Dozens of people are missing in a jade mine in northern Burma following a landslide on Wednesday, December 22, while a lifeless body has been found.
Read also Myanmar: at least 1 dead and 70 missing after a landslide in a jade mine
Working conditions are particularly dangerous in this opaque and poorly regulated industry, which employs poorly paid migrant workers to extract highly coveted gems from barren hills in neighboring China. All at the cost of dozens of deaths each year. Relief initially said at least 70 people were missing after the disaster at around 4 a.m. (9:30 p.m. GMT Tuesday) in Hpakant, Kachin state, before saying they were still trying to confirm that number.
"
The search has been stopped for the moment, we will resume them tomorrow morning when the fog and haze have cleared,
" Ko Jack, an official in charge of the rescue operations, told AFP.
“
It seems they are buried.
It's cold here, that's why we stopped, but we will continue,
”he continued.
One of his colleagues, Ko Ny, for his part told AFP that there was one death and that 25 wounded had been hospitalized.
"They dig at night and in the morning"
The increased pressure from the weight of the earth and dumped rocks dragged down the hill to the nearby lake, he explained. According to him, hundreds of workers returned to Hpakant during the rainy season to prospect in the surface mines, despite the ban imposed by the junta until March 2022. “
They dig at night and in the morning, they dump earth and rock
, ”he stressed.
Following a moratorium in 2016, many large mines closed and are no longer monitored, allowing the return of many independent miners.
Coming from underprivileged ethnic communities, the latter operate almost clandestinely in sites abandoned by the excavators.
Heavy monsoon rains caused the worst drama of its kind in 2020, with 300 miners buried after a landslide in the same massif of Hpakant, the heart of this industry, near the Chinese border.
Landslides are frequent in this poor and isolated region, which looks like a lunar landscape, so much has it been altered by large mining groups, with no regard for the environment.
About 200 rescue workers mobilized
About 200 rescuers participated in the search on Wednesday, some on board boats to try to recover bodies from the lake, Ko Ny said.
Photos released by the fire department show dozens of people lined up on the shores and rescuers pulling an unidentified object out of the water.
Firefighters from Hpakant and the nearby town of Lone Khin were participating in the rescue operations, but they did not report any results, according to the firefighting services.
Access to mines located in this region is severely limited by the military and internet access is spotty.
The media Kachin News Group for its part claimed that more than 20 minors had died Wednesday.
The jade trade generates more than $ 30 billion a year, nearly half of Burma's Gross Domestic Product.
A very small portion of this financial windfall ends up in the Burmese state coffers, with most of the quality jade being smuggled into China where demand for this stone, believed to symbolize prosperity, seems insatiable.
Read also Myanmar: several hundred jade merchants arrested by the junta
On the other hand, this trade drains fortunes for the military who have controlled access to the Hpakant region since the early 1990s and hold numerous mining concessions.
Another key player is the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), a rebel faction that has been fighting for decades against the military for control of mines and the income they generate.
In the end, everyone receives bribes and the jade funds many conflicts between government forces and ethnic groups in the region and even beyond.
The February coup destroyed any chance of a sector reform initiated under Aung San Suu Kyi, watchdog Global Witness ruled in a 2021 report.