Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia yesterday torched nearly US$1 billion worth of seized narcotics in a defiant show of force as police struggle to stem the rising flow of drugs in the region.
The burnings, to mark the UN’s International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, follow another year of record seizures of narcotics from the remote borderlands of Myanmar, Laos, southern China and northern Thailand.
Myanmar in particular remains one of the world’s great drug-producing nations, a dark legacy of decades of civil war in its frontier regions where troops and ethnic rebel forces have vied for control of the lucrative trade.
Photo: Reuters
Armed gangs churn out vast quantities of opium, heroin and cannabis and millions of caffeine-laced methamphetamine pills known as “yaba” which are then smuggled out across Southeast Asia.
An estimated US$385 million was burned yesterday in three official ceremonies around Myanmar, according to a senior police officer in the capital, Naypyidaw.
At the biggest bonfire in Yangon, huge clouds of smoke filled the sky as authorities set fire to stacks of opium, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine tablets worth almost US$230 million.
“We burned a record amount of drugs today ... because police have seized more in recent years,” drug enforcement officer Myo Kyi said.
On an industrial estate on the outskirts of Bangkok, Thai authorities incinerated about US$589 million worth of drugs, including 7,800kg of yaba pills and 1,185kg of crystal methamphetamine.
In Cambodia, officials burned 130kg of drugs estimated to be worth about US$4 million.
The huge seizures are often touted as proof these countries are making inroads into the vast regional drug trade, but law enforcement agents say they are just the tip of the iceberg as producers ramp up production to meet growing demand across Southeast Asia and increasingly in Bangladesh and India.
Unlike their Latin American counterparts, cartel leaders in the Golden Triangle are rarely ever arrested or killed.
The senior officer in Naypyidaw said almost all of the drugs burned at Myanmar’s official ceremonies originated in the eastern state of Shan in areas controlled by ethnic armed groups.
The kingpins are the United Wa State Army, a 25,000-strong militia known as Asia’s most heavily armed drug dealers who boast their own autonomous territories on the border with China and have close links with Beijing.
Despite their reputation, the Wa deny producing drugs and even staged their own burning session yesterday in the village of Ponpakyin.
Myanmar has also been struggling to stem a growing tide of drug addiction inside its borders.
Experts say yaba use has exploded in Myanmar as ethnic armed gangs switched from exporting all the pills abroad to increasingly targeting domestic users.
Buddhist monks and military officers were among 13,500 people prosecuted for drugs crimes last year, up 50 percent from the previous year, according to data seen by reporters.
Drug production has increased every year since 2006,” Yangon police chief Win Naing told crowds gathered for yesterday’s ceremony on the outskirts of the city.
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