A new documentary produced by Global Witness follows an investigation that exposes the links between jade and war in Kachin State. Watch it online or at the Park Royal Hotel tomorrow at 1pm.
“It is very obvious that the military is protecting the jade business, and they are trying to control it,” a man says in a new documentary that sheds light on the links between Myanmar’s gem trade and armed conflict that will be released online tomorrow.
‘Jade and the Generals‘ follows an undercover investigation in 2015 by UK-based NGO Global Witness, which revealed that Myanmar’s gem trade was worth up to $31 billion in 2014 alone, equal to 48 percent of the country’s official GDP that year.
Since the 1990s, Myanmar’s military has consolidated profits from the country’s natural resources into the hands a small number of elite families, including those of former dictator Than Shwe, former ruling party general-secretary Maung Maung Thein, and the former top general in Kachin State, Ohn Myint.
According to Global Witness, these families made a combined $220 million at the official government jade sale in 2014 and $67 million at the same event in 2013.
The money is thought to help fund the military’s ongoing conflict against ethnic armed organizations, including the Kachin Independence Army, ever forestalling the prospect of peace.
Even amid Myanmar’s widely lauded political and economic transformation over the last few years, the military’s clandestine squandering of jade profits has not slowed.
In fact, critics say the lifting of international sanctions from Myanmar has directed even more revenue into the coffers of the military elite and undermined the bargaining power of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and her elected government.
The film will be released on the Global Witness website tomorrow. It will also be screened at the Park Royal Hotel in Yangon at 1pm the same day.
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