Hard Labor, Religion for Burma's Op

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Subject: Hard Labor, Religion for Burma's Opium Growers (fwd)

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Subject: Hard Labor, Religion for Burma's Opium Growers
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Subject: Hard Labor, Religion for Burma's Opium Growers
ACategory: international

         SARMSAO, Burma (Reuter) - His legs are shackled and he is
under armed guard, locked up in a warehouse stacked high with
rice sacks.
         Ai Lu, a villager of Burma's Wa ethnic minority, was a
poppy-grower who volunteered to switch to raising livestock. He
was given breeding pigs by the Wa guerrilla group that governs
the southern part of Burma's Shan state.
         But after just six months Ai Lu sold his pigs and bought
poppy seeds. He prepared to return to opium-growing because, he
said, he was used to it, even though he knew he could make more
money from selling pigs. Now he is paying the price for that
decision.
         Ai Lu, 40, is one of 60 prisoners serving time with hard
labor at this Wa guerrilla base in the heart of the Burma
section of the Golden Triangle opium-producing region.
         ``These people received light sentences, only two years with
hard labor, because they broke the rule but for soldiers the
penalty is execution,'' Wa prison guard Luah Kui told Reuters.
         Luah Kui said 26 Wa soldiers had been executed by the United
Wa State Army (UWSA) since it began a project to eradicate
opium-growing in its zone, where at least 2,200 tons of the
sticky black sap are produced annually.
         Colonel Theng Kwang Ming, 45, the Wa regional commander in
this zone near the Thai border, said the order to eradicate
opium came from Wa guerrilla headquarters at Panghsang, near the
border with China.
         The Wa realized they would never receive international
recognition, or support, as long as huge amounts of opium and
its refined product, heroin, continued to flow from their zone,
Burma-watchers said.
         The former anti-government fighters struck a cease-fire with
the Rangoon junta more than four years ago. Now they administer
their own zone of contol in the hills of Shan state.
         Their eradication program began in earnest two years ago
when two Christian missionaries arrived and offered their help,
the colonel said, adding the aim was to eradicate poppy-growing
by 2005.
         ``We began the plan with the army. Soldiers are strictly
prohibited from growing opium, anyone breaking the rule will be
executed,'' Theng Kwang Ming said.
         ``As for villagers, the missionaries are educating them and
giving volunteers breeding pigs to raise and new crops to
replace opium poppies.''
         The Wa are former headhunters from the remote hills of
northeastern Burma with a reputation as tough, independently
minded fighters.
         Some Wa were converted to Christianity by missionaries
during British colonial rule but others retained their
traditional animism. Some Wa communities still practised
headhunting as late as the 1960s.
         ``We are preparing the Wa for Christianity as well as
educating the children,'' said Chi Shiung, a 45-year-old
Christian missionary from Taiwan. ``I am confident the
opium-eradication program will work in the long run.
         ``My hopes are pinned on the new generation. We cannot
change the old people from growing opium but the new generation
will change.''
         Chi Shiung said more than $120,000 had so far been spent on
pigs, cattle and seeds for crop substitution for villagers who
agreed to give up cultivating the plants that bloom white and
pink every cool season.
         Most of the money came from the UWSA and some was donated by
Taiwan supporters.
         The Wa leaders claim good initial results, and the area
around the Sarmsao guerrilla base is now free of poppy plants.
         Since the project began at least 20,000 people had switched
from poppy-growing to pig-raising and other crops, guerrilla
officials said. But they admit they still have a long way to go
and without outside help their chances of success are slim.
         Chi Shiung said 700,000 people in the Wa zone grew opium
poppies, as their families had done for generations.
         The UWSA say they invited all parties concerned with the
narcotics problem, including the Drug Enforcement Agency, the
U.N. anti-narcotics agency and Western embassies, to inspect
their zone but so far only the two missionaries have responded.
         ``We are appealing to all agencies concerned with the drug
problem to come and study the opium problem in our area. The Wa
are poor and illiterate. They need education and vocational
training to change from growing opium,'' Colonel Theng Kwang
Ming said.
         The UWSA accuses rival opium warlord Khun Sa of fueling the
drug trade by buying opium from Wa villagers in their area and
refining it into heroin.
         But a senior Thai narotics-suppression officer based in the
northern Thai city of Chiangmai said Khun Sa was no longer the
heroin king of the Golden Triangle. ``Heroin refineries have
shifted from his areas to the Wa area,'' the officer said.