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Is Myanmar's jade business driving ethnic tensions? 🇲🇲 | Counting the Cost

4,458 views · Published 19 September 2017 · 4:24 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Al Jazeera English · 2017 · Entertainment

Over the past few weeks, nearly 400,000 people escaping violence in Myanmar's eastern state of Rakhine have streamed into Bangladesh, creating a humanitarian crisis. The UN Security Council has condemned the violence against the Rohingyapeople, calling it ethnic cleansing.

A report by Global Witness suggests that natural resource exploitation, especially the country's billion-dollar jade business, may also be playing a part in the country's religious and ethnic tensions.

Nearly all of the world's jade comes from Myanmar.

According to a report by Global Witness, the country's jade industry was worth $31bn in 2014, which
is as big as half of Myanmar's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2014. But none of that money is reaching ordinary people. Instead - the report says - the sector is secretly controlled by networks of military elites and druh lords. Most stones are smuggled across the border to neighbouring China.

Paul Donowitz, a team leader at Global Witness, spoke to Al Jazeera's Hazem Sika about 'probably the biggest natural resource heist in modern history'.

Al Jazeera: Is there a connection between the jade industry and what's happening now with the Rohingya community?

Paul Donowitz: You have to take a step back and understand the context. The military in Myanmar has an outsized role in politics, the economy and the social life of the country by virtue of the constitution which guarantees it 25 percent and veto-proof standing to change the constitution. Also, the military controls key sectors of the economy and by virtue of this special status, the military really remains outside of civilian control. The civilian government can't hold the military accountable for any actions or abuses it commits against ethnic people, including the self-identified Rohingya.

Al Jazeera: Myanmar is a resource-rich nation - oil and gas being among them. There are pipelines being built right now to connect Myanmar to China. These projects claim to benefit the whole country with employment, transit fees, oil and gas revenues, but are they doing that?

Donowitz: There's an offshore gas field that's been built and oil and gas pipelines to transport Myanmar's gas and foreign oil to China. Instead of providing jobs and spurring the economy, what we've seen is they've created resentment among local people who feel they're not deriving benefits from these projects.

There's issues around land grabs, displacement, and in fact we're seeing now another mega development project and economic zone up in Rakhine State that's fuelling additional resentment. So, these megaprojects - which in theory could provide benefits to local people - are having the opposite impact and are really only furthering distrust to the central government and the military and further marginialising local people - which is not helping the situation in Rakhine at present.

Is Myanmar's jade business driving ethnic tensions? 🇲🇲 | Counting the Cost

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