Burma: Bomb Destroys Mining Company Truck

A bomb blew up a truck loaded with sil­i­con min­er­al stone in Aung Myit­tar Ward, Namhkam Town­ship, North­ern Shan State at 7.20pm on 10 March accord­ing to Sai Ye, a local res­i­dent.

He said: “When the bomb explod­ed under the engine at the front of the truck some parts of the engine were destroyed but no one was injured in the acci­dent. The truck dri­ver is Sai Pe from Aung Myit­tar Ward and the explo­sion hap­pened in front of his home. The explo­sion was very big, it caused the ground to shake. The whole town was silent after the explo­sion and there was almost no one on the street.”

 

The destroyed truck belongs to the Ngwe Kabar Kyaw min­ing com­pa­ny and is a Chi­nese made six-wheel truck accord­ing to Sai Ye.

On 26 Feb­ru­ary about 300 local res­i­dents blocked Ngwe Kabar Kyaw min­ing com­pa­ny trucks loaded with min­er­als in Namhkam Town­ship for one and a half hours. The res­i­dents stopped the trucks because they are angry that the min­ing com­pa­ny had nev­er dis­cussed with local res­i­dents about car­ry­ing out fur­ther exca­va­tions for min­er­als at Nam­seri Stream.

Pre­vi­ous­ly the com­pa­ny had been min­ing min­er­al stone from the Nam­seri Stream, but they stopped their activ­i­ties after com­plaints from the vil­lagers and promised to con­sult them before resum­ing exca­va­tions.

Recent­ly, the com­pa­ny angered the vil­lagers by resum­ing exca­va­tions with­out con­sult­ing them, which led to them blockad­ing the trucks.

The exca­va­tions already car­ried out at Nam­seri Stream by the com­pa­ny have caused the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of near­by farm­lands, which have not yet been addressed accord­ing to Sai Hseng Moon, a farmer leader.

He said: “The dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the farm­lands along the Nam­seri Stream due to the min­ing project, in Phan-Khar Vil­lage, have not been repaired yet [for a long time] and now they are going to exca­vate stone at Hway-Oh Vil­lage after get­ting per­mis­sion from the Naypyi­daw Gov­ern­ment, which they nev­er should have giv­en.”

The truck that was blown up was one of the trucks block­ad­ed by the vil­lagers on 26 Feb­ru­ary, but no one yet knows what group set off the bomb said a source close to the police.

The source said: “The bomb was made of min­ing explo­sives and was the same type of bomb that explod­ed in the house of U Aung Win last year in Namkhan Town­ship. U Aung Win is a town­ship sup­port­ing group mem­ber and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber of the Shan Nation­al League for Democ­ra­cy (SNLD) par­ty of Namhkam Town.

Accord­ing to local peo­ple there have been sev­er­al bombs explod­ing in Namhkam Town, but no one has ever been arrest­ed over the explo­sions.

Trans­lat­ed by Aung Myat Soe Eng­lish ver­sion writ­ten by Mark Inkey for BNI Bur­ma News Inter­na­tion­al