The projects are located in Nubia, the ancient bridge between Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa. Nubians have developed their own language and civilization over thousands of years, but now risk being annihilated as a nation. In the 1960s, 120,000 Nubian people were displaced from their ancestral lands in Egypt and Sudan for the construction of the Aswan Dam. Within Sudan, they were moved to an irrigation scheme 700 kilometers away, which turned into a complete development disaster. "By flooding the last of the remaining Nubian lands," warns Arif Gamal, who was displaced by the Aswan Dam, "the Nubians are reduced to a group of people with no sense of memory, no past and no future to look for."

The affected people are strongly opposed to the construction of the Kajbar and Dal dams. A statement of the committee of affected villages declares: “We will never allow any force on the earth to destroy our heritage and nation. Nubians will not sacrifice for the second time to repeat the tragedy of the Aswan Dam.”

Chinese companies have expressed an interest in the Kajbar Project since 1997. When Sudanese and Chinese engineers carried out feasibility studies in 2007, thousands of people staged repeated protest demonstrations. The authorities cracked down harshly. In April 2007, security forces shot and wounded at least five protestors. On June 13, 2007, security officers killed four peaceful protestors in an ambush and wounded more than 15 others. (You can witness the massacre towards the end of this video.) The government arrested some 26 people, including journalists who tried to cover the massacre, and detained them for several weeks. The UN Special Rapporteur on Sudan deplored the “excessive force” and “arbitrary arrests and prosecutions to stifle community protest against the Kajbar dam” in a report.