Myanmar jade mining drives rights abuses, disasters, war

Myanmar's secretive jade industry - run by military elites, drug lords and crony companies - is fuelling armed conflict, land grabs, deadly landslides and floods in northern Kachin state, the rights group Global Witness said on Friday.   Jade is driving conflict between the government and ethnic Kachin rebels, funding both sides in a war that has killed thousands of people and displaced 100,000 since 2011, the London-based organization said in a 128-page report.  The loss of land, pollution and takeover of the jade industry by government-licensed companies have destroyed traditional sources of income - farming and small-scale mining - and stoked resentment in a volatile region, the report said.

"Locals are literally having the ground cut from under their feet. There is a parallel social collapse involving endemic drug addiction amongst miners, prostitution and gambling," Mike Davis, Asia director for Global Witness, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an email from Yangon.   Those who "stand in the way of the guns and machines" face land grabs, intimidation and violence, the report said. Companies named in the report did not immediately respond to requests from the Thomson Reuters Foundation for comment on it. 

The Global Witness analysis, which details the military and ruling families, drug lords and companies benefiting from jade, valued Myanmar's jade production in 2014 at as much as $31billion - equivalent to 48 percent of Myanmar's GDP - and up to $122 billion over the decade through 2014.  (Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation)