Info

Where did all the plagarised information go to?

Myanmar - "Lords of Addiction"

Myanmar's rulers say they are trying to stop the heroin trade. In fact, they are hooked on its revenues. By Brian Eads.

Lung Paw fled his village in northern Myanmar in March 2001, slinging a sack of rice and some bedrolls over his broad shoulders. With his pregnant wife and two young children, the 38-year-old farmer trekked east towards Thailand. What the future held for his family he did not know. He prayed it would be better than what they were running from. Life was seldom easy in Shan State, but things began turning dramatically for the worse three years ago---when the Burmese army ordered Paw and the other heads of households to cultivate nearly one haectare of poium poppy each.

"The army took 50% of the harvest in tax and bought the other 50% for a pittance," Paw said in a recent interview conduted at a Thai refugee settlement cam. "It was slave labour" Other Shan refugees at the camp told Reader's Digest similar stories.

Narcotics were soon being traded in village markets openly, often by soldiers who used them like currency. "My younger brother was hooked on methamphetamines," Paw said. "They paid him four pills for a chicken."

Paw was sometimes forced to haul supplies along forest tracks without pay. "When I was tired and hungry they gave me opium to eat," he said.

Recently, trucks with uniformed men and thier families began arriving in his district. They were Wa, a tribal minority from the country's northeast. The Wa people planted poppes as well.

In February 2000 the Shan villagers were told to join the militia or forfeit thier land to the Wa immigrants. Paw was ordered to sign a reciept for an AK-47 assault rifle and 100 rounds of ammunition.

"If I lost the weapon or ran away with it, all my relatives would be killed," Paw said. It was the last straw. A few days later, he led hi family into the jungle.

Any comments? Send them here! And do be courteous!