Burma’s ruling junta announced on Monday that it burned nearly half a billion dollars worth of narcotics, while admitting its inability to stem the rise in drug production and trafficking in the country.
Piles of heroin, cannabis, methamphetamine and opium have been set alight in Yangon, with flames the size of a man, AFP journalists have reported, in an annual operation marking the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.
State television also broadcast images of burnings elsewhere in the country. In total, the equivalent of $446 million went up in smoke, according to military junta officials.
“Even though countless drug addicts, producers, traffickers and cartels have been arrested and prosecuted, drug production and trafficking have not diminished at all,” the chief of the police said in a rare admission of helplessness. fight against drugs, Soe Htut, to the official newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar.
The “Golden Triangle” border region between Burma, Laos and Thailand has long been a hotbed for the production and trafficking of illicit drugs, particularly methamphetamine and opium.
This region includes Shan State, the first source of methamphetamine in Southeast Asia according to the United Nations, which is home to a mosaic of rebel ethnic groups and militias allied to the army.
The military, which ousted an elected government and took power in 2021, has no intention of shutting down the lucrative trade, analysts say.
The military are “in fact the ultimate protection cartel for this trade, and have been for many years,” independent expert David Mathieson told AFP.
The United Nations reported record seizures of 23 tons of methamphetamine last year in Burma. Wholesale and retail methamphetamine prices across Southeast Asia are falling or even hit record lows, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
“The most powerful regional trafficking networks are able to operate with a high degree of certainty that they cannot and will not be stopped,” says UNODC.
Poppy production also increased dramatically after the coup, UNODC said in January, as political and economic unrest prompted farmers to switch to the crop.
According to the United Nations, opium poppy cultivation in Burma today covers just over 40,000 hectares, or about half the size of New York City (United States).
Authorities in Myanmar’s neighboring country, Thailand, also said they had destroyed 32 tons of drugs, mostly methamphetamine, worth around $607 million.
26/06/2023 12:17:02 – Rangoun (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
