AFP. (2020, July 03). Death toll climbs to more than 160 in Myanmar jade mine disaster.

France 24.
Retrieved from https://www.france24.com/en/20200703-death-toll-climbs-to-more-than-160-in-
myanmar-jade-mine-disaster

Death toll climbs to more than 160 in Myanmar

jade mine disaster
Issued on: 03/07/2020 - 12:08 Modified: 03/07/2020 - 12:08

Scores die each year while working in Myanmar's lucrative but poorly regulated jade industry. © Handout Myanmar Fire
Services Department/AFP

Text by: NEWS WIRES </en/news-wires>

Rescuers Friday pulled several bodies from the scene of a landslide

which killed over 160 jade miners in northern Myanmar, many of them
migrant workers seeking their fortune in treacherous open-cast mines
near the China border.
The disaster—the worst in memory to strike Myanmar <https://www.france24.com
/en/tag/myanmar/>’s notoriously dangerous jade mines <https://www.france24.com/en/tag
/mining/>—occurred on Thursday <https://www.france24.com/en/20200702-more-than-100-
when a hillside collapsed in heavy monsoon
dead-in-landslide-at-myanmar-jade-mine>
rains <https://www.france24.com/en/tag/landslides/>.

A deluge of mud smothered workers scouring the land for the precious stone—a
moment of horror captured on cameraphone footage.

A woman cried over the body of her son who lay in the grim line-up of bloodied
corpses retrieved from the mud, his clothes ripped off by the force of the
landslide.

“The search and rescue missions continued today and we now have 166 bodies,”
the Myanmar Fire Services Department said in a Facebook post, raising the
overnight toll by four.

The area is close to the Chinese <https://www.france24.com/en/tag/china/> border in

Kachin state, where billions of dollars of jade is believed to be scoured each year
from bare hillsides by poor migrant <https://www.france24.com/en/tag/migrants/> workers
seeking to strike it rich.

As photos of the dead circulated on social media Facebook users began to

identify workers hundreds of miles from home, leaving moving tributes to friends
and family members.

“Please bring my father back,” said Hnin Wati. “A daughter’s heart is breaking.”

Another, from a former miner, affectionately remembered one of the dead for his
“kind-heart” and generosity with his food during tough shared times on the
mountainside.

Myanmar is one of the world’s biggest sources of jadeite and the industry is
supercharged by demand for the green gem from neighbouring China.

Some jade brokers suspended online auctions on Thursday, and promised to

donate money to their friends who were killed.

Scores of miners die every year in landslides and other accidents on unstable,
over-excavated mountainsides.

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They are often from impoverished ethnic minority communities, looking for scraps
left behind by big firms.

Low-quality stones can be exchanged for food or sold for $20 to waiting brokers.

“Many of them (the dead) are Rakhine,” Phon Graing, a Hpakant township official
told AFP, referring to the ethnic group who live hundreds of kilometres away at the
other end of the country, and who are among Myanmar’s poorest communities.

“But we don’t have specific numbers yet.”

(AFP)

MYANMAR </EN/TAG/MYANMAR/> LANDSLIDES </EN/TAG/LANDSLIDES/> MINING </EN/TAG/MINING/>