controversial U.S. $1.5-billion pipeline gets under way, RFA reported on 22 May.
The residents boarded more than 100 motorboats and piloted them from Kyaukphyu to Maday Island, site of the local office of the Chinese state-owned oil company China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), or Petro China, which operates the tankers.
The protesters said that local fishermen’s livelihoods are threatened because Myanmar’s Fisheries Department has banned them from fishing in the area, while allowing oil tankers to operate there, and that the government has failed to rectify the situation, the report said.