http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50170
BURMA: Ethnic Women Expose Opium Fields in Junta Strongholds
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jan 31, 2010 (IPS) - A report exposing the spreading opium fields in the north-eastern corner of the military-ruled Burma has brought to light an equally revealing story. It was produced by a team of ethnic women who risked their lives to document the heroin-filled world they inhabit.
"One of the most damning points of this new report is to show the extent of opium being grown in areas under the control of the Burmese military regime," said Debbie Stothard, coordinator of ALTSEAN, a regional human rights group monitoring rights violations in Burma.
"The regime has tried to give the impression that poppy cultivation continues in areas only under the control of ethnic rebel groups," she told IPS. "But these women have seriously undermined that picture."
"What these women have done must come as a rude shock to the regime," Stothard revealed. "They were able to do so because women have been largely under the radar in how information and intelligence is gathered in the field."
Yet Stothard admitted that the women involved in the report, ‘Poisoned Hills’, released on Jan. 26, had embarked on a dangerous mission to complete their task. "They took great risks in gathering this information for they know what it means to be seen as an enemy by the junta."
Some 30 women from the Palaung ethnic community, who live close to the border that Burma shares with China, were involved in the report that took two years to produce, said Lway Aye Nang, co-author of the groundbreaking report. "They were all above 25 years. Some had basic education – middle school, high school; some had gone to university."
The Palaung are one of some 130 ethnic communities who live in Burma, also known as Myanmar. These include the Shan, the Karen and the Kachin. The majority of the South-east Asian country’s estimated 56 million people are Burmans.
There is little mystery why the Palaung women were drawn to serve as grassroots researchers for the report produced by the Palaung Women’s Organisation (PWO), based in Mae Sot, a town along the Thai-Burma border. "They were directly affected by the consequence of opium cultivation in their communities," Lway Aye Nang remarked in an IPS interview.
"We have been motivated in this research by the suffering of women in our communities whose lives are continuing to be devastated by the addiction of their husbands, sons and fathers," the report declares in its introduction.
Most disturbing, according to PWO, is the litany of abuse wives face from their heroin-addicted husbands. These women, who make a barely livable income working in the tea cultivations in that hilly terrain, are verbally and physically abused when their husbands, who are reportedly unemployed, need money for a heroin fix.
"The women have suffered more because of this," said Lway Aye Nang. "The men use violence to get money from their wives. They sometimes steal things the women own or things from the house to sell to buy drugs."
Besides domestic violence, the Palaung women endure other trials. They range from being infected with HIV by their husbands to the inability to educate their children as the household incomes are drained to pay for the male heroin addiction.
The PWO’s report goes beyond shredding the Burmese regime’s picture of the opium fields in the northern stretches of Shan state, part of the infamous drug-producing and -trafficking area spread across Thailand and Laos and dubbed the ‘Golden Triangle’. The 55-page ‘Poisoned Hills’ also questions the findings of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
"Between 2007 and 2009, PWO conducted field surveys in Namkham and Mantong townships, and found that the total area of opium cultivated increased almost fivefold over three years from 963 hectares in the 2006-7 season to 4,545 hectares in the 2008-9 season," states the report.
"The amounts are far higher than reported in the annual opium surveys of the (UNODC), and are flourishing not in ‘insurgent and ceasefire areas,’ as claimed by the U.N., but in areas controlled by Burma’s military government," adds the report.
"Namkham and Mantong are both fully under the control of the (Burmese regime). The areas have an extensive security infrastructure, including Burmese army battalions, police and pro-government village militia."
The U.N. drug agency’s findings, although more conservative, indicated that opium production was on the rise in north-eastern Burma, an area more extensive than the two townships surveyed for the PWO report.
The area under opium cultivation had expanded by 11 percent since 2008 and by "almost 50 percent since 2006, reaching a total of 31,700 hectares in 2009," the U.N. agency revealed in mid-December in a survey, ‘Opium Poppy Cultivation in South-East Asia’. "More than one million people are now involved in opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar, most of them in Shan State, where 95 percent of Myanmar’s poppy is grown."
But the current area of opium cultivation is still well below what it was in the 1990s, when the land area covered by opium fields was nearly five times the current number and earned Burma the notoriety of being the world’s leading opium producer.
Burma gave way to Afghanistan as the world’s largest supplier of heroin after the junta declared publicly in 2000 that it was committed to eradicating opium fields in the country by 2014. Some eradication efforts saw the number of opium fields dwindle till 2005, for which the Burmese regime won much needed praise and support from the UNODC and the international community.
Yet such praise by the UNODC of the junta’s efforts to end heroin production blinds it to the actual picture on the ground, said Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of the ‘Shan Herald Agency for News’, a web publication based in Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai. "This is what the report by the PWO also confirms."
"They (UNODC) rely too much on official information the junta gives them," said Khuensai, who has written extensively about Burma’s narcotics trade. "They need to work with the local ethnic groups to get a better picture."
The courageous women of Palaung have provided that picture.
(END)
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
BURMA: Ethnic Women Expose Opium Fields in Junta Strongholds
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Golden Triangle 'clearance sale'
Traffickers rush to convert stocks into cash to buy arms
Thai anti-narcotic officials are seeing a flood of heroin and methamphetamine as traffickers slash their inventories in a panicked sell-off to convert their drug stocks into cash to buy weapons. - ST PHOTO: FRANCIS ONG
DOI CHANG MOOB (THAILAND) - A MILITARY crackdown by Myanmar's government on armed ethnic groups along the borders with Thailand, Laos and China has led to a 'clearance sale' of drugs in the area.
UNPRECEDENTED
'There was nothing on that scale last year. This year has been quite unusual.'
Mr Leik Boonwaat, the representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, on recent drug busts in Thailand and Myanmar
... More
Thai anti-narcotic officials are seeing a flood of heroin and methamphetamine as traffickers slash their inventories in a panicked sell-off to convert their drug stocks into cash to buy weapons.
'Some dealers at the border are buying on credit. They don't even need to pay in cash,' said Mr Pornthep Eamprapai, director of the northern branch of the Thai Office of Narcotics Control.
This new development has also led to more heroin seizures by the police in northern Thailand - up by more than twentyfold. From October last year to August this year, the authorities seized 1,270 kg of heroin, up from 57kg a year earlier, according to the Office of Narcotics Control.
On the other side of the border, Myanmar has reported enormous drug seizures in recent months, including one in August of more than 725kg, anti-narcotic officials said. Several million methamphetamine pills were also seized in the Myanmar border town of Tachilek.
'There was nothing on that scale last year,' said Mr Leik Boonwaat, the representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime based in Laos. 'This year has been quite unusual.'
ASSOCIATED PRESS-NEW YORK TIMES
Read the full story in Thursday's edition of The Straits Times.
http://www.straitst imes.com / Breaking% 2BNews/SE% 2BAsia/Story / STIStory_ 439630.html
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
AP IMPACT: Tons of released drugs taint US water
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/pharmawater_factories
By JEFF DONN, MARTHA MENDOZA and JUSTIN PRITCHARD,
Associated Press Writers – Mon Apr 20, 4:45 am ET
U.S. manufacturers, including major drugmakers, have legally released at least 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterways that often provide drinking water — contamination the federal government has consistently overlooked, according to an Associated Press investigation.
Hundreds of active pharmaceutical ingredients are used in a variety of manufacturing, including drugmaking: For example, lithium is used to make ceramics and treat bipolar disorder; nitroglycerin is a heart drug and also used in explosives; copper shows up in everything from pipes to contraceptives.
Federal and industry officials say they don't know the extent to which pharmaceuticals are released by U.S. manufacturers because no one tracks them — as drugs. But a close analysis of 20 years of federal records found that, in fact, the government unintentionally keeps data on a few, allowing a glimpse of the pharmaceuticals coming from factories.
As part of its ongoing PharmaWater investigation about trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, AP identified 22 compounds that show up on two lists: the EPA monitors them as industrial chemicals that are released into rivers, lakes and other bodies of water under federal pollution laws, while the Food and Drug Administration classifies them as active pharmaceutical ingredients.
The data don't show precisely how much of the 271 million pounds comes from drugmakers versus other manufacturers; also, the figure is a massive undercount because of the limited federal government tracking.
To date, drugmakers have dismissed the suggestion that their manufacturing contributes significantly to what's being found in water. Federal drug and water regulators agree.
But some researchers say the lack of required testing amounts to a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy about whether drugmakers are contributing to water pollution.
"It doesn't pass the straight-face test to say pharmaceutical manufacturers are not emitting any of the compounds they're creating," said Kyla Bennett, who spent 10 years as an EPA enforcement officer before becoming an ecologist and environmental attorney.
Pilot studies in the U.S. and abroad are now confirming those doubts.
Last year, the AP reported that trace amounts of a wide range of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in American drinking water supplies. Including recent findings in Dallas, Cleveland and Maryland's Prince George's and Montgomery counties, pharmaceuticals have been detected in the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans.
Most cities and water providers still do not test. Some scientists say that wherever researchers look, they will find pharma-tainted water.
Consumers are considered the biggest contributors to the contamination. We consume drugs, then excrete what our bodies don't absorb. Other times, we flush unused drugs down toilets. The AP also found that an estimated 250 million pounds of pharmaceuticals and contaminated packaging are thrown away each year by hospitals and long-term care facilities.
Researchers have found that even extremely diluted concentrations of drugs harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species. Also, researchers report that human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory when exposed to trace concentrations of certain drugs. Some scientists say they are increasingly concerned that the consumption of combinations of many drugs, even in small amounts, could harm humans over decades.
Utilities say the water is safe. Scientists, doctors and the EPA say there are no confirmed human risks associated with consuming minute concentrations of drugs. But those experts also agree that dangers cannot be ruled out, especially given the emerging research.
___
Two common industrial chemicals that are also pharmaceuticals — the antiseptics phenol and hydrogen peroxide — account for 92 percent of the 271 million pounds identified as coming from drugmakers and other manufacturers. Both can be toxic and both are considered to be ubiquitous in the environment.
However, the list of 22 includes other troubling releases of chemicals that can be used to make drugs and other products: 8 million pounds of the skin bleaching cream hydroquinone, 3 million pounds of nicotine compounds that can be used in quit-smoking patches, 10,000 pounds of the antibiotic tetracycline hydrochloride. Others include treatments for head lice and worms.
Residues are often released into the environment when manufacturing equipment is cleaned.
A small fraction of pharmaceuticals also leach out of landfills where they are dumped. Pharmaceuticals released onto land include the chemo agent fluorouracil, the epilepsy medicine phenytoin and the sedative pentobarbital sodium. The overall amount may be considerable, given the volume of what has been buried — 572 million pounds of the 22 monitored drugs since 1988.
In one case, government data shows that in Columbus, Ohio, pharmaceutical maker Boehringer Ingelheim Roxane Inc. discharged an estimated 2,285 pounds of lithium carbonate — which is considered slightly toxic to aquatic invertebrates and freshwater fish — to a local wastewater treatment plant between 1995 and 2006. Company spokeswoman Marybeth C. McGuire said the pharmaceutical plant, which uses lithium to make drugs for bipolar disorder, has violated no laws or regulations. McGuire said all the lithium discharged, an annual average of 190 pounds, was lost when residues stuck to mixing equipment were washed down the drain.
___
Pharmaceutical company officials point out that active ingredients represent profits, so there's a huge incentive not to let any escape. They also say extremely strict manufacturing regulations — albeit aimed at other chemicals — help prevent leakage, and that whatever traces may get away are handled by onsite wastewater treatment.
"Manufacturers have to be in compliance with all relevant environmental laws," said Alan Goldhammer, a scientist and vice president at the industry trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
Goldhammer conceded some drug residues could be released in wastewater, but stressed "it would not cause any environmental issues because it was not a toxic substance at the level that it was being released at."
Several big drugmakers were asked this simple question: Have you tested wastewater from your plants to find out whether any active pharmaceuticals are escaping, and if so what have you found?
No drugmaker answered directly.
"Based on research that we have reviewed from the past 20 years, pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities are not a significant source of pharmaceuticals that contribute to environmental risk," GlaxoSmithKline said in a statement.
AstraZeneca spokeswoman Kate Klemas said the company's manufacturing processes "are designed to avoid, or otherwise minimize the loss of product to the environment" and thus "ensure that any residual losses of pharmaceuticals to the environment that do occur are at levels that would be unlikely to pose a threat to human health or the environment."
One major manufacturer, Pfizer Inc., acknowledged that it tested some of its wastewater — but outside the United States.
The company's director of hazard communication and environmental toxicology, Frank Mastrocco, said Pfizer has sampled effluent from some of its foreign drug factories. Without disclosing details, he said the results left Pfizer "confident that the current controls and processes in place at these facilities are adequately protective of human health and the environment."
It's not just the industry that isn't testing.
FDA spokesman Christopher Kelly noted that his agency is not responsible for what comes out on the waste end of drug factories. At the EPA, acting assistant administrator for water Mike Shapiro — whose agency's Web site says pharmaceutical releases from manufacturing are "well defined and controlled" — did not mention factories as a source of pharmaceutical pollution when asked by the AP how drugs get into drinking water.
"Pharmaceuticals get into water in many ways," he said in a written statement. "It's commonly believed the majority come from human and animal excretion. A portion also comes from flushing unused drugs down the toilet or drain; a practice EPA generally discourages."
His position echoes that of a line of federal drug and water regulators as well as drugmakers, who concluded in the 1990s — before highly sensitive tests now used had been developed — that manufacturing is not a meaningful source of pharmaceuticals in the environment.
Pharmaceutical makers typically are excused from having to submit an environmental review for new products, and the FDA has never rejected a drug application based on potential environmental impact. Also at play are pressures not to delay potentially lifesaving drugs. What's more, because the EPA hasn't concluded at what level, if any, pharmaceuticals are bad for the environment or harmful to people, drugmakers almost never have to report the release of pharmaceuticals they produce.
"The government could get a national snapshot of the water if they chose to," said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, "and it seems logical that we would want to find out what's coming out of these plants."
Ajit Ghorpade, an environmental engineer who worked for several major pharmaceutical companies before his current job helping run a wastewater treatment plant, said drugmakers have no impetus to take measurements that the government doesn't require.
"Obviously nobody wants to spend the time or their dime to prove this," he said. "It's like asking me why I don't drive a hybrid car? Why should I? It's not required."
___
After contacting the nation's leading drugmakers and filing public records requests, the AP found two federal agencies that have tested.
Both the EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey have studies under way comparing sewage at treatment plants that receive wastewater from drugmaking factories against sewage at treatment plants that do not.
Preliminary USGS results, slated for publication later this year, show that treated wastewater from sewage plants serving drug factories had significantly more medicine residues. Data from the EPA study show a disproportionate concentration in wastewater of an antibiotic that a major Michigan factory was producing at the time the samples were taken.
Meanwhile, other researchers recorded concentrations of codeine in the southern reaches of the Delaware River that were at least 10 times higher than the rest of the river.
The scientists from the Delaware River Basin Commission won't have to look far when they try to track down potential sources later this year. One mile from the sampling site, just off shore of Pennsville, N.J., there's a pipe that spits out treated wastewater from a municipal plant. The plant accepts sewage from a pharmaceutical factory owned by Siegfried Ltd. The factory makes codeine.
"We have implemented programs to not only reduce the volume of waste materials generated but to minimize the amount of pharmaceutical ingredients in the water," said Siegfried spokeswoman Rita van Eck.
Another codeine plant, run by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Noramco Inc., is about seven miles away. A Noramco spokesman acknowledged that the Wilmington, Del., factory had voluntarily tested its wastewater and found codeine in trace concentrations thousands of times greater than what was found in the Delaware River. "The amounts of codeine we measured in the wastewater, prior to releasing it to the City of Wilmington, are not considered to be hazardous to the environment," said a company spokesman.
In another instance, equipment-cleaning water sent down the drain of an Upsher-Smith Laboratories, Inc. factory in Denver consistently contains traces of warfarin, a blood thinner, according to results obtained under a public records act request. Officials at the company and the Denver Metro Wastewater Reclamation District said they believe the concentrations are safe.
Warfarin, which also is a common rat poison and pesticide, is so effective at inhibiting growth of aquatic plants and animals it's actually deliberately introduced to clean plants and tiny aquatic animals from ballast water of ships.
"With regard to wastewater management we are subject to a variety of federal, state and local regulation and oversight," said Joel Green, Upsher-Smith's vice president and general counsel. "And we work hard to maintain systems to promote compliance."
Baylor University professor Bryan Brooks, who has published more than a dozen studies related to pharmaceuticals in the environment, said assurances that drugmakers run clean shops are not enough.
"I have no reason to believe them or not believe them," he said. "We don't have peer-reviewed studies to support or not support their claims."
___
Associated Press Writer Don Mitchell in Denver contributed to this report.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Burma key to war on drugs
http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/13930/burma-key-to-war-on-drugs
Published: 25/03/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: NewsPrime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is to kick off a new campaign against illegal drugs next week. And there is good reason for the new impetus on the "war on drugs".
In announcing the new campaign, Mr Abhisit cited frightening new evidence that the rate of addiction is rising once again. His figures appear to confirm the general feeling throughout the country that neither drug suppression nor treatment have been adequate. The government must lead the fresh campaign against illicit drugs while keeping in mind that the public will not accept either legal abuses or official violence of the past.
The serious drug problem in today's world has several faces. One of the most important is that the drugs which debase and imperil the country come almost exclusively from outside. Thailand of the past was a drug producer, home to traffickers selling out their country and exporting their illegal products. Today, the country imports virtually all illegal drugs. Chiefly, they come from Burma, where the government appears to do little against one of the world's richest and most prolific trafficking rings. So-called recreational drugs also come from South America and Europe, frequently carried through neighbouring countries along the way.
Mr Abhisit has promised to increase border security as part of the six-month anti-drug programme he will kick off on April 1. Of all the ways to fight drug trafficking, this may be the most difficult and prone to failure. The long and difficult Burmese and Lao borders in particular are virtually impossible to seal. Smugglers detect an effort to guard one portion of border and move to another.
The premier and his anti-drug security forces of the military and police should put more emphasis on gaining information about the drug gangs. Last week, a joint US-Thai operation dealt a significant blow to the narcotics trade when agents arrested some top traffickers and hit them where it really hurts - in their pocketbooks.
Authorities seized more than 117 million baht in cash and goods. The three arrested men, former associates of the late heroin warlord Khun Sa, admitted to having sold 750kg of heroin and methamphetamines in the past year.
The arrested men pinpointed a large drugs laboratory. Close to the Thai border of Tak province, it is reportedly owned by the United Wa State Army, Southeast Asia's biggest and most influential drug cartel. The UWSA thrives in what seems to be the absence of any action against the group by the generals in Burma.
The public backs increased government action against drugs. Weekly surveys by Abac Poll show that drugs have been the top overall concern of viewers of the premier's weekly talk on TV. Mr Abhisit was correct to equate drugs with terrorism and international crime as the chief threats to the country. The prime minister correctly ordered that the war on drugs must adhere to civil and human rights.
Two additional steps are vital to defeat the drug traffickers. The first is to make good on Mr Abhisit's pledge to redirect some anti-drug resources to help addicts and victims. It is as necessary to reduce the demand for drugs as the supply. But the key to reducing supply rests with the military dictators of Burma. Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya was in Burma and agreed to talk about the Burmese concern over the Karen resistance, but without gaining any concessions from the junta on the UWSA. So long as Burma allows drug trafficking to flourish, Thailand and other neighbours will remain at a disadvantage.
Friday, March 20, 2009
2 million methamphetamine pills seized in Myanmar
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/152607/2-million-methamphetamine-pills-seized-in-Myanmar
03/13/2009 | 03:38 PM
Email this | Email the Editor | Print | ShareThisYANGON, Myanmar — An anti-drug squad in Myanmar has seized 2 million methamphetamine tablets hidden in the fuel tank of a truck headed to the Thai border, state-owned media said Friday.
The report follows an announcement Thursday that Myanmar seized more than 1.3 million methamphetamine tablets in February, a 25-fold increase over January's total.
The New Light of Myanmar newspaper said the 10-wheel truck was traveling from Kengtung in eastern Myanmar to the border town of Tachileik when it was stopped and searched. The truck owner was arrested as part of an ongoing sweep against traffickers.
The most recent U.S. State Department report on the international illicit drug trade said Myanmar "is a significant player in the manufacture and regional trafficking of amphetamine-type stimulants."
Large quantities of the drugs end up in Thailand, where their use has been rampant in recent years.
A separate report in the newspaper said the Myanmar government has destroyed 7,893 acres (3,194 hectares) of opium poppy fields in the Shan and Kachin states during this year's growing season.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, is the world's second largest producer of heroin after Afghanistan, according to U.S. and U.N. experts, although the Central Asian country leads by a long shot, accounting for 90 percent of the world's production of the narcotic.
Heroin is produced from the opium poppies. - AP
Monday, March 16, 2009
MYANMAR: HIV awareness key among injecting drug users
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=83379
There are 70,000 registered drug users in Myanmar today, the government reports
YANGON, 9 March 2009 (IRIN) - Maung Maung (not his real name) never knew he could contract HIV by sharing needles.
"I was too late," the 37-year-old, who routinely exchanged needles with drug addicts over a 10-year period, told IRIN/PlusNews.
"When I took a blood test six months ago, I was told I was HIV-positive,” he said. Maung Maung has yet to receive ART treatment, despite being registered at the Waibagi Hospital, one of the few in Myanmar with the capacity to treat people infected with HIV.
"Whenever I think of my plight, I blame myself for not knowing more at the time,” Maung Maung said.
There are thousands of injecting drug users like Maung Maung, with little or no awareness of the risks.
Government figures suggest there are around 70,000 registered drug users in the country, with the vast majority of newly registered addicts using heroin.
But with most addicts reluctant to register with the authorities (a requirement when seeking treatment) out of fear of persecution, numbers are likely to be much higher. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates up to 300,000 people may be addicts.
HIV prevalence stands at about 35 percent among injecting drug users, according to government figures, in some areas topping 80 percent.
"HIV prevalence among injecting drug users is pretty high in this country,” Sun Gang, country coordinator with the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), [see IRIN report] told IRIN/PlusNews in Yangon. “One in three injecting drug users is infected with HIV/AIDS,” he said.
An estimated 240,000 people are thought to be living with HIV/AIDS in Myanmar, the agency says.
In Myanmar - the world's second-largest producer of illicit opium and one of the largest producers of amphetamine type stimulants (ATS) - injecting drug use is the main mode of transmission after heterosexual sex – accounting for approximately 30 percent of all new infections.
Behaviour change key
"You cannot get behaviour change unless you have the correct knowledge," Willy de Maere, country coordinator with Asian Harm Reduction Network (AHRN), told IRIN/PlusNews in Yangon, emphasising the importance of awareness among this high-risk group, although in some areas that is already happening.
Nelly Thein, project coordinator with the Myanmar Anti-Narcotics Association (MANA), a local NGO, said: “They [injecting drug users] should really understand how HIV could be transmitted to them, and how it can be prevented."
Other areas of additional help needed include the provision of clean needles. At present, given the prevalence of injecting drug use, existing treatment and rehabilitation services are inadequate, specialists said.
In an effort to reduce the risks of HIV among high drug using populations, UNODC and partners such as AHRN and MANA are providing HIV/AIDS knowledge, needles and syringes, and distributing condoms through drop-in-centres and outreach programmes.
The organisations also provide vital medical care for opportunistic infections, skin infections, general healthcare, and offer referral services for access to voluntary and confidential counselling and testing, prevention of mother to child transmission, treatment for HIV/TB, sexually transmitted infections and anti-retroviral treatment, detox and methadone (a heroin substitute) maintenance treatment.
Imprisonment "not a solution"
In Myanmar, drug use is illegal, and offenders face between one and three years’ imprisonment.
However, according to one doctor, who wished to remain anonymous: "Imprisonment of drug users is not a solution. It can make the situation worse in terms of HIV/AIDS transmission."
He added that police crackdowns and arrest of drug users affected the continuation of outreach and prevention activities as well as interrupting symptomatic drug treatment and other necessary treatment interventions such as anti-TB, antiretroviral and methadone treatment.
"In prison, it's hard to access clean needles and syringes, which could fuel HIV/AIDS transmission [as drugs are readily available]," the expert warned.
lm/ds/mw
Monday, March 9, 2009
Poppy cultivation in Burma up again: US state Department
http://www.mizzima.com/news/world/1786-poppy-cultivation-in-burma-up-again-us-state-department.html
by Solomon
Monday, 02 March 2009 20:48
New Delhi (Mizzima) - A new report by the U S state department said opium production, cultivation of poppy and the number of opium farmers have once again soared in Burma since 2007, despite a decreasing trend in earlier years.
The ‘2009 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report’ said Burma, which had slowly brought down poppy cultivation since 1996, is once again registering a rise since 2007 with several acres of farms being cultivated in Eastern, Northern and Southern Shan State and Kachin State in northern Burma.
The report said, both the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and U.S. surveys of opium poppy cultivation indicates a significant increase in cultivation and potential production in 2007 and export of synthetic drugs has continued to be on the rise.
“Production and export of synthetic drugs [amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS), crystal methamphetamine and Ketamine (Ice)] from Burma continues unabated,” the report added.
In 2007 the overall opium poppy cultivation increased to an estimated 29 per cent and potential production of dry opium increased to 46 per cent. And in villages opium prices increased from $153 per kg in 2004 to $ 265 per kg in 2008 the report said.
While the total value of opium production was estimated at approximately US $ 72 million in 2006, in 2007 it was estimated at US $120 million, the report said. It also said the total poppy cultivation in 2006 was 21,500 hectares but in 2007 it rose to 27,700 hectares.
Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of Thailand-based Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN) who has been monitoring drug production in Shan state, said economic difficulties have forced more local people to be involved in poppy cultivation and working on paddy fields could not solve their daily needs.
“They need to pay taxes to the Burmese Army battalions, which have been increased up to 30 to 160 within these years and they also need to pay several rebel groups,” said Khuensai said.
“A local told me that earlier he could easily manage his family by cultivating paddy for a year, but these days it does not even support the family for four months, so he said he has to cultivate poppy,” Khuensai added.
He, however, said the cultivation of poppy in Shan State in Eastern Burma has shifted from the North to the South of the State, since 2005.
He added that the temporary decline in poppy cultivation is due to bad weather conditions such as heavy rainfall and extreme cold, as well as the government’s efforts in burning down the fields.
“The cultivation has increased again in 2008-2009 but the production is still low because of bad weather conditions,” Jaiyen said.
Despite the decline in poppy cultivation, production of drugs such as Amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS), crystal methamphetamine and Ketamine (Ice)] are increasing. Several Chinese drug-lords, who are based along the Sino-Burma border, have teamed up with leaders of ethnic armed rebel group – United Wa State Army – in the production.
But an official of the UWSA, who spoke to Mizzima on condition of anonymity, denied their involvement in the production of synthetic drugs including amphetamine-type Stimulants (ATS) and methamphetamine but admitted that there might be people from China, Thailand and even India, who are involved in the trade.
“I don’t know that kind of businesses is run by us, but it might be possible that traders and peddlers from Thailand, China and India are producing drugs here [in our control area], China and India,” he said.
Burma is still the second largest producer of drugs in the world following Afghanistan. Though the military junta claims that it is implementing a drug eradication programme since 1999, so far it has largely failed as production and cultivation once again rose in 2007.
Khuensai said, he has evidence of the Burmese Army, especially in the higher echelons, has links to the production and cultivation of poppy.
Friday, February 27, 2009
UN: World drug control efforts face huge problems
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/world/2009/02/25/D96J1JDO0_as_china_drugs/
By ELAINE KURTENBACH Associated Press Writer
Print Feb 25th, 2009 | SHANGHAI -- The world risks losing decades of progress in drug control if it fails to counter the emergence of a criminal market of "staggering proportions," a U.N. official said Thursday.
"I confess I feel somewhat frustrated," Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said following a meeting to commemorate a century of international work on curbing trafficking in opium and other drugs.
Countries should "take control of organized crime far more seriously. Otherwise the accomplishments generated over the past few decades could be undermined," Costa said of the threat from criminal syndicates spreading their reach across almost every continent.
International efforts to curb trading in opium and other narcotics began in 1909 in Shanghai, then China's main hub for the opium trade, with the meeting of the 13-country International Opium Commission.
The delegates meeting Thursday issued a "Shanghai declaration" lauding progress in controlling the trade in opium and its derivatives in the decades that followed that first meeting but urging stronger efforts to combat modern drug scourges.
"We must have the courage to look at the dramatic, unintended consequences of drug control: the emergence of a criminal market of staggering proportions," Costa said. He did not make any specific recommendations at the commemoration.
Countries have so far failed to implement anti-crime measures in a way that has had an impact on the drug trade, he added, describing efforts to curb use of the Internet for drug trafficking and other crimes as "inept to say the least."
The international opium commission did not put an end to opium trafficking in China, which persisted in the chaotic times leading up to the 1949 Communist revolution.
But its decision to begin trying to regulate the opium trade holds a special significance for China, a country whose appetite for the drug left it bankrupted and vulnerable to humiliating defeats by colonial powers.
In the 1950s, China largely eradicated widespread drug use, mostly of opium, along with prostitution and gambling.
But as social controls were loosened in the past several decades, the drug trade in China has flourished. Government statistics put the number of known addicts in China at 1.2 million, including 700,000 heroin users, more than two-thirds of them under the age of 35.
"The achievements made by the international community in drug control remain fragile with a strong possibility of reversing," said Chinese Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu.
The resurgence in drug abuse has brought with it rising rates of HIV infections, often due to sharing of needles. Last year, AIDS was the top killer among infectious disease, the government reported earlier this month.
In China, heroin and opium come from Burma and Laos and, to a lesser extent, Central Asian nations. Occasional reports say opium is also being cultivated in isolated parts of southern China. Ketamine and menthamphetamines are growing problems.
But the biggest source of opium globally, accounting for 90 percent, remains strife-torn Afghanistan, Costa said.
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On the Net:
U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime: http://www.unodc.org
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Myanmar poor turn to poppies
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090220/FOREIGN/108877265/1015/NEWS
Larry Jagan, Foreign Correspondent
Last Updated: February 20. 2009 9:30AM UAE / February 20. 2009 5:30AM GMT
Terraces in the Shan State where most of Myanmar’s poppy cultivation takes place. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
BANGKOK // Opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar has increased alarmingly in the past two years amid fears the region’s worsening economic crisis will encourage an even greater spurt in growth, the UN warns.
Falling international commodity prices and increasing political instability in Myanmar’s border areas has fuelled fears that many of the country’s poppy farmers will find it impossible to resist the temptation to return to their former ways. There is a real danger of an explosion of poppy growing and opium production, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
In the past few years, there has been a dramatic fall in the area under poppy cultivation and opium production, but these gains have been reversed in the past two years, according to the UNODC’s annual survey released recently.
“The problem of poppy production in the region has been contained but not solved,” said Gary Lewis, the UNODC regional head based in Bangkok.
“There have been significant increases, especially in Myanmar, which are threatening to rise further because of the worsening economic conditions faced by former poppy farmers.”
More than 90 per cent of the poppy grown in South East Asia – Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam – is grown in Myanmar’s north-eastern Shan State.
Poppy cultivation has fallen from more than 120,000 hectares in 2000 to about 30,000 in 2008. Opium production has fallen from more than 1300 tonnes to 410 tonnes during this period. This is the equivalent of producing 40 tonnes of heroin.
The reduction had been largely due to international pressure, particularly from Beijing, on two of the largest opium producers in Myanmar’s Golden Triangle – which borders China, Laos and Thailand – the Kokang and the Wa. Both are rebel ethnic groups, with large guerrilla forces, but have ceasefire agreements with the Myanmar government. Most poor farmers in the northern part of the country have grown poppy for several decades.
“The poor peasants in this region needed to have a cash crop to supplement their meagre income from farming,” said Col Hkham Awang, Myanmar’s anti-narcotics police chief. “They earned less than US$200 [Dh734] from each crop – and that all went on necessities, like clothes and shoes, and extra rice in the lean season.”
The Kokang virtually ceased opium production in 2003 and the Wa in 2006. But in the past two years both poppy cultivation and opium production have restarted.
“The trend is certainly upwards with a significant increase in the land under cultivation in Myanmar,” said Leik Boonwaat, the UNODC chief in Laos, who has also been stationed in Myanmar.
“For former opium farmers who already live in dire poverty they are facing twin levers of increasing opium prices and falling commodity prices that may encourage them to increase poppy growing.”
The prices of most commodities grown or produced in Myanmar as alternative crops to poppy, particularly maize and rubber, have fallen by more than 50 per cent, according to the UN’s annual drug report.
Most of the Wa and Kokang’s alternative crops – tea, rubber and fruit – are sold to traders across the border in China. But these merchants are no longer interested in buying these products. Chinese traders are not even buying jade from the Pangsan market, near the border with China.
“The price of opium has doubled in the past few years – from $153 a kilogram in 2004 to $301 currently on the Myanmar market – making it hard for former opium growers to ignore this incentive to return to poppy cultivation,” Mr Boonwaat said.
Already there are signs that Myanmar’s poppy growers are returning to their old trade. The greatest increase has been in southern Shan state, where the Wa leadership is in the hands of Wei Xiao Gang – an alleged gangster who is wanted on drug trafficking charges in the United States.
There has also been a steady increase in the north-east of Shan State. More worrying is the steady increase in cultivation in both Kachin and Kayah states over the past two years that had been nearly free of poppy fields for more than five years.
The Wa leaders admit there is pressure to reverse their poppy ban. “Everything is getting worse,” said a 60-year-old former poppy farmer in the Wa area. “People are desperate for food and clothes. They want to know why there was an opium ban in the Wa area when there is no ban in other places.”
The fragile situation in the northern Wa areas is also of great concern to international anti-drug agencies, according to senior Thai intelligence officers.
So far the Wa ban on poppy production, punishable by death, is holding. Wa leaders have always known that the situation remained precarious – the ban was never a popular move – and depended on the poor Wa farmers having greater food security and an alternative source of a cash income.
“The Wa leaders may even be forced to renege on their promises to the UN and international community if the economic and security situation deteriorates further,” said a UN drugs official familiar with the problems in Shan state.
The political problems in Myanmar – the planned elections in 2010 and the junta’s efforts to disarm certain groups, including the Wa – is increasing instability in the border regions, which have been the traditional opium producing areas, putting further pressure on former opium growers to return to their poppy fields.
“There is no room for complacency,” Mr Lewis said. “There is much more that needs to be done.”
ljagan@thenational.ae
Friday, February 20, 2009
Secret of Thai success in opium war
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7899748.stm
Thailand army have helped wipe out the drug trade
By Alastair Leithead
BBC News, northern Thailand
High up in the beautiful mountains where Thailand, Burma and Laos meet, the landscape has been transformed in the years since the "Golden Triangle" produced practically all the world's opium.
Afghanistan gradually took over the dubious mantle in the late 1990s and is now responsible for 90% of the world's heroin.
It is a figure which has gone up, rather than down since Britain and the rest of the international community took responsibility for reducing the illicit harvest.
Over the same timescale, the Golden Triangle has seen its opium crop plummet to just a fraction of world supply.
Opium growing plots in the jungle are easy to spot from the air
One of the men who shares responsibility for the success story is now urging Afghanistan's Western backers to listen to him.
"Our thinking is opium, the people involved in opium, that 99% of it is driven by poverty and lack of opportunity - this is the cause," says MR Disnadda Diskul, secretary-general of the Mah Fah Luang Foundation.
The "MR" preceding his name indicates he is a descendant of the revered Thai royal family and has devoted the last two decades to helping a royal project bring an end to Thailand's deadly harvest.
In one area at least, that has been done through a combination of textiles, paper, coffee beans and macadamia nuts as money-making alternatives.
Heavy-handed military
Just below the ridge that separates Thailand and Burma, the mountain slopes steeply down into the valley and clinging to its sides are row after row of coffee bushes.
You can hear the women giggling and gossiping as they pluck the red-ripe coffee beans from their stalks and drop them into small wicker baskets hanging round their necks, but the vegetation is so lush that you can't see them.
Advertisement
Life in a mountain village in the Golden Triangle
Surveying the scene from the path is Wattana Chuenwirasup, who now grows coffee where he once grew opium and trafficked it to dealers.
Sweeping his hand across the landscape he shows me where his poppies once flourished, circling 360 degrees from the edge of the hill tribe village.
"There were no choices then but opium and rice," he said. "It was dangerous when the government started to crack down on growing opium and there was a good opportunity."
His is the story of Thailand's success - a combination of sometimes heavy-handed military force and years of persuading people to grow something other than opium.
The Thai authorities say only 280 hectares of poppies were grown last year, and most of them were eradicated.
They may be remote, but fields in jungle clearings are relatively easy to spot from satellite images and aerial photographs, and heavily armed troops simply follow the maps and destroy the crops.
There is little resistance from local people. There is never any proof of who is growing the opium poppies, so although the fields are beaten down with sticks and irrigation pipes, there are no arrests.
Key to success
It is a lot more dangerous being part of an Afghan eradication force - they are regularly attacked and destroy just a fraction of the overall crop each year.
The eradication team beats down fields with sticks and irrigation pipes
Disnadda Diskul from the Mah Fah Luang Foundation is advising the Afghan government on the way forward, but says there is too much emphasis on getting rid of the poppies and that more should be done to give people other options.
"I look at the British approach and they do try hard, but I don't think they are doing it the right way because they spend so much money. The Americans also spend billions and billions of dollars and what do they get out of it? Nothing.
"At the moment they are pouring the money into Afghanistan but they are giving fish to the poor, but not giving them a fishing rod and teaching them how to fish, or to look after the ocean," he says.
"That's the difference between the Thai way and what they are doing in Afghanistan. The donor countries are using all their money for infrastructure - not into the mouths and stomachs of the people."
He points out establishing what people can produce and then identifying a market and joining them up is the key to the project's success.
Strong determination
The British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, who has been in Afghanistan this week, insists they are on the right track with more Afghan provinces becoming opium free and the overall harvest being reduced a little last year.
"I don't know which programme the Thai representative is talking about because we don't do grand infrastructure projects," he said.
"We build alternative livelihoods for farmers from the bottom up, through projects such as the wheat distribution programme in Helmand.
"We are not interested in great projects - we are interested in steps forward for ordinary people.
"I think when you see the numbers coming out this year about poppy cultivation you will see them going down because security is getting better and because alternatives for farmers in the legal economy are getting better too."
It has taken many years for the villagers in northern Thailand to be weaned off opium, both through the new opportunities given to them and the sometimes very heavy hand of a country with a strong military, and a determination to tackle the problem.
That is still a long way off in Afghanistan, especially with war still raging in the south.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
SSA: Blame junta for druglord on the loose
by admin — last modified 2009-02-19 07:50
Naw Kham, former pro-junta militia leader who again made headlines by shooting at a Chinese cargo ship on the Mekong yesterday, remains free because of the ruling military junta’s support for him, according to the anti Rangoon Shan State Army (SSA) South.
Naw Kham
By SHAN
19 February 2009
Thai-Burma Relations
“Otherwise, how can he move freely in the area?” ask Lt-Col Gawnzeun, Commander of the Kengtung Force. “He’s been surrounded on all sides by Burma, Lao and Thai forces.”
His boss Col Yawdserk, leader of the SSA, agreed. “When our troops were there, the Burma Army kept chasing us without let-up,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem to care much about Naw Kham’s presence in the area.”
Not quite, said a Thai security source. Following the meeting between Burmese and Lao authorities on 7 February, reportedly through Chinese pressure, the two had resolved to cooperate on the apprehension of Naw Kham, the new “Lord of the Golden Triangle,” dead or alive, according to him.
The Burma Army unit stationed in Mongphong, opposite Lao’s Muong Mom, almost immediately gave chase following the shootings in the river where 1 Chinese was killed and 3 others wounded, according to Thai media reports.
“That could be a simulation,” said Gawnzeun. “He can’t get away if you really want to catch him. I’d certainly wish to give it a try, as he’s been taxing traders using our name.”
Naw Kham had also shot up a Chinese patrol boat on 25 February last year wounding 3 Chinese officers.
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www.shanland. org
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Myanmar steps up cracking down on smuggling through containers
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-02/11/content_10800098.htm
www.chinaview.cn 2009-02-11 10:53:17 Print
YANGON, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar authorities are stepping up cracking down on smuggling of banned goods out of the country through containers by conducting strict and thorough check on exporting goods, especially forest products, carried in the containers, the local Weekly Eleven News reported Wednesday, quoting exporters.
Applying complicated process, the one-by-one detailed check on exporting items by having them unloaded from container before it is granted for shipping is being carried out or with X-ray at the Yangon Port to expose hidden banned goods, the report said.
The tight measures was introduced after there was unconfirmed report that smuggling of narcotic drugs through exporting wood carried in one container was foiled recently only minutes after it was given green light, alerting the authorities to take such tightened measure in the aftermath.
According to the anti-drug authorities, Myanmar punished 277 people, including 67 women, for drug offense in December last year.
During the month, the authorities seized 50 kilograms (kg) of opium, 2.32 kg heroin as well as 120,000 stimulant tablets, the figures of the Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control show.
In the previous month, the country exposed a total of 207 narcotic-drug-related cases punishing 308 people including 58 women.
That month's seizure included seized 71.18 kilograms (kg) of opium, 7.6 kg of heroin, 7 kg of ephedrine, 9 kg of marijuana, 2.5kg of Ice and 5.9 kg of Caffeine as well as 221,406 stimulant tablets.
Due to anti-drug efforts, the number of drug users in Myanmar decreased from 61,455 in 2005 to 54,709 in January 2008.
Myanmar has been implementing a 15-year plan (1999-2014) to totally eradicate poppy in three phases, each running for five years.
Editor: Yang Lina
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Raids in Rangoon Yield More Heroin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By THE IRRAWADDY Friday, January 30, 2009
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Police and customs officers in Rangoon have confirmed that a special anti-narcotics task force has seized substantial quantities of heroin in a series of raids carried out in the former Burmese capital since late last week.
Police said at least 28 kilograms of heroin were found last Sunday in a container on the Singaporean-flagged ship Kota Tegap, which was docked at the Asia World Port Terminal, located in Rangoon’s Ahlone Township.
Burma's Home Minister Maj-Gen Maung Oo, second from right, together with Rangoon-based diplomats check the illicit drugs before being put into flames, during the drug burning ceremony held at a remote town Lashio in Burma's northeastern Shan state in June, 2007. (Photo: AFP)
The port is owned by Tun Myint Naing, the son of former drug kingpin and militia leader Lo Hsing Han and one of those listed for sanctions by the US Treasury Department.
According to a report by Washington-based Radio Free Asia, the container, which was bound for Singapore, is owned by the Myanmar Timber Enterprise, a government-owned business that is also under US sanctions.
Police told The Irrawaddy on Friday that in a subsequent sting operation, the Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control (CCDAC) discovered another large cache of heroin in FMI City, an upscale residential area in Hlaing Tharyar Township. Further details were not available.
The CCDAC is a high-level task force chaired by Minister for Home Affairs Maj-Gen Maung Oo. Brig-Gen Khin Yi, the director general of the national police force, serves as secretary of the committee, which is based in the junta’s capital of Naypyidaw.
According to sources at the customs department, the police special intelligence department, known as the Special Branch, is now questioning port employees, high-ranking government officials and prominent businessmen in connection with the heroin seizure at the Asia World Port Terminal last weekend.
Observers say that drug traffickers are increasingly using maritime routes to smuggle drugs out of Burma due to a tough suppression campaign by neighboring countries such as Thailand and China.
On Tuesday, the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma reported that Kyaw Kyaw Min, a crab exporter in Bogalay Township, Irrawaddy Division, was arrested for attempting to smuggle 32 kilograms of heroin out of the country aboard a container ship.
Meanwhile, Singapore’s Central Narcotics Bureau seized 44.2 kilograms of heroin last year, up from 17.2 kilograms seized in 2007, the Straits Times reported Friday.
A shipment of 11 kilograms of high-grade heroin, bound for the European market, was seized in June, said the report, adding that it was the biggest seizure of its kind in the last 10 years. The report added that most of the heroin came from Thailand and Burma.
According to the 2008 World Drug Report, opium poppy cultivation in Southeast Asia increased by 22 percent last year, mainly driven by a 29 percent increase in opium cultivation in Burma.
The Burmese regime seized 103.8 kilograms of heroin and 1,690 kilograms of opium from January 2007 to June 2008, according to official figures.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Drug Trade In The ‘Golden Triangle’
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0901/S00106.htm
Thursday, 8 January 2009, 11:51 am
Press Release: United Nations
Real Lives Touched By Drug Trade In ‘Golden Triangle’ Featured In UN Photo Stories
New York, Jan 7 2009 11:10AM The lives of real people affected by the illicit drug trade in the area known as the Golden Triangle – Thailand, Laos and Myanmar – are showcased in a new set of photo stories published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The second volume of the photojournalism book “De Narcoticis” is produced by award-winning photographer, journalist and UNODC Goodwill Ambassador, Alessandro Scotti.
The project “gives a face” to a problem that is often depicted through data and numbers, and focuses on a range of actors, including law enforcement officers, traffickers, plantation workers and addicts, notes Mr. Scotti.
“It’s an underworld which has been examined closely enough to give us plenty of figures and statistics, but which is less known for its personal stories,” he says.
“The people involved in trafficking have only a very partial perception of the overall phenomenon, and yet their lives are powerfully affected by it. They are simple people with a limited perception of the impact of their actions.
“Most are in any case tied to the ‘job’ for their very survival; desperate people with otherwise limited life chances or opportunities,” he says.
This is why UNODC’s work is so important, Mr. Scotti adds. “UNODC offers a holistic approach including development strategies which allow alternative businesses to grow and become sustainable. A stronger economic and social framework leads to a different balance.”
The first volume of “De Narcoticis” focused on Colombia, which now produces only 5 per cent of the world’s opiates – down from over 70 per cent some 30 years ago – and where UNODC has been partnering with local authorities in combating the drug trade.
ENDS
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
China strengthens border with Burma-DVB
http://english.dvb.no/news.php?id=1986
Dec 8, 2008 (DVB)Chinese authorities have begun to erect walls along the border with Burma near the Kachin Independence Organisation-controlled area in Laiza, north-east Burma, according to local residents.
The construction project started in the last week of November as Chinese workers and machines began digging along a border stream.
"In some places, they have already started laying bricks and digging the ground,・a local resident said.
的n some places, it is as high as a person."
The decision to clearly demarcate and strengthen the border had been discussed at coordination meetings, and sources close to the KIO said the Chinese authorities met the Northern Command military security force and KIO executive committee member Dr La Ja on 2 December. Fences and iron posts have also been erected in the Shweli-Kyegaung area, locals said.
Some residents said that the fences had been put up on the orders of the Yunan state narcotics elimination commission, but a resident of Laiza said there appeared to be other motives.
"I think it is about more than the elimination of narcotics,・the resident said.
擢encing like this would not stop that."
Military analyst Aung Kyaw Zaw, who is based on the border, said the construction of the walls could be a precautionary measure in anticipation of activities by armed groups in the area in the run-up to the 2010 election.
"It is a way of putting pressure on the KIO,・Aung Kyaw Zaw said.
典his is clear because they are erecting the walls where the Pan Wa and Kan Paik ethnic armed groups are based."
Aung Kyaw Zaw also speculated that the reinforced borders could be linked to the construction of gas pipelines to China, which is due to start in 2009.
Reporting by DVB
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
War on drugs takes a hit
http://www.russiatoday.com/features/news/33728
November 25, 2008, 14:05
War on drugs takes a hit
The USA has spent billions in South America fighting the war on drugs. After 37 years, narcotic production is rising while drug prices in the US have fallen dramatically. So, is it time to give the battle against drugs a shot in the arm?
The green fields around the sleepy little town of Chulumani in Bolivia’s semi-tropical Yungas region are dominated by one crop: coca. Where once the plant sacred to the Andean people grew alongside fruit and vegetables, now it alone remains – the base ingredient of cocaine.
November 25, 2008, 14:05
War on drugs takes a hit
The USA has spent billions in South America fighting the war on drugs. After 37 years, narcotic production is rising while drug prices in the US have fallen dramatically. So, is it time to give the battle against drugs a shot in the arm?
The green fields around the sleepy little town of Chulumani in Bolivia’s semi-tropical Yungas region are dominated by one crop: coca. Where once the plant sacred to the Andean people grew alongside fruit and vegetables, now it alone remains – the base ingredient of cocaine.
The record-high coca price and the removal of production limits means this is boom time for the cocaleros (coca farmers). Every night convoys of trucks laden with the green leaves take the dangerous dirt road through the breathtakingly beautiful mountains. The cargo will be sold, chewed, made into tea or refined into cocaine.
While Bolivia’s cocaine travels to Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Europe, rather than the USA, Bolivia is the world’s third-largest producer of coca and should be a crucial battlefield in the USA’s global war on drugs.
However, this month, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was expelled from Bolivia, accused of espionage and financing the political opposition.
The US State Department described the accusations as “false and absurd”. Nonetheless, the DEA was given three months to leave. As a result, the US’ role in Bolivia will be severely curtailed. It has lead President Bush to blacklist Bolivia with Venezuela and Burma as “failing demonstrably” in the war on drugs.
Coca farmer president leads anti-cocaine fight
Evo Morales, ex-cocalero and president
Bolivian President, Evo Morales, was always an unlikely ally for the USA in its coca-eradication programme. While the official policy—“Coca, sí. Cocaine, no” —could hardly be simpler, the reality is more complicated. Morales is a former cocalero and headed a union of coca producers. Assisting the States in coca eradication without upsetting his natural constituent was always problematic.
Bolivia claims it will wage its own anti-drugs war without US support. President Morales points to successfully eradicating 5,000 hectares (12,500 acres) of illegal crops — achieving this year’s goal. In the first 10 months of this year, 24.5 metric tons of cocaine were seized, 7.5 tons more than the whole of last year.
How vigorously Morales’ government goes after his illegal former cocalero colleagues and current political supporters remains to be seen. Without the US’ resources, policing production will be difficult even if the will is real.
It seems likely that following the DEA’s expulsion and the animosity between the two countries, Bolivia will be responsible for more of the world’s cocaine. Whether it ever produces as much as Colombia — the USA’s closest ally in South America — is less likely.
Colombia: cocaine capital of the world
Colombia is the world’s largest cocaine producer. It is in the grip of a national drugs emergency. The corrupting influence of drug money is felt everywhere. When nationwide pyramid-selling schemes collapsed this month, it was revealed that traffickers were using them to launder money.
Since 2000, the States has been working with its ally on Plan Colombia, aimed at halving illegal coca production. The US$ 5 billion initiative has seen coca rise by 15%, according to the US Government Accountability Office.
Despite the vast military, security and economic assistance, 90% per cent of the cocaine and a large proportion of the heroin in the USA still comes from here.
Critics say Plan Colombia focuses too heavily on military investment and poisoning crops at the expense of rural development. The military aerially sprays vast quantities of land to destroy coca plants. In the process, the spray poisons the soil and kills fish in rivers.
The Colombian drug trade is controlled by armed groups, such as the Farc, which are involved in a decades old conflict with the government. Defined as “narco-terrorists” by the USA, their origins were politically inspired.
There are signs that there has been some success against these paramilitary drug networks with fewer kidnappings, murders and acts of terrorism. A price has been paid: human rights groups and the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights report “widespread and systematic” killings of civilians by the military.
Soldiers’ kill rates were used to qualify for bonuses and promotion, until it was discovered that 11 innocent men had been executed and passed off as combatants.
Peru’s Shining Path marches again
Coca production is also rising in Peru, the world’s second-largest producer. Another strong ally in the war on drugs, Peru destroyed more than 10,000 hectares of coca fields last year despite violent resistance from cocaleros.
As in Colombia, violent political groups control the production of coca. There are signs that the Shining Path, once a formidable group of Maoist guerillas, is making a resurgence. Last month, they killed 15 police officers and soldiers, and two civilians in remote coca-growing areas they control.
Peru, like Bolivia, defends the legal use of coca. Its indigenous Andean population has used coca for centuries in religious ceremonies, for making tea and to chew. For generations, coca’s alkaloids have relieved hunger and provided energy.
The last staging post
Confiscated drugs at the Mexican-U.S. border
(AFP Photo / Omar Torres)
Mexico provides the last defence in the USA’s war against drugs. Its border sees drugs going north and guns coming south. Mexican gangs are the largest movers of illicit drugs into the USA. Their trade is incredibly lucrative and the routes north are highly prized and heavily defended.
In parts of Mexico, the drug smuggling culture has become so ingrained that they even have a revered unofficial patron saint of traffickers, Jesús Malverde.
Extensive bilateral cooperation between Mexican President Felipe Calderón and his US counterparts has lead to 83 extraditions in 2007. The government has increased spending by 24% from 2006 to US$2.5bn to raise security and quell the drug-related violence.
More than 12,000 Mexican troops have been brought in, conducting joint investigations with the DEA.
However, there have been problems. The former drugs czar was arrested (21.11.08) accused of taking a bribe of US$450,000 every month from traffickers. From 2006 until this August, Noe Ramirez Mandujano was responsible for the attorney general’s office that fights organised crime.
Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora admitted last month that five members of his office had been spying for the Beltran Leyva cartel. One of his staff even claimed to have fed information about the DEA back to the cartel from the US Embassy in Mexico City.
Bloody battles are fought between the various gangs for supremacy of the trade and the army sent to enforce peace. This year there have been 4,300 killed in the violence, according to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. This is 1,600 more than in the whole of 2006.
The war on drugs on the home front
When Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs in 1971, it was a five-year plan to bring the problem under control. It shows no sign of being won 37 years later.
On the domestic front, the States is fighting hard concentrating on reducing supply and law enforcement.
The USA incarcerates a higher proportion of its population than any other country on earth. Its prison population of nearly 2,200,000 (Source: International Centre for Prison Studies) is testament to the government’s readiness to imprison offenders. The US Justice Department reports that 20% of them are inside for drug offences.
War on drugs is far from being over in the US
The financial investment and loss in this battle is vast; in 2004 the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy put the cost of illicit drugs at US$181bn.
The federal government spent more than US$19bn on the war on drugs in 2003, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
This extraordinary effort has shown precious little result in either the supply of or demand for illicit drugs. Prices are down an inflation-busting 80% since the 1980s, while drug use remains at about 8% of the population, relatively constant for 10 years.
And so, the war on drugs drags on seemingly without any possible conclusion. Whether Chulumani’s cocaleros, Mexico’s traffickers or the USA’s prison population will see a different approach from the new administration remains to be seen.
While vice-president elect, Joe Biden, came into power on a platform promising change, he is an architect of the modern war on drugs. It seems a revolution in approach is unlikely and the war is set to continue.
Jonathan Stibbs for RT
Related links:
Bolivia won’t let US anti-drugs agency return
World record cocaine bust in Mexico
Security tightened in Columbia
Monday, November 17, 2008
Opium production on the rise-THAILAND-BURMA
http://www.bangkokpost.com/171108_News/17Nov2008_news10.php
SUBIN KHEUNKAEW AND THEERAWAT KHAMTHITA
CHIANG MAI : Authorities are worried about an increase in poppy cultivation in the Golden Triangle, fearing that opium production in the region would be boosted due to the global economic slowdown.Deputy secretary-general of the Narcotics Control Board (NCB) Pitaya Jinawat said yesterday that opium cultivation in Thailand, Laos and Burma has increased over the past three years.
He said poppy-growing areas in the country's northern region, a prime cultivating area, increased from 700 to 1,800 rai last year and was expected to grow to 2,000 rai this year.
A significant increase in opium production in Laos and Burma has also been reported, he said.
In a statement issued last week by Shan State Army leader Col Yodsuek, the production of raw opium in Shan state would triple this year to 3,000 tonnes.
Mr Pitaya said the situation has alarmed the United Nations Development Programme, which plans to call a meeting to find out the real causes of the unusual increase. Thailand, meanwhile, has its own five-year plan to reduce planting areas, he said.
The NCB will focus on areas where opium is grown repeatedly even though authorities destroy the plants every year.
There are about 1,000 rai in the northern provinces where heavy suppression is needed, Mr Pitaya said. Under the five-year plan, the NCB will also join hands with the royal projects to encourage farmers to switch to other crops.
According to Mr Pitaya, most opium growers in Thailand are financed by influential figures, most of whom are either local politicians or ex-state officials.
The NCB will ask the cabinet to set aside a special budget for the task. The government recently renewed its campaign against narcotics trafficking.
Porntep Iamprapai, head of the NCB's upper northern office, said the agency is racing against time to secure the grant under this government.
"If parliament is dissolved, our plan would hit a snag," he said.
Meanwhile, the Pha Muang Task force arrested a Burmese man as he tried to smuggle 4,000 speed pills into Chiang Rai's Mae Sai district.
Yi Taiyai, 37, of the Tai Yai ethnic minority, paddled his boat across the Sai river from Burma to the Sob Ma pier in Mae Sai. He told police he was hired by a man, whom he only identified as Mr B, in Mae Sai for 2,000 baht to take the pills, produced by the Wa ethnic group, to Thailand.
Friday, November 14, 2008
US freezes assets of alleged Myanmar drug traffickers
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081113/wl_asia_afp/myanmarcrimeussanctions_081113180346;_ylt=AqXbMoSdW2pB244QMD3HmK_uOrgF
Thu Nov 13, 1:03 pm ET AFP/File – A document of Thailand's police shows a picture of "Drug kingpin" Wei Hsueh Kang, displayed … WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US authorities said Thursday it had frozen the assets of 26 individuals and 17 firms tied to drug trafficking in Myanmar and prohibited US citizens from dealing with them.
Targeted were those linked to the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the most powerful drug trafficking organization in southeast Asia, and Wei Hsueh Kang, a senior UWSA commander, the Treasury Department said in a statement.
They were named "Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers" by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.
The Treasury said its "action freezes any assets the 43 designees may have under US jurisdiction and prohibits US persons from conducting transactions or dealings in the property interests of the designated individuals and entities."
Corporations found violating the Kingpin Act could be fined up to ten million dollars while corporate officers could be fined up to five million dollars and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Other individuals could face up to 10 years in prison and fines.
The United Wa State Army "is a major producer and exporter of synthetic drugs, including methamphetamine," according to OFAC Deputy Director Barbara Hammerle who was quoted in the department's statement.
"Today OFAC is targeting the Wa's lieutenants and the financial holdings of this massive drug trafficking organization. We call on other nations to do the same," Hammerle was quoted as saying.
Under the Kingpin Act, US President George W. Bush identified as significant foreign narcotics traffickers Wei Hsueh Kang, in 2000, and the UWSA, around three years later, it added.
In January 2005, federal prosecutors in New York "unsealed a criminal indictment charging Wei, along with his brothers Wei Hsueh Lung and Wei Hsueh Ying, who are designated today, for narcotics trafficking," it said.
The US State Department is offering a reward of up to two million dollars for tips leading to Wei's capture.
Others named by the OFAC are Pao Yu Hsiang, Ho Chun Ting and Shih Kuo Neng.
Pao Yu Hsiang, indicted in 2005 with Wei Hsueh Kang, is the commander-in-chief of the UWSA, the treasury said.
In 2005, prosecutors in New York charged Ho Chun Ting and Shih Kuo Neng, among others, with money laundering and narcotics trafficking, it said.
In 2007, Hong Kong authorities arrested Ho Chun Ting, a partner of Wei Hsueh Kang, but Hong Kong later released him for unknown reasons, the treasury said.
Shih Kuo Neng is the manager of the Hong Pang conglomerate of companies, many of which were also named Wednesday.
Treasury adds to Myanmar drug trafficker list
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081113/pl_nm/us_usa_treasury_myanmar_1;_ylt=Ap_wmT27vWEBrlXxe7gX01fuOrgF
Thu Nov 13, 3:20 pm ET
AFP/File – A document of Thailand's police shows a picture of "Drug kingpin" Wei Hsueh Kang, displayed … WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday added the names of 26 people and 17 companies linked to Myanmar's military government to its list of accused traffickers of opium, the raw material of heroin, and other drugs.
"The United Wa State Army is the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in Southeast Asia and is a major producer and exporter of synthetic drugs," the Treasury said in a statement.
Many of the those named in the announcement are tied to the military regime and have previously been indicted by U.S. federal courts.
The full list is at www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/bulletin.txt
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, shares the notorious Golden Triangle region with Laos and Thailand, a mountainous opium-producing area that has seen its leading role in the global heroin trade eclipsed by Afghanistan.
According to Jane's Information Group, the United Wa State Army, a former insurgent force, "has successfully asserted itself as the largest and wealthiest player in Myanmar's booming narcotics trade."
"China has found itself facing a growing menace from Wa-produced heroin, while the UWSA's aggressive export of methamphetamines has acted as a persistent irritant in relations" between Myanmar and Thailand, Jane's said.
"Since 2000, the Wa have opened new narcotics export routes into Laos, Cambodia and India's northeast as well as trafficking small-arms to these regions."
Jane's said it was clear Myanmar's junta "is politically unwilling and militarily ill-prepared to risk any confrontation with the UWSA, a move that could have disastrous repercussions on ceasefire arrangements with a range of other factions."
(Reporting by Patrick Rucker, editing by John O'Callaghan)
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Watching the war on drugs-THAI -BURMA
http://www.bangkokpost.com/111108_News/11Nov2008_news16.php
EDITORIAL
Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat has ordered a new crackdown on drug peddlers, and Justice Minister Somsak Kiatsuranond kicked it off officially at a Chiang Mai ceremony. This has raised concerns, particularly on the civil rights front. Such concern is understandable and proper. But the good news is that this campaign, for all its flash and gimmickry, has been properly planned.
Any active anti-drug trafficking campaign these days is certain to be overshadowed by the infamous order to police by ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra to eliminate drug peddlers and hang the consequences. That shameful 90-day police violence not only took innocent lives, it also put every subsequent attempt to crack down on big-time drug dealers and their street-corner sellers on the wrong foot. In the more than five years since that three months of a real "war on drugs," traffickers have made bold new inroads, while authorities often felt inhibited from pursuing them.
Timidity is not a useful reaction in dealing with Thai and Thailand-based drug traffickers. They are ruthless men, seriously addicted to the drug trade for its huge profits and, in many cases, its power. In the past 20 years, which is to say one generation, Thailand has made huge progress in the fight against big-time drug trafficking. Many forget that the notorious Khun Sa once lived in northern Thailand with impunity, virtual emperor of an opium fiefdom.
The 2003 campaign under Thaksin was an abomination. An independent committee reported credibly that the so-called anti-drug crackdown resulted in 2,819 deaths. Only 1,370 were found to be related to the actual crackdown. The committee said 878 people were killed even though they had no connection with drugs, and another 571 were murdered for causes still unknown. Such an operation must never again be countenanced.
Today, there are three major areas which any anti-drug operation must target to be successful. The first is the Burma-based production facilities of the United Wa State Army. The UWSA is responsible for most of the amphetamines and heroin that are sold or smuggled through Thailand. Anti-drug agents must also find the street-level drug peddlers and, through them, the "Mr Big" traffickers who ultimately control the trade and aim to corrupt Thai youth through drugs and the nation through corruption and money.
Finally, there is the demand for drugs. It is encouraging to see that the Office of the Narcotics Control Board has targetted both drug users and the most vulnerable parts of society. Drug users can and should be encouraged to stop harming themselves and their families, as well as the country. Potential users can be properly educated in the danger, corruption and moral indignity, so that they never start.
The concerns of many human rights activists are germane. But it would be wrong to delay or cancel anti-drug campaigns at any level because one of them went off the tracks. Mr Somchai seems sincere about this programme. He appointed Interior Minister Kowit Wattana to head a suppression and control centre, with Somsak Kiatsuranond as deputy.
This is encouraging. The next step is to make the government fully and intimately accountable at each stage of the anti-drug campaign. Human rights groups, the media and all members of the public should be involved. It is important that authorities pursue drug traffickers, both at the national level and at the street level. Such campaigns will be more successful and long-lasting if the government obeys the law at every stage.
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