Since last year’s coup, mining activity in northern Myanmar has increased fivefold. Toxic and radioactive waste amounts to millions of tons. Regulation of the sector is almost impossible due to the presence of a militia affiliated with the Burmese regime.
Yangon ( / Agencies) – In the northern state of Kachin, the extraction of rare earths that are exported to China has increased fivefold thanks to the complicity of a militia close to the Burmese regime.
The information comes from the independent website The Irrawaddy, according to which in Pangwa, Chipwi municipality – after the military junta’s coup that ousted the civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1 last year – the influx of Chinese workers to the region has increased.
Rare earths are a group of minerals required for the production of advanced technologies such as electric vehicles, smartphones, wind turbines and fighter planes. With the growing demand for high-tech products, rare earth deposits have become paramount: their production is controlled almost entirely by China, which is the world’s leading source, followed by the United States and Myanmar.
It should be noted that, when it is not regulated, the extraction of minerals pollutes the environment a lot: there are studies dating back to the 1990s and documenting the ecological damage caused by illegal mining.
Beijing has been mining rare earths in northern Myanmar since 2016, after banning illegal activities within its borders. Today, more than half of the minerals that reach China come from the former Burma, where this activity registers a year-on-year growth of around 23%. As early as 2018, Myanmar was China’s top rare earth supplier. According to official Chinese sources, between May 2017 and October 2021, Myanmar exported 140,000 tons of rare earths worth more than one billion dollars.
Environmental specialists say there are a hundred mines in the north of the country, all of them under the control of Chinese investors and the New Democratic Army Kachin (NDA-K), a militia affiliated with the Burmese army. In 2009, Burmese generals changed the group’s name to Border Guard Force.
Between 2019 and 2020, the Kachin Mining Department discovered the existence of several illegal mines: officials explain that the presence of armed groups on the border has always made it difficult to regulate the industry. The previous civilian government had shut down all activities in 2019, but with the return of the military junta to power, they have resumed.
According to some estimates, between May 2017 and October 2021, Myanmar harbored 284 million tons of toxic waste and 14 million tons of radioactive waste. In dozens of Burmese villages along the Chinese border, the soil and groundwater are unusable as a result of extraction activities.
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