Rescuers in northern Myanmar yesterday retrieved two more bodies after a landslide at an illegally run jade mine and warned that dozens of people feared missing are likely dead.
Rescuers pulled two more bodies from a nearby lake, taking the confirmed death toll to three after one casualty was found the previous day before the operation was cut short due to fog and overnight rain.
Authorities had initially said that at least 70 more were feared missing after the landslide struck early on Wednesday, but later added they were still trying to confirm the number of those unaccounted for.
Photo: Myanmar Fire Services Department / Reuters
One of the men, a 23-year-old, came from Yinmar Pin, hundreds of kilometers away in central Myanmar, they said.
The miners at Hpakant travel from across Myanmar to scratch a living picking through the piles of waste left by industrial mining firms in hopes of finding an overlooked hunk of jade.
The weather had cleared, the Myanmar Rescue Organization’s Ko Jack said, adding that six rescue teams were searching for survivors.
“The search is going fine and no difficulty as it’s sunny now,” Ko Jack said.
However, Ko Nyi, another rescuer, said that the outlook was grim.
“If the dead bodies don’t float today, they will appear in the following days,” Ko Nyi said.
Hundreds of diggers had returned to Hpakant during the rainy season to prospect in the treacherous open-cast mines, despite a junta ban on digging until March, a local rights advocate said.
Rescuers said that increased pressure from the weight of dumped soil and rock had pushed the ground downhill into the nearby lake.
Jade and other abundant natural resources in northern Myanmar — including timber, gold and amber — have helped finance both sides of a decades-long civil war between ethnic Kachin insurgents and the military.
Civilians are frequently trapped in the middle of the fight for control of the mines and their lucrative revenues, with a rampant drugs and arms trade further curdling the conflict.
Last year, heavy rainfall triggered a massive landslide in Hpakant that entombed nearly 300 people.
Watchdog Global Witness estimated that the industry was worth about US$31 billion in 2014.
However, corruption means that very little reaches state coffers.
A military coup in February also effectively extinguished any chance of reforms to the dangerous and unregulated industry initiated by ousted Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government, a Global Witness report said earlier this year.
The coup has also sparked fighting in Kachin State between local insurgents and the Burmese military, the watchdog said.
Wednesday’s disaster “is a haunting reminder that lives too often come second to profit in the jade mines of Hpakant,” said Hanna Hindstrom, senior campaigner for Myanmar at Global Witness.
“As the military is busy turning the sector into a financial lifeline for its illegitimate regime, once again miners are paying the ultimate price,” Hindstrom said.
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