…Myanmar’s jade mines are among the bleakest places in all of Asia. In these zones, death is so common and lawlessness so obscene that the government forbids almost all outsiders from coming to take a look…
This jade extraction industry is dominated by Myanmar’s military figures and their associates, whose firms plunder jade with heavy machinery…
While army-linked firms devour jade’s profits, their lucrative business also lures desperate men and women to the mines’ fringes. They are known as “yemase”: freelance scavengers picking through rubble unearthed by the big machines.
They appear to have comprised most of the landslide’s victims…
…[T]his disaster is still a reminder that Myanmar’s military — though bruised in recent elections swept by their chief rivals, the National League for Democracy — still dominates powerful industries that are marked by neglect for human life...
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