Landslide at Myanmar jade mine kills at least 162 people
By ZAW MOE HTET and PYAE SONE WIN
1 of 12 https://apnews.com/8d689af35b5f65e0971b1e6b5af5b611
People gather near the bodies of victims of a landslide near a jade mining area in Hpakant, Kachine state, northern Myanmar Thursday, July 2, 2020. Myanmar government says a landslide at a jade mine has killed dozens of people. (AP Photo/Zaw Moe Htet)
HPAKANT, Myanmar (AP) — At least 162 people were killed Thursday in a landslide at a jade mine in northern Myanmar, the worst in a series of deadly accidents at such sites in recent years that critics blame on the government’s failure to take action against unsafe conditions.
The Myanmar Fire Service Department, which coordinates rescues and other emergency services, announced about 12 hours after the morning disaster that 162 bodies had been recovered from the landslide in Hpakant, the center of the world’s biggest and most lucrative jade mining industry.
The most detailed estimate of Myanmar’s jade industry said it generated about $31 billion in 2014. Hpakant is a rough and remote area in Kachin state, 950 kilometers (600 miles) north of Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon.
“The jade miners were smothered by a wave of mud,” the Fire Service said.
It said 54 injured people were taken to hospitals. The tolls announced by other state agencies and media lagged behind the fire agency, which was most closely involved. An unknown number of people are feared missing.
Those taking part in the recovery operations, which were suspended after dark, included the army and other government units and local volunteers.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed deep sadness at the deaths, sent condolences to families of the victims and Myanmar’s government and people.
Gutteres reiterated “the readiness of the United Nations to contribute to ongoing efforts to address the needs of the affected population,” said his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.
The London-based environmental watchdog Global Witness said the accident “is a damning indictment of the government”s failure to curb reckless and irresponsible mining practices in Kachin state’s jade mines.”
“The government should immediately suspend large-scale, illegal and dangerous mining in Hpakant and ensure companies that engage in these practices are no longer able to operate,” Global Witness said in a statement.
At the site of the tragedy, a crowd gathered in the rain around corpses shrouded in blue and red plastic sheets placed in a row on the ground.
Emergency workers had to slog through heavy mud to retrieve bodies by wrapping them in the plastic sheets, which were then hung on crossed wooden poles shouldered by the recovery teams.
Social activists have complained that the profitability of jade mining has led businesses and the government to neglect enforcement of already very weak regulations in the jade mining industry.
“The multi-billion dollar sector is dominated by powerful military-linked companies, armed groups and cronies that have been allowed to operate without effective social and environmental controls for years,” Global Witness said. Although the military is no longer directly in power in Myanmar, it is still a major force in government and exercises authority in remote regions
Those killed in such accidents are usually freelance miners who settle near giant mounds of discarded earth that has been excavated by heavy machinery. The freelancers who scavenge for bits of jade usually work and live in abandoned mining pits at the base of the mounds of earth, which become particularly unstable during the rainy season.
Most scavengers are unregistered migrants from other areas, making it hard to determine exactly how many people are actually missing after such accidents and in many cases leaving the relatives of the dead in their home villages unaware of their fate.
Global Witness, which investigates misuse of revenues from natural resources, documented the $31 billion estimate for Myanmar’s jade industry in a 2015 report that said most of the wealth went to individuals and companies tied to the country’s former military rulers. More recent reliable figures are not readily available.
It said at the time the report was released that the legacy to local people of such business arrangements “is a dystopian wasteland in which scores of people at a time are buried alive in landslides.”
In its statement Thursday, Global Witness blamed the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, which came to power in 2016, for failing “to implement desperately needed reforms, allowing deadly mining practices to continue and gambling the lives of vulnerable workers in the country’s jade mines.”
Jade mining also plays a role in the decades-old struggle of ethnic minority groups in Myanmar’s borderlands to take more control of their own destiny.
The area where members of the Kachin minority are dominant is poverty stricken despite hosting lucrative deposits of rubies as well as jade.
The Kachin believe they are not getting a fair share of the profits from deals that the central government makes with mining companies.
Kachin guerrillas have engaged in intermittent but occasionally heavy combat with government troops.
___
Pyae Son Win reported from Yangon, Myanmar.
More than 100 dead in landslide at Myanmar jade mine
By ZAW MOE HTET and PYAE SONE WIN
1 of 12 https://apnews.com/8d689af35b5f65e0971b1e6b5af5b611
People gather near the bodies of victims of a landslide near a jade mining area in Hpakant, Kachine state, northern Myanmar Thursday, July 2, 2020. Myanmar government says a landslide at a jade mine has killed dozens of people. (AP Photo/Zaw Moe Htet)
HPAKANT, Myanmar (AP) — At least 162 people were killed Thursday in a landslide at a jade mine in northern Myanmar, the worst in a series of deadly accidents at such sites in recent years that critics blame on the government’s failure to take action against unsafe conditions.
The Myanmar Fire Service Department, which coordinates rescues and other emergency services, announced about 12 hours after the morning disaster that 162 bodies had been recovered from the landslide in Hpakant, the center of the world’s biggest and most lucrative jade mining industry.
The most detailed estimate of Myanmar’s jade industry said it generated about $31 billion in 2014. Hpakant is a rough and remote area in Kachin state, 950 kilometers (600 miles) north of Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon.
“The jade miners were smothered by a wave of mud,” the Fire Service said.
It said 54 injured people were taken to hospitals. The tolls announced by other state agencies and media lagged behind the fire agency, which was most closely involved. An unknown number of people are feared missing.
Those taking part in the recovery operations, which were suspended after dark, included the army and other government units and local volunteers.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed deep sadness at the deaths, sent condolences to families of the victims and Myanmar’s government and people.
Gutteres reiterated “the readiness of the United Nations to contribute to ongoing efforts to address the needs of the affected population,” said his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.
The London-based environmental watchdog Global Witness said the accident “is a damning indictment of the government”s failure to curb reckless and irresponsible mining practices in Kachin state’s jade mines.”
“The government should immediately suspend large-scale, illegal and dangerous mining in Hpakant and ensure companies that engage in these practices are no longer able to operate,” Global Witness said in a statement.
At the site of the tragedy, a crowd gathered in the rain around corpses shrouded in blue and red plastic sheets placed in a row on the ground.
Emergency workers had to slog through heavy mud to retrieve bodies by wrapping them in the plastic sheets, which were then hung on crossed wooden poles shouldered by the recovery teams.
Social activists have complained that the profitability of jade mining has led businesses and the government to neglect enforcement of already very weak regulations in the jade mining industry.
“The multi-billion dollar sector is dominated by powerful military-linked companies, armed groups and cronies that have been allowed to operate without effective social and environmental controls for years,” Global Witness said. Although the military is no longer directly in power in Myanmar, it is still a major force in government and exercises authority in remote regions
Thursday’s death toll surpasses that of a November 2015 accident that left 113 dead and was previously considered the country’s worst. In that case, the victims died when a 60-meter (200-foot) -high mountain of earth and waste discarded by several mines tumbled in the middle of the night, covering more than 70 huts where miners slept.
Those killed in such accidents are usually freelance miners who settle near giant mounds of discarded earth that has been excavated by heavy machinery. The freelancers who scavenge for bits of jade usually work and live in abandoned mining pits at the base of the mounds of earth, which become particularly unstable during the rainy season.
Most scavengers are unregistered migrants from other areas, making it hard to determine exactly how many people are actually missing after such accidents and in many cases leaving the relatives of the dead in their home villages unaware of their fate.
Global Witness, which investigates misuse of revenues from natural resources, documented the $31 billion estimate for Myanmar’s jade industry in a 2015 report that said most of the wealth went to individuals and companies tied to the country’s former military rulers. More recent reliable figures are not readily available.
It said at the time the report was released that the legacy to local people of such business arrangements “is a dystopian wasteland in which scores of people at a time are buried alive in landslides.”
In its statement Thursday, Global Witness blamed the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, which came to power in 2016, for failing “to implement desperately needed reforms, allowing deadly mining practices to continue and gambling the lives of vulnerable workers in the country’s jade mines.”
Jade mining also plays a role in the decades-old struggle of ethnic minority groups in Myanmar’s borderlands to take more control of their own destiny.
The area where members of the Kachin minority are dominant is poverty stricken despite hosting lucrative deposits of rubies as well as jade.
The Kachin believe they are not getting a fair share of the profits from deals that the central government makes with mining companies.
Kachin guerrillas have engaged in intermittent but occasionally heavy combat with government troops.
___
Pyae Son Win reported from Yangon, Myanmar.
More than 100 dead in landslide at Myanmar jade mine
ARTISANAL MINING
Issued on: 02/07/2020 -
Rescue workers carry a dead body following a landslide at a mining site in Hpakant, Kachin State City, Myanmar on July 2, 2020, in this picture obtained from social media. © Myanmar Fire Services Department via Reuters
Text by:NEWS WIRES
The bodies of at least 100 jade miners were pulled from the mud after a landslide in northern Myanmar on Thursday, in one of the worst ever accidents to hit the perilous industry.
Scores die each year while working in the country’s lucrative but poorly regulated jade industry, which uses low-paid migrant workers to scrape out a gem highly coveted in China.
The disaster struck after an early bout of heavy rainfall close to the Chinese border in Kachin state, the Myanmar Fire Services Department said in a Facebook post.
“The miners were smothered by a wave of mud,” the statement said. “A total of 113 bodies have been found so far.”
They had apparently defied a warning not to work the treacherous open mines during the rains, local police told AFP.
Rescuers worked all morning to retrieve the bodies from a mud lake, pulling them to the surface and using tyres as makeshift rafts.
Police told AFP that 99 bodies were found by noon, with another 20 injured.
They said search and rescue efforts had been suspended because of more heavy rains.
The workers were scavenging for the gemstones on the sharp mountainous terrain in Hpakant township, where furrows from earlier digs had already loosened the earth.
Photos posted on the fire service Facebook page showed a search and rescue team wading through a valley flooded by the mudslide.
Rescuers carried bodies wrapped in tarpaulins out of the mud lake as a deluge poured down from above.
Unverified footage of the scene showed a torrent of sludge crashing through the terrain as workers scrambled up the sharp escarpments.
Chinese demand
Police said the death toll could have been even higher if authorities had not warned people to stay away from the mining pits the day before.
“It could have been hundreds of people dead—more than this, but the notice might have saved some,” superintendent Than Win Aung told AFP.
Open jade mines have pockmarked Hpakant’s remote terrain and given it the appearance of a vast moonscape.
Landslides in the area are common, especially when rainfall hammers the muddy terrain during Myanmar’s notoriously severe monsoon season.
The workers combing through the earth are often from impoverished ethnic communities who are looking for scraps left behind by big firms.
A major collapse in November 2015 left more than 100 dead.
A mudslide buried more than 50 workers last year, when a days long recovery effort saw police digging through a “mud lake” to retrieve bodies from the sludge.
Myanmar is one of the world’s main sources of jadeite and the industry is largely driven by insatiable demand for the green gem from neighbouring China.
Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morningSubscribe
The mines are mired in secrecy, though Global Witness claims their operators are linked to former junta figures, the military elite and their cronies.
The watchdog estimated that the industry was worth some $31 billion in 2014, although very little reaches state coffers.
Northern Myanmar’s abundant natural resources—including jade, timber, gold and amber—help finance both sides of a decades-long civil war between ethnic Kachin insurgents and the military.
The fight to control the mines and the revenues they bring frequently traps local civilians in the middle.
(AFP)
Issued on: 02/07/2020 -
Rescue workers carry a dead body following a landslide at a mining site in Hpakant, Kachin State City, Myanmar on July 2, 2020, in this picture obtained from social media. © Myanmar Fire Services Department via Reuters
Text by:NEWS WIRES
The bodies of at least 100 jade miners were pulled from the mud after a landslide in northern Myanmar on Thursday, in one of the worst ever accidents to hit the perilous industry.
Scores die each year while working in the country’s lucrative but poorly regulated jade industry, which uses low-paid migrant workers to scrape out a gem highly coveted in China.
The disaster struck after an early bout of heavy rainfall close to the Chinese border in Kachin state, the Myanmar Fire Services Department said in a Facebook post.
“The miners were smothered by a wave of mud,” the statement said. “A total of 113 bodies have been found so far.”
They had apparently defied a warning not to work the treacherous open mines during the rains, local police told AFP.
Rescuers worked all morning to retrieve the bodies from a mud lake, pulling them to the surface and using tyres as makeshift rafts.
Police told AFP that 99 bodies were found by noon, with another 20 injured.
They said search and rescue efforts had been suspended because of more heavy rains.
The workers were scavenging for the gemstones on the sharp mountainous terrain in Hpakant township, where furrows from earlier digs had already loosened the earth.
Photos posted on the fire service Facebook page showed a search and rescue team wading through a valley flooded by the mudslide.
Rescuers carried bodies wrapped in tarpaulins out of the mud lake as a deluge poured down from above.
Unverified footage of the scene showed a torrent of sludge crashing through the terrain as workers scrambled up the sharp escarpments.
Chinese demand
Police said the death toll could have been even higher if authorities had not warned people to stay away from the mining pits the day before.
“It could have been hundreds of people dead—more than this, but the notice might have saved some,” superintendent Than Win Aung told AFP.
Open jade mines have pockmarked Hpakant’s remote terrain and given it the appearance of a vast moonscape.
Landslides in the area are common, especially when rainfall hammers the muddy terrain during Myanmar’s notoriously severe monsoon season.
The workers combing through the earth are often from impoverished ethnic communities who are looking for scraps left behind by big firms.
A major collapse in November 2015 left more than 100 dead.
A mudslide buried more than 50 workers last year, when a days long recovery effort saw police digging through a “mud lake” to retrieve bodies from the sludge.
Myanmar is one of the world’s main sources of jadeite and the industry is largely driven by insatiable demand for the green gem from neighbouring China.
Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morningSubscribe
The mines are mired in secrecy, though Global Witness claims their operators are linked to former junta figures, the military elite and their cronies.
The watchdog estimated that the industry was worth some $31 billion in 2014, although very little reaches state coffers.
Northern Myanmar’s abundant natural resources—including jade, timber, gold and amber—help finance both sides of a decades-long civil war between ethnic Kachin insurgents and the military.
The fight to control the mines and the revenues they bring frequently traps local civilians in the middle.
(AFP)
