Mining of iron and other metals
Iron, tungsten (wolfram), molybdenum, titanium, platinum, antimony, chromite, nickel, tin etc
Individual Documents
Description:
"... In 2014, Myanmar(Burma)confounded industry analysts by emerging to become the World?s third biggest tin producer, experiencing a 5-year tin production increase of ca.4900%. This surprise emergence of Myanmar as a major tin producer is a possible Black Swan event that potentially has significant re-percussions both for the future of global tin production, and for the economic development of Myanmar. This is a disruptive event that has likely contributed to a substantial drop in tin prices in 2015. The
Myanmar production increase came from a new minesite in Wa State, and not from the traditional tin-producing areas in the South. We discuss tin mining and potential in Myanmar and consider whether it could provide a foundation for the economic rehabilitation of the country..."
Nicholas J. Gardiner, JohnP.Sykes, AllanTrench, LaurenceJ.Robb
Source/publisher:
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford
Date of publication:
2015-10-05
Date of entry/update:
2016-04-15
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Mining of iron and other metals, Rural development in Burma/Myanmar, Natural Resource Use, Burma/Myanmar - reports, articles etc.
Language:
English
Format :
pdf
Size:
1.95 MB
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Description:
"A recent paper published in the journal "Resources Policy" concludes that a new tin mining operation located in a corner of northern Shan State controlled by the United Wa State Army (UWSA) appears to be responsible for elevating Burma in just a few years from being a bit player in the global tin industry ?to the status of the World?s third largest tin producing country.”
What the authors call a potential ?black swan event” represents a 4900.00 percent increase in tin production over a five year period, from 2009 to 2014, according to figures provided by the UK based International Tin Research Institute (ITRI), a not for profit group with close ties to the mining industry..."
Seamus Martov
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy"
Date of publication:
2016-02-25
Date of entry/update:
2016-02-29
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Mining of iron and other metals
Language:
English
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Description:
A Free Burma Rangers (FBR) team travelled to the town of Maw Chee [Mawchi] to get information about the Burma Army and mining activities in that area.
Mining operations in Maw Chee began at the time of the British occupation of Burma. Over the years it has increased with both Burmese and Chinese companies coming into this area to mine ore. Primarily the mines in the Maw Chee area extract tin...When looking at Maw Chee one can see scars all over the hill sides from where the mining operations have dumped debris and caused landslides. In October 2015, a large landslide killed 24 people when part of the mountain over Maw Chee came loose and destroyed 38 houses. This landslide was not directly linked to any one mine, but was caused by heavy rains and roadways built along the hillside. Myint Aung Hlaing came by helicopter, and the Burma Army ? along with many other organizations ? came to provide relief for the victims of the landslide..."
Source/publisher:
Free Burma Rangers
Date of publication:
2016-02-26
Date of entry/update:
2016-02-26
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Mining of iron and other metals, Rural economy
Language:
English
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Description:
"A Chinese and a Luxembourg-registered firm have obtained Arakan State government approval to begin mining aluminum and titanium deposits located on beaches in the north of the state, said Arakan State Minister of Electricity and Industry Aung Than Tin.
He added that final approval from Naypyidaw for the projects, which are located in strife-torn parts of the state, was expected soon..."
Nyein Nyein
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy"
Date of publication:
2013-10-07
Date of entry/update:
2014-12-21
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Mining of iron and other metals
Language:
English
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Description:
"Chin political parties and residents are calling for transparency over a Chinese-backed project, with some warning that the project could lead to a repeat of the unrest seen at the Letpadaung copper mine.
Geological studies of the Mwe Taung Phar Taung area ? on the border of Chin State?s Tiddim township and Sagaing Region?s Kale township ? show three deposits of mixed nickel and iron capable of providing nearly 17,000 tonnes of pure nickel annually.
A survey carried out by Chin political parties, civil societies and MPsfrom September 2 to 9, however, shows that many residents in the area are concerned about the potential impact on their businesses and the environment..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Times"
Date of publication:
2014-09-20
Date of entry/update:
2014-12-21
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Mining of iron and other metals
Language:
English
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Description:
"Villagers in Tenasserim Division?s Dawei District announced they will file a legal complaint against a Thai company and a Burmese government firm operating the Heinda tin mine, in order to seek compensation for severe environmental damage to their farmlands caused by the mine?s wastewater.
In a press release Sunday, disseminated by US campaign group Earth Rights International, residents of Myaung Pyo village said they would complain to Dawei District Court over the operations of Thailand?s Myanmar Pongpipat Company and state-owned Mining Enterprise 2, which falls under the Ministry of Mining.
The inhabitants of the ethnic Dawei village said their lands have been affected by increasing amounts of wastewater ever since Myanmar Pongpipat took over the Heinda mine. The Thai firm signed a production-sharing contract with Mining Enterprise 2 in 1999 and reportedly holds rights to 65 percent of produced tin and tungsten, which is transported to nearby Thailand for processing..."
Paul Vrieze
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy"
Date of publication:
2014-03-17
Date of entry/update:
2014-12-21
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Mining of iron and other metals
Language:
English
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Description:
"Two Karenni NGOs have called on the Burmese government to suspend all mining licences issued since March 2012 for the eastern state until there is constitutional reform granting ethnic states the right to control and manage their own natural resources.
In a joint-statement issued last week, the Molo Women Mining Watch Network and Karenni Civil Society Network (KCSN) strongly condemned the Burmese government?s practice of granting mining contracts in conflict zones in Karenni state.
According to the groups, since the Karenni National Progressive Party signed a ceasefire with the Burmese government some 18 months ago, the number of mines in Karenni state has risen from three to 16.
?Tin and tungsten mines in Mawchi mining town have been expanded, and new antimony, coal, galena and gold mines are being mined throughout Karenni state,” said the report.
Source/publisher:
Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB)
Date of publication:
2013-10-07
Date of entry/update:
2014-12-21
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Mining of iron and other metals
Language:
English
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Description:
This report includes a situation update submitted to KHRG in September 2012 by a community member describing events occurring in Dooplaya District, during September 2012. Specifically detailed is the situation and location of armed groups (Tatmadaw, DKBA and BGF); the villagers? situation and opinions of the KNLA; and development projects in the area. This report also contains information about Tatmadaw practices such as the killing of villager?s livestock without permission or compensation; forcing villagers to be guides; and use of villagers? tractors; villagers were however, given payment for this. The report also describes villagers? difficulties associated with the payment of government-required motorbike licenses, as well as difficulties regarding the education system. The lack of healthcare in local villages is described, as well as the ailments that villagers suffer from. Further, this report includes information about antimony mining projects in the area carried out by companies such as San Mya Yadana Company and Thu Wana Myay Zi Lwar That Tuh Too Paw Yay owned by Hkin Zaw. Antimony mining is reported to have been going on for four years and the presence of mining companies is reported to have led to food price increases in the area. The community member describes how large mining companies have contributed water pipes and money to a village school. The biggest mining project in the region led by Hkin Maung is discussed and it is reported that mining companies working in the area have permission from the KNU and pay taxes to the KNU. This report and others, was published in March 2013 in Appendix 1: Raw Data Testimony of KHRG?s thematic report: Losing Ground: Land Conflicts and collective action in eastern Myanmar.
Source/publisher:
Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG)
Date of publication:
2013-06-07
Date of entry/update:
2013-07-27
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Mining of iron and other metals, Economic oppression, Extortion, Robbery, Armed conflict in Burma - Impact on village life, including health and education
Language:
English
Format :
pdf
Size:
134.63 KB
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Description:
This report documents the increased militarization around the Mawchi mines, as well as the different social and environmental impacts they have had on the local community......
1. Introduction...
2. Ancestral lands and water sources to be lost from
extension of Mawchi mines...
3. Tin production for export and domestic use...
4. Villagers suffer impacts of Heinda tin mine in Tenasserim...
5. Background history of Mawchi tin mine...
6. Timeline of Mawchi mines...
7. Relations between tin mining companies...
8. Military security for Mawchi mine...
9. Social impacts of tin mining:
9/1 . Health problems caused by tin mining;
9/2 . Pollution from mining waste;
9/3. Drinking water problems;
9/4. Health problems downstream from the mines;
9/5. Living conditions and safety of mine workers;
9/6 . Gender disparity...
10 . An old woman from the Mawchi area recounts her
experience...
11 . Environmental impacts of tin mining:
11/1 . Deforestation;
11/2 . Landslides...
12 . Who benefits from tin mining?...
13. Conclusion and recommendations.
Source/publisher:
Molo Women Mining Watch Network
Date of publication:
2012-12-11
Date of entry/update:
2012-12-17
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Mining of iron and other metals
Language:
English
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Description:
အစီရင်ခံစာအကျဉ်းချုပ်
ရှမ်းပြည်နယ် အရှေ့ပိုင်း တာချီလိတ်မြို ၏့ မြောက်ဖက် တောင်တန်းဒေများတွင် ဒေသခံများကို ထိခိုကေ် စသည့်
ရွှေဖြူတူးဖော်ခြင်းလုပ်ငန်းကို ၂၀၀၇ခုနှစ်မှ စတင်ခဲ့ကာ ယင်းကြောင့် လားဟူ၊ အာခါနှင့် ရှမ်းရွာ ၈ရွာမှာ လူပေါင်း ၂၀၀၀ကျော်ကို
ထိခိုက်စေခဲ့သည်။ ရွှေဖြူတူးဖော်မှုကို မြန်မာကုမ္ပဏီများက ဆောင်ရွက်နေပြီး တရုတ်နှင့် ထိုင်းနိုင်ငံသို့ တင်ပို့လျှက်ရှိသည်။
တာချလီ တိ ြ်မို့ မြောကဖ် က ် ၁၃ကလီ မို တီ ာအကွာရ ှိအားရဲခေါ် အာခါရွာအနီးတငွ ်ကမု ဏ္ပ ၅ီ ခကု လပု င် န်း လပု က် ငို လ် ျှကရ် သှိ ည။်
ထကို မု ဏ္ပ မီ ျားက ရွာသားများပငို ဆ် ငို သ် ည့်ပစည္စ ်းများနငှ့် မြေယာများက ိုအတင်းအကျပဖ် အိ ားပေး၍ ဈေးနမှိ ်ရောင်းချစေသကသဲ့ ို
မြေယာအချို က့ ို လျှော်ကြေးမပေးဘဲ အဓမ္မသိမ်း ယူ ခဲ့ကြသည်။ ထောင်ပေါင်းများစွာသော စိုက်ပျိုးမြေဧကများနှင့်
သစ်တောများကို ကုမ္ပဏီက သိမ်းယူနေပြီး အချို့သောမြေယာများသည် သတ္တုတွင်းမှ အညစ်အကြေးများစွန့်ပစ်သောကြောင့်
ပျကဆ် ီးလျှကရ် သှိ ည။် ရွာသရူ ွာသားများ အသုံးပြုသည့်အဝေးပြေးလမ်းသ့ိုသွားရောကရ် ာလမ်းမှာလည်း သတု္တတူးဖောသ် ည့်
ကုန်တင်ကားများ၊ စက်ယန္တယားကြီးများ ဖြတ်သန်းသွားခြင်းကြောင့် ပျက်ဆီးကြရသည်။
သတု္တတူးဖောြ်ခင်းကြောင့် ရွာသားများ အဓကိ အသုံးပြုနေသော ရေအရင်းအမြစ ်ညစည် မ်းလျှကရ် ြှိပီး ရေစီးကြောင်းများလည်း
ပြောင်းလဲကုန်သည်။ ယင်းအခြေအနေများက ဒေသခံအမျိုးသမီးများကို ကြီးမားသော အခက်အခဲများဖြစ်ပေါ်စေသည်။
အကြောင်းမှာ ရေရရှိရန်အတွက် အလွန်ဝေးကွာသောခရီးကို ခြေလျင် လမ်းလျှောက်သွားရသောကြောင့် ဖြစ်သည်။
ထို့အတူ သတ္တုတူးဖော်ရာလုပ်ငန်းသို့ အမျိုးသားရွှေ့ပြောင်းအလုပ်သမားများ အစုလိုက်အပြုံလိုက် ရောက်ရှိ လာခြင်းကြောင့်
ထိုနေရာတဝိုက်တွင်နေထိုင်သည့် အမျိုးသမီးများ၏ လုံခြုံရေးမှာ အန္တရာယ် ကျရောက် လျှက်ရှိသည်။ စိုက်ခင်းသို့
သွားသည့်အမျိုးသမီးများမှာ လိင်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ ထိပါးနှောင့်ယှက်မှုများကို ကြုံတွေ့ နေရသည်။ အမျိုးသမီးငယ်များမှာ
သတ္တုတွင်းအလုပ်သမားများ၏ မယားငယ်များအဖြစ် သိမ်းယူခံရသကဲ့သို့ အချို့ အမျိုးသမီးငယ်များမှာ ပြည့်တန်ဆာများ
ဖြစ်ကြရသည်။ သတ္တုတွင်းဝန်ထမ်းများက ဒေသခံ အမျိုးသမီးငယ်များကို လူကုန်ကူးရာတွင် ပါဝင်ပတ်သက်နေကြသည်။
ရွာသ၊ူ ရွာသားများ၏ အခငွ အ့် ရေးက ိုကာကွယ်ပေးသည့် ဥပဒေစိုးမိုးမလှု ည်း ကင်းမဲ့နေသည။် မြနမ် ာစစတ် ပမ် ှအရာရမှိ ျားအား
လာဘ်ထိုးခြင်းအားဖြင့် သတ္တုတူးဖော်သည့် ကုမ္ပဏီများသည် လူမှုရေးနှင့် သဘာဝပတ်ဝန်းကျင်ဆိုင်ရာ စံသတ်မှတ်ချက်များကို
လိုက်နာရန်မလိုဘဲ လုပ်ငန်းလုပ်ကိုင်နိုင်ကြသည်။ ထို့ကြောင့် သတ္တုတူးဖော်သည့်ကုမ္ပဏီများနှင့် အိမ်နီးချင်းနိုင်ငံမှ
ရွှေဖြူဝယ်ယူသူတို့သည် လူမှုရေးနှင့် သဘာဝပတ်ဝန်းကျင် ထိန်းသိမ်းရေးဆိုင်ရာ တာဝန်များကို ရှောင်ရှားခြင်းဖြင့်
သတ္တုတူးဖော်ခြင်း လုပ်ငန်းမှ အမြတ်ငွေ များနိုင်သမျှ များများရအောင် ဆောင်ရွက်နေကြသည်။
ထို့ကြောင့် လားဟူ အမျိုးသမီးအဖွဲ့က ဒေသတွင်းဖွံ့ဖြိုးတိုးတက်မှုကို မဖြစ်စေဘဲ ဆင်းရဲမွဲတေမှုနှင့် သဘာဝပတ်ဝန်းကျင်
ပျက်ဆီးမှုကိုသာဖြစ်စေသည့် သတ္တုတူးဖော်ခြင်းလုပ်ငန်းကို ချက်ချင်း ရပ်တန့်ရန် မြန်မာအစိုးရအား တောင်းဆိုသည်။
Source/publisher:
Lahu Women?s Organization
Date of publication:
2012-05-08
Date of entry/update:
2012-05-14
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
Burmese (မြန်မာဘာသာ)
Format :
pdf pdf
Size:
1.81 MB 44.89 KB
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Description:
Burmese and Chinese companies are pushing aside Akha, Lahu and Shan villagers
in eastern Shan State in a grab for platinum (?white gold” in Burmese). Women are
facing particular hardship due to the loss of livelihood and the contamination of water
sources. The Lahu Women Organization is calling for an immediate halt to these
damaging mining operations....Summary
Since 2007, destructive platinum mining has been taking place in the hills north of
Tachilek, eastern Shan State, impacting about 2,000 people from eight Lahu, Akha
and Shan villages. The platinum is being extracted by Burmese mining companies and
exported to China and Thailand.
Five companies are currently operating around the Akha village of Ah Yeh, 13 kilometers
north of Tachilek. They have forced villagers to sell property and land at cheap prices,
and confiscated other lands without compensation. Hundreds of acres of farms and
forestland have been seized, or destroyed by dumping of mining waste. The villagers?
access road to the main highway has been ruined by the passage of heavy mining trucks
and machinery.
The main water source for local villagers has been diverted and contaminated by
the mining, causing tremendous hardship for local women, who must now walk long
distances to do their washing.
Women are also facing increased security risks from the influx of migrant male miners
into the area. There is regular sexual harassment of women going to their fields. Young
women are being taken as minor wives by the miners; some are also becoming sex
workers. Mining staff have also been involved in trafficking of local women.
There is no rule of law protecting the rights of the local villagers. By paying off the local
Burmese military, mining companies are able to carry out operations without adhering
to any social or environmental standards. The companies and platinum buyers in
neighbouring countries are therefore maximizing profits by avoiding responsibility for
the social and environmental costs of the mines.
The Lahu Women?s Organisation therefore calls on the Burmese government to put an
immediate stop to these destructive mining operations, which are not contributing to
local development, but are causing poverty and environmental degradation..."
Source/publisher:
Lahu Women?s Organization
Date of publication:
2012-05-08
Date of entry/update:
2012-05-14
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
English
Format :
pdf
Size:
1.81 MB
more
Description:
Summary:
Since 2007, destructive platinum mining has been taking place in the hills north of
Tachilek, eastern Shan State, impacting about 2,000 people from eight Lahu, Akha
and Shan villages. The platinum is being extracted by Burmese mining companies and
exported to China and Thailand.
Five companies are currently operating around the Akha village of Ah Yeh, 13 kilometers
north of Tachilek. They have forced villagers to sell property and land at cheap prices,
and confiscated other lands without compensation. Hundreds of acres of farms and
forestland have been seized, or destroyed by dumping of mining waste. The villagers?
access road to the main highway has been ruined by the passage of heavy mining trucks
and machinery.
The main water source for local villagers has been diverted and contaminated by
the mining, causing tremendous hardship for local women, who must now walk long
distances to do their washing.
Women are also facing increased security risks from the influx of migrant male miners
into the area. There is regular sexual harassment of women going to their fields. Young
women are being taken as minor wives by the miners; some are also becoming sex
workers. Mining staff have also been involved in trafficking of local women.
There is no rule of law protecting the rights of the local villagers. By paying off the local
Burmese military, mining companies are able to carry out operations without adhering
to any social or environmental standards. The companies and platinum buyers in
neighbouring countries are therefore maximizing profits by avoiding responsibility for
the social and environmental costs of the mines.
The Lahu Women?s Organisation therefore calls on the Burmese government to put an
immediate stop to these destructive mining operations, which are not contributing to
local development, but are causing poverty and environmental degradation.
Source/publisher:
Lahu Women?s Organization
Date of publication:
2012-05-08
Date of entry/update:
2012-05-14
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
Lahu (Metadata: English)
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Description:
"It is reported in the Japanese press today that Itochu Corp has begun a feasibility study in the country to isolate specialty metals including tungsten and molybdenum.
This follows approaches by Japanese officials last year trying to get a deal with Burma for access to rare earths, the elements vital to Japanese industry?s high tech and hybrid car programs.
South Korea has also been lobbying the Burmese over rare earths. Chinese companies have also been eyeing projects in the country. In 2008, China National Petroleum Corp signed a 30-year gas agreement covering production from three blocks in the Bay of Bengal.
But this is only the beginning. The country will be a big target because it has bountiful resources in close proximity to resource-hungry India and China..."
Robin Bromby
Source/publisher:
"The Australian"
Date of publication:
2012-05-04
Date of entry/update:
2012-05-06
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Minerals and Mining - Burma (general articles and analyses), Mining of iron and other metals
Language:
English
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Description:
Pinpet Mountain under imminent threat
as iron project speeds ahead....
"Excavation of Burma?s second largest iron deposit located
in southern Shan State is imminent as bulldozers begin
preparatory clearing on the iconic Pinpet Mountain, home
to 7,000 people. The 300 residents in Pang Ngo village are
in immediate danger from falling rocks and landslides as
machines uproot trees, clear brush and remove top soil on
the west side of the mountain. Farm fi elds at the foot of the
mountain may be covered with toxic waste soils once the
excavation starts as ore samples at the site have tested
high for arsenic content.
Construction activities at the secretive iron factory
compound are also racing ahead. Underground bunkers
are now complete and a massive new crushing facility (see inside) now
towers above the compound walls. Surveys for uranium conducted on the
mountain in the past continue to fuel persistent concerns that this project is
linked to Burma?s nuclear plans.
Meanwhile according to authorities the forced relocation of nearby villages
will begin after the military regime?s sham elections, beginning with the
extraction of a community graveyard in December. Land confi scation
continues unabated. Local villagers are calling to stop the project, protect
the mountain and save the main waterway for the entire Hopone valley from
toxic pollution before it?s too late..."
This briefing is an update of PYO?s report, "Robbing the Future published in June 2009".
Source/publisher:
Pa-Oh Youth Organization (PYO)
Date of publication:
2010-10-00
Date of entry/update:
2011-02-03
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Mining of iron and other metals
Language:
English, Burmese
Format :
pdf pdf
Size:
2.21 MB 2.24 MB
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Description:
"Save our Mountain, Save out Future": Pinpet Iron Mine and Steel Mill plant, near Taunggyi..."The Pa-Oh Youth Organisation (PYO) has produced a video and leaflets
showing the destruction already caused by the mining project, due to start
next year, including loss of farmlands, pollution of waterways, and abuses
committed by the Burmese regime?s troops providing security for the
project. Hundreds of copies of the video have already been distributed in
the affected areas.
Construction of the massive iron factory, jointly funded by Russian
state-owned Tyazhpromexport company, is almost complete. 100 villagers are
now being ordered out of the project area, among 7,000 people slated for
relocation once Pinpet mountain starts being leveled for open pit mining.
A further 35,000 villagers will be impacted by pollution of the Thabet
Stream, which has been diverted to clean and process the iron ore.
Affected communities have appealed to local authorities to stop the land
confiscation and forced relocation, but so far to no avail.
?There is a news black-out about the Pinpet project in Burma. We want to
raise awareness about the damage being caused and support community
efforts to oppose the project,” said PYO spokesperson Khun Chan Khe..."
To see the video and an update on the project, see
http://pyo-org.blogspot.com/
..... ပအိုဝ်းလူငယ်လှုပ်ရှားတက်ကြွသူများက
ရှမ်းပြည်နယ် တောင်ကြီးမြို့နယ်ရှိ
မြန်မာပြည်၏ အကြီးဆုံး ပင်းပက်
သံသတ္တုမိုင်းမှ ထိခိုက်ဆိုးကျိုးများအား
ဆန့်ကျင်ကန့်ကွက်နေသည့် ဒေသခံပြည်သူများ
အားဝိုင်းဝန်း ထောက်ခံအားပေးရေးအတွက်
ယနေ့ လှုပ်ရှားမှုကို ကျင်းပပြုလုပ်ခြင်း ဖြစ်ပါသည်။
လှုပ်ရှားမှုနှင့်ပတ်သက်၍သတ္တုမိုင်း စီမံကိန်းကြောင့်
ထိခိုက်ဖျက်ဆီးခံရမှုများကို ဗွီဒီယို၊ လက်ကမ်းစာစောင်များ
အား မှတ်တမ်းတင်ထုတ်ဝေသည်။ ထိခိုက်ဖျက်ဆီးခံရမှုတွင်
စီမံကိန်းလုံခြုံရေးကြောင့် ဒေသခံအာဏာပိုင်များက
ကျူးလွန်ခဲ့သည့် လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ချိုးဖောက်ခံရမှုများ၊
ဒေသခံပြည်သူများမှ လယ်ယာမြေများ လက်လွတ်ဆုံးရှုံးရမှု၊
ရေထုညစ်ညမ်းမှုများ ကြုံတွေ့နေရပါသည်။ ထို့သို့ ထိခိုက်
နစ်နာခဲ့ရသည့် ဒေသခံပြည်သူများပုံရိပ်ကို ပအိုဝ်းလူငယ်
အစည်းအရုံးမှ ဓါတ်ပုံဗွီဒီယိုမှတ်တမ်း အနေဖြင့် ဖြန့်ဖြူး
ထုတ်ဝေပါသည်။
Source/publisher:
Pa_Oh Youth Organization (PYO)
Date of publication:
2010-10-27
Date of entry/update:
2010-10-28
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Mining of iron and other metals
Language:
English, Burmese
Format :
pdf
Size:
4.02 KB
Local URL:
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Description:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
"The transformation of Mount Pinpet, or "Pine Tree Mountain," in Burma?s war-torn Shan State, for the excavation and refinement of the country?s second largest iron ore deposit is changing the very nature of life there, and if not stopped could permanently destroy the home of more than 7,000 primarily ethnic Pa-O residents.
Since 2004 Russian and Burmese companies have been preparing to develop the deposit and are currently building an iron processing plant and a cement factory on a total of 11,000 acres of lands. An Italian company is also believed to be involved in the project.
Although there has been a ceasefire in the area since 1991, the military ruling Burma has established three sizeable battalion camps and two military universities in or around the nearby towns of Taunggyi and Hopone. Fighting has flared up south of the project site and has led to recent torture and killing of villagers by the Burma Army.
Twenty-five villages, a total of 7,000 people, could be permanently displaced from their homes and farmlands by the projects. A further 35,000 people rely on the watershed of the Thabet Stream in the valley east of the mountain.
Fifty people have already been forced to move and were not adequately compensated. The confiscation of vital farmlands has begun, leaving over 100 families without the primary source of their livelihood and sustenance. Travel restrictions have closed down a major road and prohibited villagers from collecting firewood, food, and shelter materials on the mountain.
The entire mountain of Pinpet will be excavated for this project, irrevocably changing the landscape and environment of the area. Pollution from mine tailings and erosion of mine heaps threaten the main water source of Hopone Valley. Ancient pagodas have been cracked and may be demolished altogether by explosions to prepare construction sites and begin excavation.
Local communities have not been informed or consulted about project plans and complaints to authorities about the confiscation of lands and lack of compensation have not been addressed. No assessments of the projects have been made public and mining authorities are pushing ahead by using the force of armed local military to relocate families, confiscate lands, restrict movements, and intimidate communities.
The lack of information is compounded by persistent speculation that the mining operation is in fact being set up to exploit and refine uranium, not only iron ore and limestone. These fears are fueled by Burma?s announcement in 2007 that Russia is to build a nuclear reactor in the country.
The companies responsible for these projects should stop all activity and first conduct thorough and transparent assessments of the projects? environmental and social impacts; adequate compensation should be provided for those who have already lost their homes and lands; to assuage fears, all nuclear and uranium mining plans should be made public; and, such projects should not be conducted under the force of military power.
The Pa-O Youth Organization stands with its community to protect livelihoods, land ownership, and cultural heritage, and calls on regional and international actors to inspect the Pinpet projects and use their influence to ensure respect for the rights of affected communities."
Source/publisher:
Pa-O Youth Organization (PYO)
Date of publication:
2009-06-00
Date of entry/update:
2009-07-02
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Mining of iron and other metals
Language:
English, Burmese
Format :
pdf pdf
Size:
3.48 MB 4.12 MB
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Description:
"Mawchi is a township in Northwest Karenni that was once a successful mining town. It was often referred to as 'little England' because of the life style on display there and its accompanying standards of living. Private British business interests developed the mines in Mawchi between the world wars, but the local economy began to decline, with the rest of Burma, with Ne Win?s Burmese Way to Socialism. The economy of Mawchi, and the standard of living for people in the Township, has continued to decline across successive military governments.
The latest and the most severe economic crisis in Mawchi is the result of the regime's 1996 forced relocation campaign. This program led to the total collapse of agricultural production in the area and the subsequent collapse of the rest of the economy. All the villagers from the surrounding areas were forced to move into the town of Mawchi. The cessation of agricultural production brought about a massive increase in the price of food and a large increase in unemployment. Now most people are more or less constantly hungry and spend their days scrounging around looking for food. All the children in the city are engaged in helping their parents obtain food - collecting birds, worms, frogs and insects to eat. Hardly any rice produced gets to market as it is kept for the family to eat and to pay back debts. The small amount of rice that does reach the market, which most cannot afford, is of the lowest quality and fit only for being boiled. This has caused most people to leave the township for Thailand and a number of the cease-fire areas..."
Alison Vicary
Source/publisher:
BURMA ECONOMIC WATCH
Date of publication:
2003-05-14
Date of entry/update:
2003-06-03
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Burma Economic Watch and its members (analyses), Economy of Karenni (Kayah) State, Rural economy, Mining of iron and other metals
Language:
English
Format :
htm
Size:
86.39 KB
Local URL:
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