Victims of jade mine landslide were mostly displaced by conflict in Myanmar

Many of the 42 people who went missing in northern Myanmar’s Kachin state after a landslide buried workers at a jade mine were migrants displaced by civil war, RFA has learned.

More than two years after a coup, the military is trying to root out armed rebels, and civilians are regularly caught up in the fighting. Nearly 2 million people have been displaced by the conflict, the United Nations says.

A quarryman from Sagaing’s Shwebo township whose cousin died in the landslide triggered by heavy rains on Sunday afternoon in Hpakant township said that the two of them had moved to the area for work but decided not to return home for a visit this year amid political instability and a military offensive against the armed resistance.

“Since our villages in the lower part of the country have been burned down [ by the military], we were too upset and did not go back,” he said. “We thought it was safer here. That’s why we didn’t go back home this year."

In addition to his cousin, the quarryman said that three of his friends were killed in the landslide.

Rescue workers and residents said Wednesday that nine people remain missing from among a group of mostly small-scale scavengers and prospectors searching for semi-precious “Yay Ma Say” stones and panning for gold after eight more bodies were recovered on Wednesday.

The block of land where the landslide took place is owned by Jade Leaf Co. Ltd., but operations had been suspended due to downpours during the rainy season.

Other victims included residents of Mandalay region’s Mogoke and Tada-U townships; Sagaing’s Taze, Shwebo, Homalin and Kyunhla townships; Kachin state’s Myitkyina and Waingmaw townships; Magway region’s Bago and Pauk townships; and Rakhine state. Most of the dead were from Sagaing, where the U.N. says nearly 800,000 people have fled fighting.

The body of Aung Tun Myint, a 26-year-old from Sagaing region’s Shwebo township, was one of those pulled from the rubble by rescue workers at around 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, his mother told RFA Burmese.

“He was a young and single son who was feeding his parents by means of his hard labor,” she said of the young man who had worked as a jade miner in Hpakant for about a decade, calling him “the only person I could rely on.”

“I am crushed and helpless as I have only one son to rely on," she added.

List of dead and missing incomplete

Video of the aftermath of the incident, obtained by RFA, shows brown water surging up the sides of muddy embankments that circle the caldera of the mine as people look on. In the background, a steep, dark stain runs down the side of a nearby cliff, where scavengers were washed away by a torrent of moving earth.

Many people sustained injuries in the accident and at least eight were sent to the hospital for treatment.

Divers had been unable to enter the pool at the caldera of the mine site and could only hang hooks from motorboats to drag the water for remains as collapses continued on Tuesday.

Win Kyaw, 46, of Kyunhla, was among those killed, said his brother-in-law, who called his death “a painful loss.”

“He was [living] with his father, as his mother had been long gone,” he said. “He still had an older sister. He was working to support them.”

Of the 25 bodies recovered by Tuesday, 19 were identified by friends and family, and later buried, rescue workers said.

“The rest of the bodies have not yet been found by their loved ones,” one worker said, adding that they had been sent to nearby cemeteries for storage.

He said recovery efforts were continuing and noted that the list of dead and missing remains incomplete.

Win Ye Tun, the junta’s spokesman and social affairs minister for Kachin state, confirmed to RFA that 25 bodies had been recovered as of Tuesday and said seven people are currently receiving treatment at the hospital.

He said that the state had provided 1 million kyats (US$476) to each of the families of identified victims and 450,000 kyats (US$214) to each injured person.

“We are helping them with all the essentials," he said.

Better safety and environmental protection

But Zaw Tan, the spokesperson for the Kachin National Forum – a group of nine Kachin civil society groups that collectively solves disputes in Kachin state – said that if the junta wants to allow jade mining to continue, it must institute better safety standards and ensure the preservation of the environment.

"To prevent such landslides from happening again, we need to stop the mining in this area, but we all know that it cannot be stopped because many people depend on it for their livelihood,” he said. “We can only [solve this issue] by taking effective measures [on safety] and through proper management to preserve the land and the nature of the region.”

Nearly a decade of large-scale excavation mining has leveled Hpakant’s mountains and cleared out its trees, making the land more susceptible to erosion and landslides, Zaw Tan added.

The Kachin National Forum also issued a statement expressing its condolences to the families of those who died in the landslide.

More than 190 people died in a landslide at the Wai Khar jade mining site in Hapkant in 2022, while nearly 80 company employees and miners died in a separate accident at mining sites owned by Myanmar National Co. and Shan Yoma Co. last year.

Under the deposed National League for Democracy, or NLD, jade mining concessions had been suspended in Hpakant and around 90% of mining rights had expired by the end of 2020.

However, residents of the area told RFA that since the coup, jade companies have illegally restarted mining operations and skirted scrutiny by paying taxes to the Kachin Liberation Organization, an ethnic army in the area, and the junta.

According to a recent statement by the U.K.-based rights group Global Witness, nearly 400,000 people in Myanmar rely on scavenging precious stones in the Hpakant region to earn a living – most of whom work under unsafe conditions.

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.