Kachin trade, gold mines wind down as war looms

Tuesday, 21 September 2010 20:02 Phanida

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – The main ethnic political organisation in Kachin State has ordered gold mines in areas under its control in the north of the state to halt production, miners said.

The closures come amid rising pressure exerted by the junta army’s Northern Command on the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), which has refused to accept the junta’s “offer” of bringing its armed wing under Burmese Army control within its Border Guard Force (BGF). The ethnic Kachin group signed a ceasefire deal with the junta in 1994.

More than 5,000 gold miners and panners left their workplaces as all mines along the May Likha River (a tributary of the Irrawaddy) in Ingyayan Township, upstream of the Myitsone hydroelectric project, had been told to close, a miner who had just returned home told Mizzima.

“Everyone left the area last Thursday. All the gold mine bosses and their miners … were ordered to close down operations in all the gold mines north of Tanyanzuap”, he said. “Even villagers living along the Irrawaddy River are not allowed to go outside. All are worried about [a potential] economic downturn … They [The KIO] have also banned running engines, even small Honda generators, to prevent noise.”

The KIO was moving all its furniture, equipment and documents from its Laiza office to its previous headquarters at Lai Zin Bum (“bum” means mountain in Kachin language), near the Sino-Burmese border. Similarly, local people had moved belongings across the border to China, the miner said.

Early last month, the junta imposed travel restrictions on KIO members, requiring them to report their travel plans first to Military Affairs Security (MAS) and to move only with permission of the Northern Command.

After that, rice trading had slowed on the Myitkyina-Bamao highway and prices of a range of commodities were rising, a trader in Laiza said.

Northern Command headquarters had also ordered early this month a stop on all rice and fuel trading in the upper Irrawaddy region, forcing the price of a rice bag (one and half baskets, 110 pounds or 50 kilogrammes) to 48,000 kyat (US$48) from 30,000 kyat and a 48-gallon (180-litre) drum of diesel to 300,000 kyat from 220,000, a person who had just returned yesterday from gold mine said.

“We stopped trading rice … because of the ban. [Then] The tomato price rose to 800 kyat per viss (3.5 pounds, 1.6 kilogrammes) from a previous 600 kyat, potatoes rose to 650 kyat from 550, onions rose to 16,000 kyat from 14,000, and oil prices rose to 16,500 for a carton containing 12 cans, from 15,000,” the rice trader told Mizzima.

The junta army was also practising direct saber-rattling, with troops erecting a barbed-wire barricade at their Lajayan checkpoint near Laiza, manned by Infantry Battalion (IB) 142. No one may pass through between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., a source said.

Meanwhile, the Union Election Commission (UEC) issued a notice last Thursday that said village tracts under KIO control were not in a position to host free and fair elections, set by the junta for November 7.