17 Apr 2000 12:44GMT
YANGON, April 17 (Reuters) - Myanmar's military government said on Monday it had arrested three saboteurs sent by opposition groups to plant explosives in Yangon.
Official government newspapers said Soe Thi Ha, 29, Aung Hlaing Win, 25, and Naing Lin Aung, 30, were arrested along the Myanmar-Thai border between April 1 and 11.
They quoted military sources as saying the three demolitionists planned to blow up unidentified sites in the Myanmar capital during the Maha Thingyan Water Festival April 13-15. They had also planned to instigate riots, they said.
The newspapers said those arrested were members of various opposition groups, including the National League for Democracy (NLD) and the All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF).
They gave no further details.
A spokesman for the NLD denied those arrested had any connection with the party.
A spokesman for the ABSDF said the group had no knowledge of the arrests and declined further immediate comment.
The accusation is groundless and I think those victims who are being detained by the military government are scapegoats of dicatorship propaganda, Thien Oo, a member of an NLD government in exile told Reuters by telephone from the Myanmar-Thai border.
The NLD, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, won Myanmar's last democratic election in 1990 by a landslide but has never been allowed to govern. It is avowedly non-violent.
Dozens of NLD members have fled to Thailand in recent years since a government crackdown on the opposition.
Many of the Myanmar exiles have gone to Australia and Europe but a few are still living on border and have been waging a low-key propaganda war against the Yangon government.
Monday, April 17, 2000; Page A20
THE TYPICAL balance-of-federal-power question in the Supreme Court is whether a federal law encroaches on state prerogatives. This term, however, the court has heard two cases involving the opposite question. The state of Washington sought to impose stringent regulation on oil tankers, while Massachusetts moved to deny state contracts to companies doing business in Burma. The issue is whether the laws invade what the Constitution says should be federal responsibilities. Our sense is that they fall on different sides of a very difficult line.
In the oil tanker case, the court ruled unanimously last month that Washington state had gone too far. Congress had adopted a comprehensive national approach to the regulation of oil tankers. Washington's attempt to set its own rules after the Exxon Valdez oil spill was preempted by the clear statement of federal policy, the justices held. That seems right to us.
The Burma law, whose constitutionality was argued last month, is a secondary boycott that could turn out to violate U.S. international trade commitments. But it's not clearly in conflict with any federal policy. Congress has not clearly preempted the subject matter. It had the chance when it passed a sanctions law against Burma after the Massachusetts law was already in effect, but did not clearly supersede the state law. The Massachusetts law is a statement about human rights that neither usurps any specific federal foreign policy responsibility nor directly regulates foreign commerce--either of which would be unconstitutional. It is, rather, a set of rules governing the state's own procurement policies, a sovereign function that should be left alone except when federal law is quite clear.
Congress has the authority to preempt the Massachusetts law, but the mere existence of such authority doesn't invalidate the statute. The political branches should have to assert their power. For the courts to say otherwise would be to take on for themselves a foreign policy role that the Constitution doesn't contemplate.
The Scotsman Publication
A Chinese anti-drugs officer shows amphetamines seized from Burmese smugglers to reporter Richard Bestic |
| Burmese drug barons winning war with China |
| Beijing’s best efforts fail to stem flood of heroin and amphetamines, reports Richard Bestic |
|
HIGH in the jungle mountains that mask the lawless border between
Burma and China, police detective Jiang Wei was about to cheat death for a
second time.
Acting on a tip-off, his patrol of five armed officers had tracked a gang of drug smugglers to a remote crossing point. The traffickers had nothing to lose. Carrying more than enough heroin to guarantee a death sentence, their only chance was to fight their way out. Armed with high-calibre weapons and Russian-made hand grenades, they attempted to do just that. The surprise of ambush, however, put them at a fatal disadvantage and was to save the life of Det Jiang. One smuggler, in his haste to lob a grenade with a three-second fuse, did not fully remove the safety catch. The device failed to explode and landed harmlessly, on Det Jiang’s chest. With a bullet scar on his shoulder, the 43-year-old detective’s experiences are typical of police work in the region. If the rhetoric in Westminster is of a war against drugs, such men are in the front line. As drug smuggling increases and official figures begin to reflect real levels of drug addiction in China, the Beijing government has announced a crackdown. Not that you would have ever accused the Chinese of being soft on drugs. Last year five tonnes of heroin was seized. The Chinese rounded up 57,000 suspected drug dealers, of which about 100 were executed. The guilty have their arms tied and are shot in the back. The final filial insult, a bill for the bullet, is sent to the family of the dead smuggler. But Burma is believed to be responsible for three quarters of world heroin production. Vast areas of it are beyond central government control. Border guards are so badly paid in the impoverished country that a case of beer will convince the Burmese to turn a blind eye. Most of the illicit production reaches the outside world through China’s straggling border with Burma. I went with one of Yunnan province’s most senior undercover officers to see the source of the drugs on the other side of the Burmese border – a town controlled by the Wa people. The heavily armed Wa and their army are so dangerous even the feared Burmese junta leaves them alone, allowing the tribe complete autonomy. They use that freedom for the wholesale production of drugs. The town gives clues of the wealth that trade generates: Fine houses in a region where wooden shacks are the norm, a military complex and the movement of expensive all-terrain vehicles. The drugs money buys something else, something the Chinese do not have: the latest international weapons; communications and transport. Earlier this year the Wa made a big show of pulling out of the drugs business. They destroyed poppy fields before the camera and moved thousands of their people to new lands and new crops. But their claim to be ending drug production is a lie – a cynical public relations exercise designed for international consumption. Evidence of the Wa’s treachery is now on film. Yunnan’s narcotics boss showed me the locked vaults where the police keep seized drugs and weapons. Opening one steel cabinet after another, he paraded just a fraction of the heroin seized in his area. He also ripped open a small plastic bag taken from a vast sack and poured a handful of pink pills into my hand. They were amphetamines. The pills suggest the Wa and others are moving from opiate-based drugs to chemicals – cheap to make, easy to shift and with no need for the land-hungry poppy plant. Seizures of the amphetamines produced in small factories just across the border have risen dramatically in recent years Today the amounts seized are measured by the ton. It is, however, only a small indication of the vast supplies getting through. This is China’s Wild West. Communications are limited by rough and dangerous mountain routes. Cracking down on drugs in the region has more than its share of hurdles: poverty for instance. I spoke to young sugar cane workers who said they worked ten hours a day for the equivalent of £2 a month. The attractions of relatively big money from drug smuggling are plain. Deep seated in the culture of the border is an acceptance of opiates. For a pound in the border town of Nansan you can buy a carefully crafted bong – Asia’s version of the hubbly-bubbly, once associated with smoking the sticky fruit of the poppy. Opium – heroin’s raw form – brings draconian penalties now, but has a long tradition. The bong these days in China is used for smoking cigarettes. In Burma it is a different matter. The narcotics-fueled economy needs the foreign currency from exporting drugs. Burma is addicted to the cash its illicit trade brings home. On the Chinese side, all the enthusiasm in the world cannot gloss over the challenge of ageing anti-drugs equipment. Roadside checks are carried out in apparently random and arbitrary fashion. And while most people I saw appeared smilingly resigned to the constant searches, most successful drug busts are achieved with the help of informants. Police footage of gun fights with smugglers suggest they do have their successes. But only the most optimistic of anti-drugs advocates would suggest they are winning the war. At the headquarters of Yunnan’s Narcotics Control Commission a weary realism prevails. The province is responsible for 80 per cent of China’s drug seizures. A senior Chinese official, Sun Dahong, the commission’s secretary general, candidly admitted international help is needed. "Our government is spending all it can on stopping the traffickers," he says. But the drugs trade is truly international and should be tackled on an international basis. "We need not only financial support from the world community, but also satellite help monitoring the position of drugs producers." While the final marketplace is Europe and North America, heroin leaves its mark on the communities through which it passes. In Yunnan, the main route for drugs out of Burma, it is a disproportionately high level of addiction and a distinctly Burmese strain of the HIV virus. In Yunnan’s capital, Kunming, officials work to break a malevolent cycle of addiction and AIDS, the courts focusing on getting people off drugs rather than punishment. A boot camp appearance at a rehabilitation centre for 4,000 people belies a mix of treatments. It includes a herbal drug, as yet unknown in the West, to counter heroin withdrawal. The former junkies I spoke to told me it really does work. As with most rehab centres, the relapse rate is high. Eight out of ten will go back to drugs. Next time the courts may not be so lenient. A second offence of using drugs brings with it a Chinese favourite – "re-education through hard labour". In China, however, young junkies are broadly seen as the innocent victims of a trade primarily aimed at the West. Chinese crop programmes in Burma promote sugar cane in place of the poppy, with modest success. Some 30 tons of opium production has been avoided in this way. At checkpoints, guards remain on alert. The ranks of 13,000 armed police continue their work around the clock and every year China indulges in an orgy of public condemnations, followed by swift executions in private. Together with my news team, cameraman Andy Portch and producer Julie Fang, I was given unprecedented access to the work of the Chinese drugs police. Never before have they allowed a western TV crew to witness their work in the field. Their motive for that exclusive access and the message they want to put across is clear. Smuggling drugs will always be a gamble; the stakes could not be higher. But unless the world heeds China’s calls for greater co-operation and equipment, its porous border with Burma will continue to see a growing flood of illicit drugs. If that is the case, all the tough talk of a drugs crackdown in Britain will be to no avail. A market will always exist for Burmese drugs in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and London. And while anti-drugs measures remain uncoordinated, inevitably the smugglers will find a way to prosper. The Chinese see a bitter-sweet irony to all this. Chinese schoolchildren are taught of the imperialist-inspired Opium Wars. 150 years ago the British first planted the poppies, to produce the opium that caused the military conflict. In the short term the policy of the day was successful. Britain secured Hong Kong, what Queen Victoria called her Half Crown Colony. But now it is the UK that faces a heroin epidemic – opium has returned in a much more deadly form. The empire strikes back. Richard Bestic’s full report can be seen on the Sky News Sharp End programme today at 11:30am; 3:30pm and 9:30pm and tomorrow at 9:30am. India Times-April 17, 2000.
36 Suu Kyi supporters held in Myanmar
YANGON: Myanmar's military junta arrested 36 members of the country's main opposition party on the eve of the country's traditional New Year festival, National League for Democracy (NLD) leaders said Sunday. The NLD, which is led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, issued a statement Sunday night denouncing the roundup of its members on unknown charges on the night of April 12 as a violation of United Nations International Human Rights Declaration. Myanmar and other Buddhist nations such as Cambodia, Laos, Nepal and Thailand began celebrations of their traditional New Year on April 13. NLD executives said nine party members from Dagon, 12 from Kyimyindine and 14 from Mingdalon townships and the party's township chairman from South Okkalapa had been arrested by security personnel and dragged from their houses in handcuffs at midnight on New Year's eve. In the same statement the NLD welcomed the recent appointment of Malaysian national Razali Ismail as the new UN special envoy on Myanmar affairs, and expressed their hopes that the recent arrests would become known to him. (DPA) The Bangkok post
- April 17, 2000.
NARCOTICS
400m pills to flood streets of Thailand Labourers hooked, says research
centre Widespread acceptance of the drug by labourers and their families, who viewed it as a means of overcoming fatigue, working longer and boosting income, was a major problem. Most wrongly regarded methamphetamine as a necessary stimulant, not as an addictive drug. Estimated illegal sales could reach 50 billion baht, the centre reported. When medical costs and other programmes were included, the total cost to society would be more than 100 billion baht. Drug suppression authorities earlier warned illegal factories along the Burmese border were capable of producing 600 million pills this year. The United Wa State Army runs an estimated 55 illegal laboratories just over the northern border. The report said the state was finding it hard to suppress methamphetamines because of the ease of production, high demand and profitability. A survey of 728 labourers in Bangkok recently found many were addicted to methamphetamines and viewed the drug only as a stimulant, not a narcotic. About 89% said they needed a stimulant to work hard without feeling exhausted. They ususally started with stimulant drinks and after a while turned to methamphetamines, which is stronger. The labourers saw methamphetamines as a tool to earning more money and helping their families. They also had the wrong idea that the drug was non-addictive. Moreover, their families considered their drug abuse as an act of devotion to income-earning. Their acceptance boosted the popularity of methamphetamines among labourers. The centre estimated the customer base of methamphetamines among labourers in Bangkok at 200,000-300,000 people, making the capital a major market worth hundreds of millions of baht in annual sales. The centre suggested the state should not only tackle the supply of methamphetamines by arresting traffickers but also try to reduce demand through education. The research centre also urged greater efforts to rehabilitate addicts, otherwise the old customer base would continue to demand the drug. Only 0.02% of the annual budget was set aside for rehabilitation, proportionately far less than the cost to society. The state continued to discourage addicts from entering rehabilitation programmes by calling them criminals rather than patients, which onlyadded to the problem of prison congestion, the Thai Farmers Research Centre said. Drug barons seek deal to open factories Narcotics producers are holding talks with Burma's ethnic Karenni rebels to set up drug factories andopen new drug routes in theirterritory, opposite Mae Hong Son province. A source at the Mae Hong Son narcotic suppression centre said if the talks between the producers and the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) leaders succeed, the drugs would reach Mae Hong Son and Tak provinces via brokers in Loikaw, in Burma's Kayah state. The source said the KNPP would be paid for drug delivery access routes through their territory. The producers also want to build new manufacturing sites in the area. The source added that Karenni refugees in Thailand were known to have been paid to sell drugs. The Nation - April 17, 2000. Chetha vows to make border narcoticsfree
FORMER Army Chief Gen Chetha Thanajaro will team up with Burmese authorities in a bid to make the kingdom’s border “narcoticsfree” by 2005, he said. Gen Chetha, who stopped advising the Interior Ministry after Maj Gen Sanan Kachornprasat’s resignation last month, acknowledge that he still had some unfinished business to complete. One mission he wanted to pursue was to combat narcotics production along the border in cooperation with Burmese authorities. Thai and Burmese senior officials had already initiated a border project to eliminate amphetamine production, he said. The aim was to convert land used for narcotics production into legal agricultural plantations, according to the initiative of His Majesty the King, Gen Chetha added. “We should not blame anybody for widespread narcotics production along the border. It does not matter what others are doing; we have to eliminate these things (narcotics) in our country,” he said. “If dealers were unable to get drugs into the country, they would not be able to survive. But we have not stopped them,” he said, adding that he was therefore determined to work with Burma to solve the problem. “We failed because we did not cooperate. The public did not join this effort and officials were lax. Sometimes, they even committed wrongdoing themselves,” Gen Chetha said. Although negotiations were under the auspices of the foreign ministry, the military’s effort should help, he added. “Personal connections work in Asian society,” he said. The Nation |