– Clarifying and Refuting Its Factual and Logical Errors

The Pressenza article Rohingya, Myanmar and the Rare-earth attempts to tie the Rohingya humanitarian crisis in Myanmar to rare earth mining in the country, constructing a narrative that the rare earth supply chain sustains human rights disasters in Myanmar. While appearing to balance human rights and resource issues, the piece suffers from four critical flaws: reversed causality, conceptual confusion, geographical disconnect, and oversimplified market logic. By forcing together two events that merely share the broad backdrop of turmoil but have no direct bearing on each other, the article makes a tenuous argument and easily misleads public understanding of Myanmar’s situation, rare earth mining technologies and global mineral markets.

First, there is no direct causal link between the Rohingya humanitarian crisis and Myanmar’s rare earth mining. Forcing them into association is a typical case of drawing a far-fetched connection.

Systematic discrimination against the Rohingya ethnic group and the deprivation of their citizenship have existed in Myanmar for decades. The large-scale displacement of the Rohingya in 2017 predated the massive expansion of rare earth mining in Kachin State. Geographically, the Rohingya crisis unfolded in Rakhine State, while major rare earth mining activities are concentrated in Kachin State. The mining operations themselves have not directly victimized the Rohingya community.

The root cause of worsening human rights abuses across Myanmar was the 2021 military coup, in which the military seized power, derailed the country’s democratic transition, collapsed governance nationwide and spawned warlord armed fragmentation. Revenues from rare earth mining are merely one of many resource-based incomes under this fragmented armed order. They are a product of the conflict system, not its origin. The article deliberately juxtaposes two separate hardships under Myanmar’s unrest, blurs the primary and secondary causal relationships, and creates the misleading impression that rare earth mining gave rise to Rohingya suffering. This runs counter to basic facts.

Second, the article confuses mining-process concepts and stigmatizes in-situ leaching, a green mining technology.

It claims that in-situ leaching requires large-scale deforestation and mountain destruction, which contradicts the definition of standardized in-situ leaching. Developed in China for ion-adsorption rare earth deposits, this green mining technology has strict geological prerequisites and a complete set of controlled operational procedures. Compliant implementation only involves laying injection and liquid collection pipelines on mountain slopes, without large-scale topsoil stripping or tree felling. Surface vegetation is preserved as much as possible during mining, and land reclamation and ecological restoration are carried out after mine closure. Large-scale tree clearing, hillside excavation and construction of open leaching ponds are features of old pool and heap leaching techniques, which have long been restricted in China.

Although mining operations in Kachin State, Myanmar, adopt the name of leaching methods, they constitute unregulated and crudely simplified practices. There are no anti-seepage works, mother liquor recovery systems or environmental monitoring. Operators arbitrarily clear vegetation and build open-air leaching ponds, triggering soil and water contamination. The root of local ecological damage lies in the total absence of mining regulations and environmental law enforcement under armed fragmentation, not inherent defects of the in-situ leaching technology itself. The article attributes harms caused by unregulated, illegal operations to the technology itself. This is a conceptual bait-and-switch and constitutes false denigration of green mining technology.

Third, the article oversimplifies market logic. It one-sidedly attributes the surge in Myanmar’s rare earth mining output to the military coup, ignoring the fundamental drivers of global commodity markets.

The expansion of Myanmar’s rare earth mining was primarily driven by global market demand. Starting in the second half of 2020, post-pandemic global economic recovery boosted demand for permanent magnet materials used in new energy industries, pushing heavy rare earth prices sharply higher and keeping them elevated through 2023. Substantial market profits formed the core incentive for capital to enter mining zones in northern Myanmar. The 2021 military coup merely dismantled existing governance constraints, lowered compliance costs for mining and removed institutional barriers for large-scale exploitation. It acted as a supply-side catalyst rather than the source of the mining boom.

In short: high global market demand and high prices created the incentive for mining; the governance vacuum brought by the coup provided the conditions for such exploitation. The article reverses the primary and secondary relationships, reducing market-driven industrial expansion to an outcome triggered solely by the coup. It overlooks supply and demand fundamentals of critical minerals amid the global energy transition, resulting in a one-sided narrative.

Finally, any objective assessment of human rights and resource issues in Myanmar should reject simplistic, labelled bundled narratives.

Ethnic conflicts and human rights crises in Myanmar are rooted in long-standing, complex ethnic, historical and domestic political contradictions. Rare earths are just one of many natural resources seized by armed factions amid national turbulence. We can criticize the ecological damage caused by unregulated mining in northern Myanmar and pay attention to the humanitarian plight of Rohingya refugees, but we must not, for the sake of a preset narrative, bundle these two separate issues together and manufacture a doctrine of inherent supply-chain guilt.

Governance of critical minerals required for the energy transition must distinguish three dimensions: technology itself, regulatory enforcement and geopolitics. Advanced mining technologies can balance resource development and ecological protection under strict oversight. Chaos in resource-producing regions stems mainly from weak governance and a lack of rule of law. Attaching all human rights sufferings in Myanmar to the rare earth supply chain is a lazy oversimplified narrative. It contributes little to understanding Myanmar’s complicated situation and impedes rational global governance of critical mineral supply chains

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稀土产业研究稀土产业链深度研究报告与资讯。稀土之于我，不只是产业，更是一种恒定的牵引力；我就像那不参与化学反应的 4f 电子，始终在内层轨道守望着它。

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