At least 27 individuals are feared dead in a landslide at a jade mine in northern Myanmar, police said on Wednesday, as heavy rain hampered the seek for survivors.
Poorly regulated and notoriously corrupt, the multi-billion-dollar industry in distant Kachin State is commonly stricken by deadly disasters, and the victims often come from poor ethnic communities.
The latest disaster hit the distant suburb of Set Mu on Tuesday after heavy rains killed a minimum of 27 people, mostly from the impoverished Rawang ethnic group, local police officer Aung Zin Kyaw said.
“We haven’t found any bodies yet. Today we will search again with the help of the Red Cross and the fire brigade,” he said.
Numbering only around 70,000 members, the mostly Christian Rawang are one in all the smallest ethnic groups in Myanmar and live mainly within the mountainous north, with a lot of them employed within the informal mining sector.
With few regulations and little oversight in a hugely profitable industry – driven largely by surging demand in China – conditions are sometimes hazardous, especially in the course of the wet months.
“Before the rainy season, people searching for jade destroyed the land. Now it is raining and the ground is not stable and very muddy,” said local resident Shwe Thein.
This 12 months, several dozen people have died because of this of landslides within the Hpakant region of Kachin State, where in November 2015, greater than 100 people died because of this of a serious accident.
Watchdog Global Witness estimated that the jade industry was price roughly $31 billion in 2014, much of which didn’t find yourself in government coffers.
Jade and other natural resources, including timber, gold and amber, help finance each side of the decades-long conflict between ethnic Kachin rebels and the military fighting for control of the mines and the revenues they generate.
Since fighting ended a 17-year ceasefire in 2011, greater than 100,000 people have been displaced, many multiple times.
Civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi said after coming to power in 2016 that ending the country’s myriad conflicts was her top priority, but the continuing peace process has yet to provide any significant results.
This article appeared within the print edition of the South China Morning Post as: landslide that killed 27 people
