More than 160 miners were killed on Thursday in a massive landslide in jade mines in northern Burma, the worst such disaster in recent years.
The searches, complicated by the night, continued on Thursday evening and the balance sheet could get even heavier.
Clumps of rock fell into a lake after heavy showers, causing waves of mud that submerged a valley in the canton of Hpakant, near the Chinese border, according to images posted on social networks.
The bodies of 162 miners have been found at this stage, according to the firefighters. 54 injured were transported to hospitals in the region.
“After the mine collapsed (…), I saw people in the lake. Some of them managed to swim to the shore,” Kyaw Min, a villager who lives outside, told AFP. far from there. Others have been swallowed up.
Dangerous work
The victims were working on the mine site despite a warning from the authorities urging them not to enter it due to heavy rain, local police said. Without the warning, “we could have had hundreds of deaths,” she said.
Rescue workers spent much of the day searching for the victims, using tires as makeshift rafts. “We could only extract the floating bodies,” said police commissioner Than Win Aung.
The rescue operations constitute a real challenge: “we had to work under torrents of rain” with the fear of a new landslide.
The UN said in a statement “deeply saddened by the terrible loss of life”.
Each year, dozens of people die in jade mines. This is due to the very perilous working conditions, especially during the monsoon season.
In 2015, more than 100 people were killed in a landslide. In 2019, a mudslide claimed the lives of 50 people.
Billions of dollars
Burmese mining is very prosperous but unregulated, employs many undeclared workers and weighs tens of billions of dollars, according to the NGO Global Witness.
The country is the world’s leading producer of jade, which is then widely sold in neighboring China. And the region of Hpakant, poor and difficult to access, has taken on the appearance of a lunar landscape as it has been transformed by these mines.
For years, these have been operated by major private companies in partnership with the Myanmar Gems Enterprise (MGE), a public company that issues mining licenses.
They dug large plots up to hundreds of meters deep, causing significant damage to the environment.
To curb this limitless exploitation, the Burmese government imposed a moratorium on new mining licenses in 2016
“Inevitable” disaster
Companies now have to comply with supposedly stricter environmental regulations in order to obtain the exploitation right and cannot dig areas larger than two hectares.
As a result, many large mines have closed and are no longer monitored, allowing the return of many independent miners. Coming from disadvantaged ethnic communities, they operate almost clandestinely in these abandoned sites.
Thursday’s disaster was “avoidable,” Hann Hindstrom, who works for Global Witness, told AFP. There is an “urgent need” to further regulate this industry.
Abundant natural resources in northern Burma – including jade, precious wood, gold and amber – help finance both sides of a decades-long civil war between insurgents of the Kachin ethnicity and the Burmese military.
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