Reuters-Thailand should kill traffi

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Subject: Reuters-Thailand should kill traffickers at border - NSC 

Thailand should kill traffickers at border - NSC
02:52 a.m. Jul 16, 1999 Eastern
BANGKOK, July 16 (Reuters) - Thailand's National Security Council chief said
on Friday troops should be stationed on the border with Myanmar and kill
drug traffickers on the spot.

``Alien drugs traffickers from a neighbouring country are becoming
increasingly rampant. The only way to deal with these people is to execute
them on the spot,'' Kachadpai Burusapatana, the NSC's secretary-general,
told a seminar on national security.

``Their first offence is smuggling drugs into the country and the second
offence is violating the sovereignty of the nation. So these people deserve
to die by execution on the spot,'' he said.

Kachadpai, whose name in Thai means ``get rid of danger,'' proposed
replacing the Thai border police with troops.

But police sources told Reuters that the shoot-to-kill policy advocated by
the NSC chief has already been in operation for some time now at the border
area to discourage traffickers.

Thai Narcotics Suppression Police had shot and killed 29 alleged alien drug
traffickers on the common border with Myanmar over the past three months,
they said.

Myanmar is one of the world's largest sources of heroin.

Thailand's Office of Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) has accused the United
Wa State Army (UWAS) which operates in northeastern Shan state of producing
and smuggling millions of amphetamine tablets into Thailand.

The ONCB estimates that more than 300 million amphetamine tablets have been
produced in the infamous Golden Triangle opium producing area by the UWAS
annually.

The Golden Triangle straddles the borders of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos.

The UWAS, a former Myanmar rebel group which has reached a ceasefire with
the Myanmar government, has taken over the drug producing and trafficking
activities of former drug warlord Khun Sa after he surrendered to Myanmar
authorities in 1995.