It is believed that 54 jade miners in northern Myanmar are dead on Tuesday after a huge mound of tailings collapsed into an open-pit mine, burying workers and heavy equipment, officials said. The disaster occurred late Monday night in the remote Hpakant area of Kachin State, where miners produce billions of dollars\u2019 worth of jade each year under harsh working conditions. Officials said there was little chance that anyone would be found alive at the mine, only three bodies have been found, which is about 100 feet deep and covers about five acres. Landslides are common in the jade mining area and and can claim 100 or more lives at a time. Many were victims of a landslide in Hpakant last year, and about 120 were buried in 2015 after the collapse of a mound of tailings, a a mudlike waste result of mining. According to the anti-corruption group Global Witness, in 2014 Myanmar\u2019s jade business was worth as much as $31 billion, almost half of the the country\u2019s gross domestic product, and most of the mining remains under government control leading to an international outcry against the disregard for workers\u2019 lives. Landslides are common in the jade mining area and can claim 100 or more lives at a time. Too many miners have lost their lives in the very dangerous business that is mining, especially in countries such as Myanmar where the government has majority control over the business yet turns a blind eye at every disaster. Many NGOs and large corporations that have a public standing against unfair working conditions and such as the jade miners experience, have spoken out against the conditions, the government, and the mining industry. In some ways, horrible disasters such as what has been seen here in Myanmar multiple times, can be seen as a violation of human rights as the miners are not properly protected. There needs to be more done to prevent these obviously preventable deaths.
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It is believed that 54 jade miners in northern Myanmar are dead on Tuesday after a huge mound of tailings collapsed into an open-pit mine, burying workers and heavy equipment, officials said. The disaster occurred late Monday night in the remote Hpakant area of Kachin State, where miners produce billions of dollars\u2019 worth of jade each year under harsh working… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3552,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551\/revisions\/3552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}