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The Junta's Friends in `High' Place



Subject: The Junta's Friends in `High' Places

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Burma-Heroin
THE JUNTA'S FRIENDS IN 'HIGH' PLACES
Burmese military rulers faces uncomfortable revelations
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FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU
Wednesday, 10 November 1999
http://www.fr-aktuell.de/english/401/t401003.htm
By Juergen Dauth

Bangkok - Film sequences shot by Thai investigators appear to have proved once and for all the long-standing suspicion that Burma's ruling military junta have friends among the world's most unscrupulous drugs barons.
The film, shot by Thai investigators shows the military junta's first secretary and military intelligence chief, General Khin Nyunt, in close congress with one of the world's most wanted drug barons, Wei Hueh-kang.
Wei has a price on his head: two million dollars, to be exact, which America's Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says it will pay out to anyone who delivers him up for prosecution.
Wei, general in the United Wa State Army, a force fighting for the rights of a minority people on the Thai-Burmese border, is the Golden Triangle's new drugs baron. His predecessor Khun Sa, president of the Shan State Army, has apparently now retired from active dealings.
The DEA is convinced that Wei is "South East Asia's leading drug smuggler - and perhaps the world's."
According to several reports, Wei was once a liberation fighter, fighting for the independence of the Wa minority in Burma. But then - in one of the junta's so-called pacification campaigns in the capital Rangoon, Wei renounced his central goal of a separate Wa state.
His pledge of fealty did not go unrewarded. In return, the generals invested him with the rights to trade in opium with southern China. Wei formed alliances and signed treaties with other minorities in the border area to Yunnan and soon became the largest trader in unprocessed opium in the Golden Triangle.
His most important customer was the unchallenged opium king Khun Sa. Khun Sawhose laboratories for turning raw opium poppies into heroin are deep in the jungles on the Thai-Burmese border. Together, Kun Sa and Wei - both ethnic Chinese - came to control the largest segment of the worldwide trade in heroin.
Then, three years ago reports spoke of Khun Sa finally retiring after years of successful dealings. The first rumours indicated that his "services" had bought him the right to live in Rangoon. But then proof started accumulating at Bangkok's anti-drugs agency headquarters that Wei and Khun Sa had merely split their lucrative operations into separate areas.
Khun Sa, it seems, had only withdrawn to Rangoon to pursue his business interests: that of legally obtaining chemicals required in the production of heroin. Wei took over the laboratories and today is reckoned to be the largest supplier of amphetamines on the world market.
One of his most important markets is Thailand where the consumption of amphetamines and heroin has risen so dramatically that the government has declared the drug situation to be a national disaster. Thailand currently has 1.8 million people withdrawing from the drug. The amphetamines produced in Wei's kitchens in Burma also reach the world market through China and Cambodia.
It has always been suspected that the drug barons receive active support from Burma's generals. The junta is also accused of financing part of its military budget through drugs. But evidence for this last suspicion was always lacking. Until now, that is.
The Thai drug investigators now have a witness in technicolor. Border police filmed the junta's strongman, Khin Nyunt, after he arrived on a tour of inspection at Wei's new headquarters in the jungle.
Both Thailand and the United States have called on Rangoon to extradite the drug barons, but repeated requests have always met with refusal. The People's Republic of China has also issued a warrant for Wei's arrest.
The junta is currently investing heavily in the infrastructure in Wei's fief on the Thai border, and have plans to build a dam there. In Bangkok, observers are convinced that the projects are being financed with drug money.
Copyright  Frankfurter Rundschau 1999
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