Myanmar's jade miners face perilous conditions, financial uncertainty
Yangon (dpa) - Jade miners in northern Myanmar know the risks. But the alternative - a life of severe financial hardship - is enough to send these men onto the rubble piles in search of the gem that is fuelling many of the country’s most intractable ills.
For Htang Sua Lasi, the pressure to provide for his parents is greater than his fear of death in Hpakant township’s notorious jade mines, he says. In two years as a miner he has already lost one friend, a 19-year-old who was crushed to death by a huge rock.
“In my native town I can earn a regular income, but working in Hpakant if I hit the jackpot once I can become a rich man,” he said in August, adding that he hasn’t earned any money so far this year.
The jade industry’s total annual revenue in Myanmar is roughly equivalent to half the country's GDP, but small-time pickers like Htang Sua Lasi, who was able to send less than 50 dollars to his parents in 2017, scarcely make enough to support their families, let alone make it out of the mines into better, safer futures.
Every year the monsoonal rains bring deadly landslides in the piles of discarded rock and debris in the once-picturesque hills that hide the sought-after gem.
In July a landslide killed 18 independent miners, with more than 40 others injured, according to the official toll. Locals believe many more suffocated under the wave of mud and rubble.
Myanmar's largely unregulated jade industry, which the watchdog group Global Witness says is worth 31 billion dollars annually, is linked to the deaths of numerous miners each year.
Promises to tighten safety regulations and licences have gone unfulfilled. The ruling National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, is largely powerless to reign in the power players on the scarred landscapes of Hpakant.
The massive majority of the profits are gobbled up by military-linked enterprises under Myanmar Gems Enterprise. Other smaller but well-connected companies operated by drug lords and military-connected parties also take many of the spoils.
The Kachin Independence Army has engaged in regular clashes with the military for control of the mines, after a ceasefire broke down in 2011. The Kachin rebels and the military both tax miners at the end of each day, with the funds used to fuel their conflicts.
While Htang Sua Lasi knows how much he’s made in the mines, the true cost of Kachin State’s jade trade cannot be tallied. Funding drug wars, ethnic armies and an HIV/AIDs crisis, the jade miners are seemingly an afterthought for industry heavyweights.
Ko Thomas Mung Dan, a representative of the local non-governmental organization TANKS (Transparency and Accountability in Kachin State) says Myanmar's military officers are “the ones really in control” and have no desire to shore up safety standards in the mines.
“They have no interest at all. They don’t care about civilians. That’s why no foreigners are allowed to travel there,” he said, referring to a ban on foreign media in Hpakant.
Kachin State has a poverty rate of around 30 per cent, and tens of thousands of internally displaced civilians, and its jade trade is criticized as a wasted resource controlled by military elites.
A report published by another industry watchdog, the Natural Resources Governance Institute, detailed the way profits - which must be stored in the depreciating local currency - are kept in “other accounts” at the Myanmar Economic Bank, and do not accumulate any interest for the national economy.
Multiple calls to the President’s Office, seeking comment on plans to reform the sector, went unanswered.
As the monsoon season continues, weakening the structure of piles of rubble that pickers hope will yield them some payouts, the government and military show no signs of reforming the industry.
“As for the National League for Democracy government ... they have no control [over it],” said Ko Maung Dan.
