Three farmers have filmed an 18-minute video on illegal mining activities at their hometown in north China's Hebei Province and handed their film to the country's safety watchdog.

The three, from Yangyuan County in the city of Zhangjiakou, visited the State Administration of Work Safety in Beijing on Friday to make disclosures about the illegal operations of private mine owners.

Their video shows round-the-clock excavation of coal at a dozen private mines in Yangyuan County where lax management, lack of protection and use of primitive facilities put miners' lives at risk.

"Yangyuan County has at least 100 such illegal mines. Many of them can make more than 100,000 yuan (US$12,820) a day and their owners admit in public this is far more profitable even than drug trafficking," one of the three farmers was quoted as saying by the Beijing News. The newspaper did not give the farmers' names.

Most of the mines had either been shutdown by the safety watchdog because of the risks they posed or the fact that they'd never held a production permit at all, the farmers said. "Accidents occur from time to time but are almost always covered up," they observed.??

A recent colliery accident they cited occurred on December 9 which killed a miner and two mules. The body of the miner, Wang Fei, a migrant worker from the southwestern Sichuan Province, was secretly buried in Guangling County of neighboring Shanxi Province.

But an official with the Yangyuan County government denied the case. "No, it wasn't true. There are no illegal mining activities whatsoever in the county," he told reporters on condition of anonymity.

The three farmers said they paid for a cameraman to shoot the video. "We had disclosed the illegal mining activities in the past but authorities didn't believe us. They said we didn't have evidence."

(Xinhua News Agency January 29, 2007)