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Burma Related News - March 03,
2002.
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Headlines
-------------------------------------------------------------- Reuters - Myanmar tops global list of opium
producers
Reuters - Drug Trade Flourishes in the New
Afghanistan
BBC - Burma camp paintings to be
sold
Bkk Post - Seized arms bound for Burmese
pirates
Kyodo News - Myanmar
junta chief calls for unity
-------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday March 2, 4:38 PM Myanmar tops global list of opium producers WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma, regained its position as the world's top producer of opium in 2001, but output slipped 20 percent because of bad weather and eradication by the authorities, the United States said in a report released on Friday. Myanmar had fallen into second place in 2000 because of a surge in
production in Afghanistan, cut short in 2001 when the ruling Taliban enforced a
ban on cultivation.
It is the only country on which the United States has imposed limited
sanctions on the grounds that it has not cooperated in efforts to crack down on
drugs.
The annual U.S. State Department report on the international drugs trade
said the area planted with opium poppies and harvested in 2001 fell to 105,000
hectares (260,000 acres) from 108,700 hectares (272,000 acres) in 2000.
The "potential yield" of raw opium would be about 865 tonnes, against about
1,085 tonnes in 2000, it added. It would be the first drop below 1,000 tonnes
since the mid-1980s.
Despite the U.S. government's annual rebuke to Myanmar for its drugs
record, the report noted a wide range of actions taken by the Myanmar government
against the trade in 2001.
The authorities, for example, eradicated 9,317 hectares (23,400 acres) of
poppies, compared to zero in 2000.
They improved their cooperation with neighbouring countries including China
and cracked down on some of the former ethnic insurgent groups which have
pledged to go "opium-free."
But in areas controlled by the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the principal
producing and trafficking organisation in the country, the government has not
yet attempted any aggressive law-enforcement operations comparable to those in
other areas.
The report said this was because a UWSA pledge to stop opium production
does not come into effect until 2005 and because the UWSA is a much more
formidable opponent.
"Burma has taken some useful counternarcotics measures in 2001, but they
are too limited in duration and scope to have had a significant impact on the
overall narcotics situation thus far," it added.
The United States also criticised the Myanmar authorities for failing to
reduce the output of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS), of which the country
produced 800 million tablets.
"With the exception of seizing modest amounts of tablets and closing a few
production labs, the government of Burma has not made a concerted effort to stop
ATS production and trafficking," the report added.
"The GOB (Government of Burma) must� address the explosion of ATS that
has flooded Thailand and is trafficked to other countries in the region.
"It must make a firm commitment and make a concerted effort to stop
production of ATS by gaining support and cooperation from the ethnic groups," it
said.
-------------------------------------------------------------- Drug Trade Flourishes in the New
Afghanistan
Fri Mar 1, 6:38 PM ET By Jonathan Wright WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
opium trade is flourishing in Afghanistan (news - web sites) after the fall of
the Taliban and the U.S. government said on Friday it is unclear whether the new
government can persuade local leaders to stop it.
In its annual report on the international drug trade, the State Department said the Taliban, driven out of power by the U.S. military last year, virtually eliminated opium poppy cultivation in the regions under their control. Overall opium production fell dramatically, to about 74 tons in 2001 from
about 3,656 tons in 2000 and almost all the production was in parts of
Afghanistan held by the Northern Alliance, Washington's ally in the war against
the Taliban.
Afghanistan has traditionally been one of the world's major producers of
opiates, along with Myanmar, which regained its place as top producer last year
because of the Taliban ban.
Opium is the raw material for the opiates heroin and morphine, and
Afghanistan has been the major supplier of those drugs to the region and to
Western Europe.
The U.S. report, released on Friday, said widespread cultivation of poppies
resumed in Afghanistan after the collapse of the Taliban and drug traffickers
remained active in Afghanistan and the region.
The interim authority in Kabul, led by Hamid Karzai and backed by the
United States, has announced its own ban on growing opium but its writ hardly
runs beyond the capital.
LOCAL POWER CENTERS
The report said, "The Authority lacks means to enforce its ban, and it must
work with local power centers and the donor community if the ban is actually to
be respected."
"It remains uncertain whether the urgings and even the financial support of
the international community will be sufficient to eliminate poppy cultivation in
Afghanistan quickly. ... In the wake of hostilities, which faction is actually
in control in which region varies. Whether factions will follow a ban on poppy
cultivation issued by the Interim Authority is uncertain," it added.
The Northern Alliance, which dominates Karzai's government, does not appear
to have taken any action against drugs in the parts of the country that it does
control, it said. "There have also been recent reports of farmers cultivating a
second opium crop in Northern Alliance-controlled areas," it added.
The United States is putting some hope in regional efforts to stop Afghan
opiates leaving the country through the Six Plus Two group, which brings
together the United States, Russia and Afghanistan's six immediate neighbors.
It said it would work with other donors on a strategy to eliminate
production and to develop indigenous law enforcement and judicial systems in
Afghanistan.
"In the meantime, narcotics trafficking in the region will continue,
despite the best efforts of the Interim Authority and the international
community," it added.
-------------------------------------------------------------- BBC - Friday, 1 March, 2002, 11:50 GMT
Burma camp paintings to be sold Drawings by a World War II veteran depicting horrific scenes from Japanese
prisoner of war camps in Burma are to be sold at auction next month.
The collection of more than 100 drawings and paintings by Jack Chalker, 83,
goes under the hammer on 16 April at Bonhams auctioneers, in London.
It is expected to fetch up to £80,000.
A spokesman for Bonhams said the pictures formed "an immensely important
historical archive".
Mr Chalker, from Somerset, was a student at the Royal College of Art in
London when he was called up to reinforce the beleaguered Singapore garrison.
He was captured, with 137,000 comrades, when the garrison surrendered in
1942, and was sent to the Kanvu river to work on the notorious Burma Railway -
the so-called railway of death.
Mr Chalker contracted dysentery and dengue fever six months later, and
spent the next two and a half years in Japanese-run hospital camps.
In watercolours, monochrome washes and drawings, he recorded his comrades'
suffering.
Drawings Mr Chalker made from his sickbed in a camp hut reserved for
victims of dysentery show stick-like figures with protruding ribs lying on the
floor in a squalid, unfurnished room.
Another, entitled Two Working Men, Kanvu River Camp, shows similarly
emaciated, frail figures, one of them walking with the aid of a makeshift bamboo
cane.
In other pictures, Mr Chalker studies tropical ulcers and items of medical
equipment fashioned from army-issue water bottles and old motor tyres.
'Nightmare'
Mr Chalker said: "Unhappily, during one of my sessions in the dysentery hut
I was hiding some drawings in a section of bamboo when a Korean sentry suddenly
appeared."
The sentry "began the expected shouting and hitting, and made me tear the
drawings into very small pieces", Mr Chalker said.
"This was only a prelude to the real beating, and the next two days were a
nightmare.
"When at last it was all over...I found that two small drawings had escaped
detection under some rags."
After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Mr Chalker was attached to Australian
HQ in Bangkok, in Thailand, as a war artist, and completed additional work for
official war history and medical records.
-------------------------------------------------------------- Seized arms bound for Burmese
pirates
Bangkok Post, Sat 2 Mar 2002 A police taskforce traced a large cache of mines and war weapons seized in
Muang district on Thursday.
Songkran Petchnoy, Paknam police deputy superintendent, said the weapons
were found abandoned near Klong Kiew-Kho Lui.
Police believe they were destined for a gang of Burmese pirates based in
the Andaman sea off the coasts of Ranong and neighbouring Phangnga.
The gang, members of the Arakan ethnic minority, ran a fleet of speed boats
carrying heavy weapons.
The gang leader, identified as Kala or Tinsu, was thought to be a
go-between for the Sri Lankan terrorist group, the Liberation Tigers of the
Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Pol Lt-Col Songkran said the origin of the weapons was unknown. Checks by
bomb experts revealed they were made in China and did not come from the Thai
military arsenal.
He declined to comment on reports the Sri Lankan embassy had contacted
police about a possible connection between the weapons and LTTE.
-------------------------------------------------------------- Myanmar junta chief calls for
unity
YANGON, March 2 Kyodo - Myanmar
junta chief Sr. Gen. Than Shwe called Saturday for unity among Myanmar's peasant
population in working for a new constitution for the country.
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