Burma: anti-government protests after Aung San Suu Kyi is sentenced
At least 70 people are missing and one has been confirmed dead after a landslide that occurred overnight in a jade mine in the north of Burma. “Between 70 and 100 people are missing in a landslide that occurred at 4” at the site of Hpakant, in the state of Kachin, say rescuers. “We sent 25 wounded to the hospital and found one dead,” the sources add.
Search for rescuers
About 200 rescuers are participating in the searches, some aboard boats to try to recover bodies from a lake. In Burma, dozens of miners die every year working in dangerous conditions in the jade quarries, an opaque and poorly regulated industry. Landslides are frequent in this poor and difficult to access region, which looks like a lunar landscape as it has been modified by large mining groups with no regard for the environment.
Poor control of the mines
Following a moratorium in 2016, many large mines have closed and are no longer monitored, allowing for the return of many independent miners. Coming from disadvantaged ethnic communities, the latter operate almost clandestinely in sites abandoned by excavators. Heavy monsoon rains caused the worst disaster of its kind in 2020, with 300 miners buried after a landslide in the Hpakant Massif, the heart of this industry, near the Chinese border.
Burma derives significant income from the massive presence in its subsoil of the precious stone particularly appreciated in China. The February coup destroyed any possibility of securing the reform of the sector initiated under Aung San Suu Kyi, according to the surveillance body Global Witness in a report published in 2021.