[Buddha-l] Tibet China - not about self-immolations

[Dan Lusthaus]

An AP story as it appeared on nytimes online.
Dan

http://tinyurl.com/bp44md8

March 30, 2013
One Body Is Found at Site of Tibetan Landslide That Buried 83
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BEIJING (AP) - Rescuers in Tibet digging for victims of a huge landslide at 
a gold mining site found one body on Saturday, a day after 83 workers were 
buried in the disaster, Chinese state news media reported. The fate of the 
other victims was unknown.

The workers were buried early Friday when about 2.6 million cubic yards of 
mud, rock and debris swept through the mine in Gyama, a village in 
Maizhokunggar County, about 45 miles east of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, 
and covered an area measuring around 1.5 square miles.

More than 3,000 rescuers with sniffer dogs and excavators were scouring the 
high-altitude, mountainous area on Saturday, but search efforts were slowed 
after snow started to fall early in the afternoon, the official Xinhua News 
Agency said.

Xinhua said the body was retrieved at 5:35 p.m., nearly 36 hours after the 
landslide slammed through the area.

The disaster has highlighted the extensive mining activities on the Tibetan 
plateau and prompted questions about whether they have been excessive and 
are destroying the region's fragile ecosystem. Criticisms, however, only 
flashed through China's social media on Saturday before they were scrubbed 
off or blocked from public view by censors.

Officials in Beijing said the cause of the disaster had yet to be fully 
investigated.

A Tibetan writer, Tsering Woeser, who has been following the development of 
mining projects in Gyama and surrounding areas since 2007, said that China's 
powerful, resource-hungry state-owned companies had ravaged the landscape.

"Unchecked mining has polluted water, sickened animals and humans, 
dislocated herdsmen and now caused a massive mudslide," she wrote on her 
blog.

The Chinese government has been encouraging the development of mining and 
other industries in Tibet to promote its economic growth and raise living 
standards. The region has abundant deposits of precious minerals and metals, 
yet Tibet remains among China's poorest areas despite its production of a 
large share of the county's minerals.