A mining disaster in Kachin State on 2 July has cost 200 lives, reports Byline Times. Mining disasters have become commonplace in the area but rarely are they on the scale of what happened that day.
Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, told Byline Times that there is “no transparency in the jade industry. Jade helps funds conflict and is one of the causes of conflict. Big mining companies have pushed out smaller local miners, with tens of thousands of local people and migrants left looking for what the bigger companies might have left behind.”
He said the NLD government has “completely ignored the problems relating to the jade industry … It seems Aung San Suu Kyi does not want to upset the powerful companies involved in the jade industry, including the military.”