Landslide In Myanmar's Jade Mine, Dozens of People Allegedly Missing Swept By Waste Into The Lake

Illustration of a jade mine in Kachin, Myanmar. (Wikimedia Commons/Yin_Min_Tun)

JAKARTA - Dozens of people are feared missing after a landslide hit a jade mine in northern Myanmar early Wednesday, civil society groups and media reports said.

The landslide occurred in the Hpakant area of Kachin State at around 4 a.m. and there are fears that about 80 people have been swept into the lake by mining waste, an official at the Kachin Network Development Foundation said.

"Authorities arrived at the scene at around 7 a.m. and are conducting a search," Dashi Naw Lawn, an official at a civil society group, said by telephone, adding that no bodies had been found to date.

News portal Mizzima and media outlet Khit Thit also reported dozens of people appeared to be missing in the incident in Hpakant, the center of Myanmar's secret jade industry. In another landslide last weekend, the media reported at least six people were killed.

Illustration of a jade mine in Kachin, Myanmar. (Wikimedia Commons/Yin_Min_Tun)

Deadly landslides and other accidents are common at the poorly regulated Hpakant mine, which attracts poor workers from across Myanmar in search of gems, much of it for export to China.

Economic pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn more migrants to the jade mines even as conflict has flared since Myanmar's military regime seized power in a coup in February.

The ousted government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi had promised 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, died in one of the worst disasters in Hpakant after mining waste collapsed into a lake.

Illustration of a jade mine in Kachin, Myanmar. (Wikimedia Commons/Yin_Min_Tun)

Meanwhile, citing the Korea Times of AFP, civilians are often caught in the middle of a struggle for control of Myanmar's mines and their lucrative income, with rampant arms and drug trades narrowing the conflict.

Last year, heavy rains triggered a massive landslide in Hpakant that buried nearly 300 miners.

The February military coup also effectively snuffed out any opportunity for reforms to dangerous and unregulated industries initiated by the government of ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, watchdog Global Witness said in a report this year.