Qualla: 2023 Hpakant Jade Mine Disaster

2023 Hpakant Jade Mine Disaster: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 13 August 2023, the mountain moved again. Mining waste -- the tailings from decades of jade extraction -- slid down the hillside at Hpakant and swept 32 miners into a nearby lake. It was the third documented landslide disaster at these mines in three years. In 2020, a similar collapse killed over 175 people. In 2021, another struck. Between 2015 and 2020 alone, 17 tailing dam and slope failures in the Hpakant area killed approximately 630 people. At the time of the August 2023 disaster, divers could not enter the lake. Soil, rocks, and waste continued pouring down the cliffs, so rescue teams could only drag hooks from motorboats across the water, searching for the dead.

2023 Hpakant Jade Mine Disaster: The Stone That Owns a Country

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Myanmar produces more jade than anywhere else on earth. The country holds the world's highest concentration of the stone -- sodium alumina silicate in its geological identity, but something closer to currency in its economic role. Myanmar's jade industry is estimated at more than...

2023 Hpakant Jade Mine Disaster: The Miners Who Cannot Leave

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Hpakant's 300,000 miners are not there by choice in any meaningful sense. Myanmar has been in an almost constant state of civil war since independence from Britain in 1948. The 2021 military coup overthrew the democratic system, and the continuous political upheaval has prevented...

2023 Hpakant Jade Mine Disaster: Mountains Turned Inside Out

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The environmental devastation at Hpakant is visible from the air: mountains sheared open, slopes of gray tailings cascading toward valleys that were once forested. The mining creates the conditions for its own disasters. Deforestation strips the hillsides. Tailings -- the waste r...

2023 Hpakant Jade Mine Disaster: Silence as Policy

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After the August 2023 disaster, the Tatmadaw's spokesperson told reporters that only ten people were missing or injured -- a figure contradicted by every other account. The Myanmar government does not conduct routine investigations into repeated landslides. It has no effective ge...