There has been a recent effort to discourage the purchase of jade from Burma. The United States has even made a special set of sanctions to target parts of the trade. And the Olympics has now been drawn into the picture. A long report outlining the dire conditions of jade miners in Burma, and titled Blood Jade: Burmese gemstones and the Beijing Olympics, is available here. For those without the time to read the full report there are shorter articles on the same topic from the Kachin News Group and Mizzima. And the www.8808forburma.com mob have taken the time to stake out the www.bloodjade.org domain. Good planning. Good execution. Will we be seeing an image like this one some time soon?
“Blood jade” and Burma
August 5th, 2008 by Nicholas Farrelly · 5 Comments
Tags: Burma · China · Kachin State · Trans-Border Issues
5 responses so far ↓
1 Leif Jonsson // Aug 5, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I saw an ad in an inflight magazine the other day (too bad I did not take a copy, maybe someone will and can post a picture) on US Airways, that had the caption “rubies from Bali”, with a photo of a specimen. The accompanying text states that this special (American) dealer happened on his find on the island of Bali (with all the usual exotic qualifiers), where there is someone who had got the “limited quality” of these precious stones from Burma. Maybe the Balinese connection is a way to avoid negative connotations (and sanctions and so on); these are somehow Balinese stones that just happen to have come from Burma. The post above puts all this in perspective. Thanks.
2 fall // Aug 6, 2008 at 12:48 am
Two words: “Who cares?”
When one side of the scale is under-paid, inhumanely treated workers and on another goverment, corporate giants, and free market customer. Guess who win?
3 Charles F. // Aug 6, 2008 at 5:22 am
Well, we’ve already been treated to the movie, “Blood Diamond” with Leonardo DiCaprio, about how diamonds fueled the war in Sierra Leone. He portrayed a jaded mercenary (this stuff writes itself) in search of the mother of all diamonds, all the while battling rebels, government thugs and even his fellow “mercs”.
I suppose that Sylvester Stallone can make a movie titled, “Blood Jade”, where he uses his walker to wage war against the junta in Burma. We can again see “mercs” - all holding the rank of colonel, of course - thrashing through the jungle, saving the Burmese from the evil junta and Bali gem traders.
4 jud // Aug 6, 2008 at 8:37 am
Burmese gems smuggled in to Thailand,India,SGP,so all should be a part of this Gem sanction
5 aiontay // Aug 6, 2008 at 10:14 am
The first time I saw pictures of the Hpakant jade mines I was simultaneously awe struck by the amount of effort it took to create those huge holes in the ground (this was back when very little machinery was being used) and appalled when I thought about the environmental consequences of the mining. I had the same feeling seeing the photos in the report. In some perverse sense, it is a testament to the human spirit that people can accomplish something on this massive of a scale. I’m reminded of a line from a Midnight Oil song, “Nothing’s as precious as a hole in the ground…”
Hla Oo’s beheading story reminds me of a story I heard from some Kachin pastors regarding drug use at Hpakant. Apparently one Burmese Army officer attempted to suppress drug trafficking in the area, and refused a bribe from the drug dealers. The next day, according to the story, they found his head sticking on a pole. The next officer assigned to the area took the bribe.
Jadeite was also mined and used in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. I think the deposits are in Guatemala. I wonder if there has been any mining there in recent years.
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