Landslide at mine in Myanmar kills 126

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A landslide at a jade mine in northern Myanmar has killed at least 126 people, emergency services said, the worst accident in years to hit an area notorious for unsafe mining conditions.

The landslide struck on Thursday morning at about 7:30 am (0100 GMT), said Khin Maung Myint, who represents the Hpakant township for the governing National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

“The bodies are being taken to the mortuary,” he told dpa.

The victims were scavenging for jade at the opencast mine in Wai Khar village when they were hit by a wave of mud that rescue services blamed on heavy monsoon rain.

It is the deadliest accident in Hpakant in Myanmar’s restive Kachin state since a landslide there in 2015 killed 115 people.

Landslides in 2019 killed 58 people in the region and 95 the year before, according to figures compiled from local media reports by openjadedata.org.

Many migrant workers in Hpakant earn money by picking through huge mounds of discarded mining debris in the hope of finding overlooked pieces of jade.

David Mathieson, an independent analyst covering Myanmar, said the NLD party has done little to improve dangerous conditions for miners since coming to power five years ago after decades of military rule.

“I think the welfare of jade miners is the least of the NLD’s concerns,” he told dpa, “they have evinced little interest in improving safety across the board in the mining sector, especially in a place like Hpakant.”

The mining town is akin to a “fiefdom of greed out of the control of Naypyitaw,” he said, referring to the country’s administrative capital. “Accidents like this happen so frequently they’re easy to ignore.”

Myanmar’s jade industry is worth about 31 billion dollars a year, equivalent to roughly half the country’s GDP, according to a 2015 estimate by campaign group Global Witness.

However, much of that is made on the black market and never makes it into state coffers, the watchdog says.

Kachin has been upended by conflict since a ceasefire between Kachin Independence Army rebels and the Myanmar military broke down in 2011.

The jade industry there is controlled by powerful elites who took control of multi-billion dollar mines under Myanmar’s former military dictatorship, according to Global Witness.

The group has blamed the industry for helping to fuel the conflict, arguing a peace deal that fairly distributed the state’s resources would mean powerful military families losing out on vast profits.