The pigeon-blood ruby made Myanmar famous and now the gem helps finance the country’s military junta, it has been reported.

Germany’s Der Spiegel reports contrary to what jewelers in Europe and Asia may think, it is the junta that controls ruby mining in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.. One carat of a top quality Burmese ruby can fetch tens of thousands of Euros on the continent.

The rubies, accounting for 90 percent of the world supply, come from the regions of Mogok and Mong Hsu, but European gem dealers seldom visit the places, says the report.

“The risk would be too great, and the prices we could get directly on location wouldn't be any better than what we pay our longstanding Thai suppliers,” said one dealer.

Der Spiegel says the military regime forces workers, including children, to extract the rubies and other gems under brutal conditions.

There are no precise figures of how much the junta makes but the report says estimates run into hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The trade with Europe and the United States is controlled largely by Chinese, Thais and Indians, with no one raising any inconvenient question, says the report.