Jade miners’ hopes of fortune often become tragedy of addiction

Jade miners gather to use drugs at a trash- and syringe-littered camp near Sai Taung Village in Hpakant Township. (Photo: Htet Khaung Linn / Myanmar Now)


By Htet Khaung Linn

HPAKANT, Kachin State (Myanmar Now) - On a hill overlooking the scarred landscape of the Hpakant jade mines, five sit men huddled together in a dirty makeshift hut made from tarpaulins.
In hushed tones they help each other tie their forearms and inject heroin. Then they wait for the drug’s high to kick in and slip into oblivion.
In another ten huts at the site, which is located Sai Taung Village and littered with trash and used syringes, dozens more miners are gathered to spend their hard-earned cash on opium, cheap methamphetamine and low-quality heroin.
One of them is a 23-year-old, frail-looking man nicknamed Ko Shan Shei - or Brother Long Hair - for his long unkempt locks. He left his poor village in Sagaing Region’s Ye U Township for the mines in northern Myanmar’s Kachin State five years ago and worked here until drugs took over his life.
“Now I am addicted to drugs and I also sell it to others,” said Ko Shan Shei. “I buy two small tubes of opium the size of a fingertip and then I take a small amount to sell to other users so I can buy food.”
He is one the estimated 300,000 migrant workers who have come from across Myanmar to scavenge through mining waste in the hope of finding jade stone. Daily income levels are good in Hpakant, but living conditions are harsh and deadly landslides are common. Yet, the biggest threat to the men’s health is drug addiction.
Though there are no official estimates on narcotics use in Hpakant, local community leaders, such as Reverend Sai Naw, think that up to half of the miners use drugs.
Tint Soe, a National League for Democracy (NLD) parliamentarian from Hpakant Township, said there are a number of drug users camps spread out among the mines.
Across the whole of Myanmar there are about 83,000 injecting drug users, estimates the United Nations Office and Drugs and Crime. There is, however, a dearth of data and the organisation is currently conducting the first nationwide survey on the issue.

‘DRUG IS AN EASY CHOICE HERE’
Opium, heroin and meth are easily available in Hpakant and produced by ethnic rebel groups, pro-government militias and criminal gangs in lawless parts of Kachin and Shan states.
Like many of the men doing hard work at the mines, Ko Shan Shei said he began using drugs to relax and relieve physical pain - in his case he smoked opium to ease a persistent cough. But soon he found himself spending much of his daily income - around US$ 7 - on heroin, which is far more addictive due to the strong high when injected.
“The hard work makes labourers want to relax with alcohol, drugs and sex workers. Drug is an easy choice for the men here.” he said. “Illegal drugs can be purchased easily and money can be earned without much difficulty, so, there is more chance for drug addiction.”
One of the greatest risks for injecting drug users is HIV infection, which can happen when users share needles. A government service and several NGOs, such as the Asia Harm Reduction Network, provide methadone, clean syringes, as well as counselling and HIV testing for thousands of users in Hpakant.
Médecins Sans Frontières said it runs a clinic that provides antiretroviral drugs and other medicine to nearly 2,000 HIV/Aids patients in Hpakant, while it helps another 8,000 patients in four clinics in Kachin State.
Some NGOs organised into the Drug Advocacy Group have called on the new NLD government to scale up such services and shift to a rights- and healthcare-based approach to drug abuse problem.

CORRUPTED AUTHORITIES
While there are harm reduction services for the miners, law enforcement by authorities is largely absent and users at the site near Sai Taung Village made no effort to hide drug abuse. Some walked around with needles still hanging from their veins so they could easily shoot up again later.
Tint Soe, the MP, said drug dealers operate freely as they pay off local officials, police and military officers, while local authorities also lack capacity to control the vast mining area.
“Law enforcement cannot reach remote areas where there are (jade) scavengers, who are the regular customers for illegal drug dealers,” he said.
Pat Ja San, the vigilante anti-drug movement set up by the Kachin Baptist Church, is also active in Hpakant and has deployed its hardline tactics of sending groups of volunteers to apprehend dealers and users.
“We normally arrest drug dealers. When we find drug abusers, we seize the drugs and release them,” said Khu Lwam, a local Pat Ja San member.
He said last October the group nabbed a female member of a local drug-dealing ring who carried a ledger that recorded nearly half a million dollars in bribes paid to top officials, police and army commanders in Hpakant over the course of 58 days.
Pat Ja San has held on to the ledger out of distrust of local authorities and Tint Soe raised the allegations in the Lower House in February.

‘I DEEPLY REGRETTED MY SITUATION’
The Baptist Church-led movement also operates a rehabilitation centre near Hpakant called Uru Htwe San, a spartan camp with simple sleeping quarters that are surrounded by barbed-wire fences to prevent addicts from running away.
Rev. Sai Naw leads the camp where he tries to help about 50 men and women end their addiction solely through bible teaching - a method that has been criticised by groups promoting harm reduction.
“We have a difficult task to provide for all of them. We need land, food and accommodation - we cannot afford everything. There are so many needy (users) in the Hpakant area and we can help a small number of them,” he said.
A 29-year-old Kachin woman named Gar Lew said her husband, who earns about $8 per day from jade trading, sent her to the camp to end her opium addiction after she failed to care for their two children.
“I was willing to do so but could not control myself. I was angry when they brought me to the rehabilitation centre, but I am okay now,” she said.
Ko Shan Shei said he had returned to his native village twice to end his addiction, but relapsed every time he came back to Hpakant. He said he felt ashamed of life as a homeless addict.
“During the Water Festival, I saw some people happily celebrating but I was in dirty clothes,” Ko Shan Shei said. “I deeply regretted my situation when I compared myself with ordinary people.”
He added, “As I am still young I think I have enough strength to quit drugs. Hopefully, I will succeed this time.”

(Editing by Paul Vrieze)

In Mon State, expanding quarries threaten farms

Dust rises as rocks are broken into gravel at Yarmanya Company’s quarry in Paung Township, Mon State. (Photo: Phyo Thiha Cho / Myanmar Now)


By Phyo Thiha Cho

PAUNG TOWNSHIP, Mon State - On a recent afternoon in May, the farmers of Ohn Titbin Village Tract were tending to their betel nut and rubber plantations when a loud blast erupted at the foot of Kalama Mountain and shook the ground.
Workers had set off an explosion in a local quarry located about 10 km away and a cloud of dust drifted out from the area towards the plantations here in Mon State, southeastern Myanmar.
Farmer Nyan Htay said several blasts occurred every day after quarrying had increased in the area in recent years. The resulting increase in pollution, he said, has affected the local environment and the harvest of his 6-acre rubber plantation.
“I earned about 6 million kyats (about US$5,000) in previous years, but it has declined to just 3 million kyats,” complained the ethnic Karen villager.
Farmers in the area, which comprises six villages with Bamar, Karen, Pa-O and Mon residents, said that since 2011 authorities had allowed companies to rapidly expand the extraction of rock stone to make gravel, while paying little attention to its environmental impact.
Waste and dust has polluted air and water sources, they said, while explosions have disrupted the underground water table and caused cracks in the walls of local homes and Buddhist pagodas. Swathes of forest around the quarries that were used by villagers to collect firewood and food, such as bamboo shoots, have been fenced off.

POLLUTED CREEKS, EMPTY WELLS
Khin Hla Cho, a woman from Ywakalay Village, said access to drinking water had become problematic. “We have to dig new wells as the old ones have dried up due to the explosions,” she said.
Htein Lin, a 55-year-old farmer in Pa-O Su Village, said he relied on a now polluted local creek and sediments in the water had gradually covered 5 out of his 6.5 acres of land. “I could only complain to the village administrator about the damage to my land, but nothing else happened,” he lamented.
Anger has long been building among the communities. In 2014, they sent a petition with 1,200 signatures to the President’s Office but received no reply. Recently, they sent letters to the National League for Democracy (NLD) government in Naypyitaw and Mon State government demanding actions against the quarries.
On June 5, desperate farmers staged a protest calling on Long Life Aggregate Mining Company to cease quarrying.
Shwe Thaung, the Ohn Titbin Village Administrator, acknowledged the environmental problems, but said he was powerless to stop the companies as they had received long-running licenses from the previous government
“A creek that was a 100 feet wide in the past has now narrowed to about six feet because heaps of waste (from the quarries) were dumped in it,” he told Myanmar Now, adding that pollution had also affected his rubber plantation.

SUPPLYING EXPANDING INFRASTRUCTURE
More than 100 quarries have sprung up in recent years near the easily accessible mountains in Mon State, 22 of which are located in Paung and 48 in Kyaikhto township, according to Aye Zan, an NLD Mon State lawmaker who is studying the industry’s environmental impact.
On the eastern and western sides of Kalama Mountain, which dominates the region, six companies - Yarmanya, Long Life Aggregate Mining, Shwe Myint Moh Tun, Tun Tauk Sa, Azami and L.M. Jewellery - are extracting rock stone.
At the noisy, dusty quarries, dynamite and heavy machinery is used to break off large chunks of rocks from the mountainside, which are then crushed into gravel or smaller rocks that are loaded on to trucks.
The construction material is supplied to Myanmar’s growing number of road and infrastructure works, as well as government development projects, such as deep-sea ports and special economic zones at Thilawa near Yangon, and Kyauk Phyu Island off Rakhine State.
Tin Ohn, general manager of Shwe Myint Moh Tun Company, said it held a 30-year license to quarry 50 acres of mountainside, adding that the firm produced around 400 tons of rocks per day destined for Thilawa SEZ.
“We operate quarries at a rocky mountainside that is not suitable for agriculture. We have approval of the Mon State government,” he said.
Tin Ohn downplayed the quarry’s environmental impacts, but added that affected farmers would be paid around $80 if they can show that a young rubber tree was destroyed by the company.

GOVERNMENT ACTION?
Tin Hla, a senior member of the Agriculture and Farmers Federation of Myanmar, which is supporting local communities, said some companies were breaching environmental rules by operating in the vicinity of farms, but authorities failed to act against them.
“According to the rules, quarries must be set up about 4 miles (6.7 km) away from villages,” he said, adding that the companies made no effort to consult villagers or accept complaints about their operations.
Aye Zan, the NLD MP, said, “We can say for sure that these mining activities have negative environmental and social impacts, but we are still in the process of surveying all these mining sites in Mon State.
“After that we will table a bill in the Mon State parliament about this issue.”
Tun Ming Aung, a Paung Township state lawmaker with the NLD who raised the problems in the state legislature on June 2, said he would call for regulating the quarries when the complaints were properly documented.
“If people really suffer from these quarries we will try to stop them,” he said.
Min Kyi Win, the state's Minister for Environmental Conservation and Natural Resources, told Myanmar Now that the environmental impacts were a concern, but added that the quarries were an important source of state government revenue.
“If our country has sufficient revenue… we don’t need to break up these mountains,” he said.
Htun Ko, a 35-year-old farmer from Ook Tatar Village who has been protesting against Long Life Aggregate Mining Company, said residents’ livelihoods suffered greatly and he vowed they would continue to fight against the mining.
“Our campaign will continue until the companies moves away from this area,” he said.

(Editing by Paul Vrieze)

Fearing extreme weather, farmers scale back rice cultivation

The drop in rice production follows the devastating impact of Cyclone Komen, which ravaged the farm sector with heavy flooding in 12 out of 14 states and regions from June to August last year. (Photo: Nyein Chan/ Myanmar Now)


By Phyo Thiha Cho

ZALUN Township, Ayeyarwady Region (Myanmar Now)— Aung Kywe remembers how he had to stand by helplessly last year when massive floods in the wake of Cyclone Komen affected Ayeyarwady Delta and destroyed half of his 14 acres of paddy.

That traumatic experience came on top of years of decreasing yields, Aung Kywe said, adding that this monsoon season he will leave much of his land in Kawkatkyi Village, Zalun Township, fallow to avoid loss of money with another failed harvest.

“Paddy plots on the lower-lying land are almost sure to be flooded,” he said, adding, “Paddy yields have also decreased year by year, from 100 baskets per acre to 75 baskets.” A basket of rice weighs around 25 kilograms.

In neighbouring Maubin Township, also located in the heart of Myanmar’s ‘rice bowl’ delta region, farmers spoke of similar measures to limit exposure to what many believe are increased occurrences of climate change-related extreme weather, such as drought, heat and floods.

Kyaw Minn, from Palaung village, said, “I will not grow monsoon paddy this year, but will cultivate other seasonal crops when the water level drops after the rainy season.”

Farmers in the delta generally grow two rice crops, one in the rainy season and one in the cooler season in lower-lying areas that are fed with receding flood waters. They might also grow a third, short-cycle crop, such as beans, in the hot months before the monsoon.

Thein Aung, chairman of the Independent Farmers League in Ayeyawady Region, said that because of rising concerns among farmers vast areas of land will go uncultivated this year.

“The farmers from our villages will not be growing paddy in a total of 200,000 acres situated on the low lands,” he said, before adding that the impact on overall paddy production would probably be limited as these fields are some of the least-productive tracts.

The Ayeyarwady Delta is home to many millions of subsistence farmers whose income and food security relies on their annual harvest, and to a lesser extent fishing.

The drop in rice production follows the devastating impact of Cyclone Komen, which ravaged the farm sector with heavy flooding in 12 out of 14 states and regions from June to August last year.

Some 260,000 acres of monsoon paddy fields were flooded and 52,000 acres damaged, according to official figures, which showed that the cyclone killed 120 people and affected more than 400,000 households.

Sein Win Hlaing, chairman of the Paddy and Rice Producers Association, said, “Rice production declined by 20 percent last year due to the weather’s impact.” He added that the fall in rice production would hamper Myanmar’s export, which stood at around 1.5 million metric tons of rice before 2015.

Cyclones and other extreme weather are set to increase further and this trend should ring alarm bells with the agriculture sector and the new National League for Democracy government, said Tun Lwin, an independent meteorological expert and former government official.

“Traditional agricultural methods are no longer suitable for the changing weather conditions,” he warned, adding that the monsoon would be shorter and produce more volatile weather.

Ba Hein, the Minister for Agriculture, Livestock, Natural Resources for Ayeyawady Region, said
development of the agriculture sector and of the water management infrastructure was ignored by previous, military-led governments.

“The delta has many rivers and streams, and these have not been properly managed,” he said, adding, however, that the state government had limited funds to improve water management infrastructure and that it was unlikely that the central government would provide more resources soon.

His administration, Ba Hein said, would focus on helping farmers find solutions to the changing weather conditions and boost overall agricultural development by, for example, launching new contract farming systems in cooperation with the Myanmar Rice Producers Association.

Thike Soe, an officer of the Agricultural Department in Maubin Township, said his department was trying to educate farmers about the changing weather patterns and the need to use different rice varieties in order to adapt to the changes.

“There will be a shortage of water supply for cultivation and crop yields may decline. So, they should grow rice seeds that can be harvested in a shorter period,” he said, adding that such varieties were available to farmers on local markets.

Soe Tun, chairman of the Myanmar Rice Association, echoed this idea but stressed water management should be improved in order to harness available water resources in times of drought.

“Myanmar has some alternative sources of water supply, including four major rivers. If the water from these rivers can be used efficiently, the country’s agricultural sector is sure to resurge,” he said.

(Editing by Paul Vrieze)