The Global Witness report, published Wednesday, December 15, is 70 pages long and very substantiated. The British NGO investigated on the border of Burma, this Southeast Asian country of 54 million inhabitants, held by the military since a coup d’état last February. The report tells how the exploitation of precious stones, rubies and jades, the country’s main wealth, has restarted since the putsch.
Officially, there has been no mining for over a year, and the mines are closed. But in reality, if we are to believe the numerous testimonies collected by the NGO, tens of thousands of people have been authorized to resume extraction. In particular in the region of Mogok, in the center of the country, which concentrates 90% of the resources in precious stones. The area had been nicknamed “the valley of the rubies” by the novelist Joseph Kessel, it was the title of one of these books. These people work individually, in very precarious conditions, and are forced to pay the military a large part of their income. Let’s call it taxes or bribes, but it comes down to the same thing: it means that at the end of the day, the money from exploitation goes into the pocket of the military dictatorship and particularly of its leader, General Aung. Ming Hlaing, whose family also controls the country’s large mining conglomerates.
The report points to some major jewelers, including Pragnell, a British firm, Van Cleef and Arpels, a subsidiary of Swiss Richemont, and Bulgari, owned by French LVMH. The NGO suspects them of continuing to source rubies on the Burmese market and therefore of financing the dictatorship, even if once again officially, there is no longer a market since the mines are supposed to be closed. It’s an old subject: the links of international jewelers and jewelers with the Burmese regime have long been denounced. The controversy had subsided when Burma experienced democratic appeasement, it has resumed since the military coup. Global Witness claims to have approached the thirty largest jewelers in the world. And only six of them (like Tiffanys or Cartier) claim to have taken strict measures to no longer obtain supplies in Burma, even indirectly. All the others, says the report, do not give guarantees on an adequate system of control of the provenance of the stones. The usual defense of these large firms is to say that the exact origin of the stones and their precise date of extraction are impossible to prove, as they pass through the hands of many intermediaries.
It must be said that it is tempting for jewelers to source their supplies in Burma: it is the world’s leading producer of precious stones, rubies and jade, but also sapphires and diamonds. For rubies, Burma’s only real competitor is Mozambique in Africa. The resource for Burmese power is estimated between 350 and 415 million euros. The British NGO therefore calls for a total international boycott of stones from Burma. In any case, on an individual basis, if you have the means to offer a jewel at Christmas, you may have to wonder about the origin of the stones.