At least one person is confirmed dead and as many as 100 others are feared missing following a landslide near the Kachin State jade-mining town of Hpakant early Wednesday morning, according to local sources.
One body was recovered at the site of the pre-dawn landslide, at an old mine near the village of Tharyargone, shortly before noon on Wednesday, while between 80 and 100 others working there were still unaccounted for, the sources said.
“The collapse of the mine’s massive slag heap may have buried everyone there. In incidents like this, bodies usually only turn up four to seven days later,” said Min Naing, the chair of the Thingaha social welfare group, one of several volunteer groups involved in search efforts at the mine.
The landslide also buried a number of small shops located near the 90-meter-wide waste pile, but it was unclear if any vendors were among those counted as missing.
Most of the victims are believed to have been jade pickers—individuals who scour waste from the mines in search of pieces of jade missed during excavation.
“The mound wasn’t even that high. The water from the lake at its base might have softened the already loosened soil, causing it to collapse,” said one local jade dealer.
The jade dealer, who spoke to Myanmar Now from the site of the landslide, said that while there were many volunteers helping with the search effort, he had yet to see any regime authorities there.
According to the Kachin News Group, 20 people were killed in Wednesday’s landslide, which came just three days after a similar incident in the village of Hseng Ja Bum, also in Hpakant Township, reportedly left five people dead.
At least 172 people were believed to have been killed after a massive landslide in the area in July of last year; only 166 bodies were recovered.
According to a 2019 report by the New York-based Natural Resource Governance Institute, official records shows that there were 245 deaths caused by landslides in Hpakant between January 2015 and July 2018. The actual number is likely much higher, it said.
Earlier this month, campaign group Global Witness released a report detailing how profits from Myanmar’s gemstone industry are financing the regime’s violent suppression of opposition to the February 1 coup.
The industry, which is mostly controlled by military conglomerates and their associates, serves as a financial lifeline for the regime, said the London-based group, which called on major international jewelers to stop sourcing gemstones from Myanmar.
Hpakant has also been the scene of a number of clashes between the military and the Kachin Independence Army, an ethnic armed group also involved in the jade industry, since the coup.
