Dozens feared missing after landslide at Myanmar jade mine

The landslide in the Hpakant area of Kachin State occurred at around 4 am on Tuesday.

There are fears that about 80 people have been swept into a lake by mining waste, an official at the Kachin Network Development Foundation said.

“Authorities arrived at the site around 7 am and are conducting the search,” said Dashi Naw Lawn, an official at the civil society group.

Hpakant is the centre of Myanmar’s secretive and notoriously dangerous jade industry.

In another landslide last weekend, media reported at least six people had died.

Deadly landslides and other accidents are common in the poorly regulated mines of Hpakant, which draws impoverished workers from across Myanmar in search of gems, which are mostly exported to China.

Economic pressures due to the Covid-19 pandemic have drawn more migrants to the jade mines, even as conflict has flared since Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup in February.

The ousted government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi had pledged to clean up the industry when it took power in 2016, but activists say little has changed.

In July last year, more than 170 people, many of them migrants, were killed in one of the worst disasters in Hpakant after mining waste collapsed into a lake.

Myanmar produces 90% of the world’s jade. Most of it comes from Hpakant, where rights groups say mining firms with links to military elites and ethnic armed groups make billions of dollars a year.