[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

KHRG Report: Testimony Regarding Op



Subject: KHRG Report: Testimony Regarding Opium Production

Status: R

************************Posted by BurmaNet************************
  "Appropriate Information Technologies--Practical Strategies"
******************************************************************

Filename: feb1_93

    AN INDEPENDENT REPORT BY THE KAREN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP


________________________________________________________________

                BRIEF_INTERVIEWS_REGARDING_OPIUM

        Testimony_of_two_escaped_porters_from_Shan_State
________________________________________________________________

                        February 1, 1993

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The following information was given in independent and informal
interviews.  The two men are Shan from central Shan State, the
region of Burma which produces over half the world's opium and its
refined product, heroin.  They are villagers who were rounded up by
SLORC troops in late 1992 and brought several days by truck under
brutal conditions all the way south to southern Karenni (Kayah)
State, where they were then used by the SLORC as porters in their
Saw Hta offensive in northern Karen State.

These men come from a region where a large proportion of the
farmers are opium addicts, and as such they are aware of the
logistics of opium production and use in their area.  Their
information implicating the SLORC for direct involvement in the
drug trade raises serious questions about why the United Nations
International Drug Control Program (UNDCP) and the United States
Drug Enforcement Agency (USDEA) continue to give the SLORC money
for "drug eradication" in these areas, when every farmer who lives
there knows of the SLORC's involvement in profiting from narcotics.

The following is the direct translation of an interview with one of
the men conducted in Burmese:

Q:  Which part of Shan State do you come from, and how much opium
do people grow there?
A:  I live in southern Shan State.  Most people there grow opium in
their fields.
Q:  Do all of the farmers there use this opium?
A:  Most of them use it.  Some don't.  But in the hills, most do.
Q:  In your area, do most of them use it or sell it?
A:  They sell it.
Q:  To whom?
A:  To the black marketeers.
Q:  Who are the black marketeers?
A:  Most are Wa and Shan - and Chinese.
Q:  Are they from your area?
A:  Some are, but some are from Pin Long.
Q: What does the SLORC do to deal with this situation?  Don't they
do anything?
A:  The SLORC escorts the black marketeers.  Because they've
already paid a tax.
Q:  Who taxes the opium farmers?
A:  The Wa, and other groups at peace with the SLORC.
Q:  The taxes that the Wa take, do they give them to the SLORC or
keep it themselves?
A:  We don't see it, but they work together.
Q:  Do they come collecting together?
A:  They don't come together.  The Wa collect the taxes.
Q:  Do you think the SLORC ever collects the taxes?
A:  Maybe.  Because they're collaborating together.  The SLORC
don't dare show their faces, so they make the Wa do it.
Q:  How much tax per year do the farmers have to pay?
A:  There are many types of taxes.  Tea taxes, rice taxes, opium
taxes.  If you plant all of them, you have to pay all of them.  I
can't guess how much.
Q:  How do they tax the opium?
A:  One ball from every 10 viss of opium.
Q:  How do they take payment?  Cash or opium?
A:  They only take opium.
Q:  As far as you know, how do they use this opium?
A:  They give it to the black marketeers.
Q:  Is this the only channel?
A:  I don't know.  I only know they give it to the black market
people.
Q:  Did the SLORC bring any for you to use while you were porters?
A:  Yes.
Q:  So the SLORC brings opium on their operations.  How do they use
it?
A:  The senior officer [the term used was 'Bomuh', meaning a Major
or Colonel] keeps the opium in a steel trunk and gives it out pinch
by pinch - this much.
Q:  Did all the porters get it like you did?
A:  Yes.
Q:  Every one?
A:  Yes.  The officer passed it out.
Q:  Does the SLORC always give opium to the porters?
A:  For us, yes - in Shan State, it's the same.
Q:  Who controls the area where you live?  The Wa from Kokang, the
SLORC or the Shan?
A:  The SLORC.
Q:  Which SLORC Battalion or company controls your area?
A:  64 Battalion.
Q:  Do you know the names of any of the commanders?
A:  No.
Q:  Not even one?
A:  They keep changing their commanders all the time, so I don't
know.
Q:  Do you know the names of any of the people who come to collect
the taxes?
A:  No.
Q:  Are there any heroin factories there?
A:  Not in our area.  Only in Thailand.
Q:  Did you just hear that?
A:  Yes, I heard it.  That Khun Sa produces it.
Q:  Does the SLORC encourage people to produce heroin?
A:  It's too far away, so we don't know.
Q:  So you don't know how the Wa and the SLORC use the opium they
collect as tax?
A:  I don't know.
Q:  Do the Wa and Shan give the opium they collect to the SLORC?
A:  I don't know.  But they all work together.
_________________________________________________________________

The following account was given by another Shan porter:

I did field work in an opium field for two years, working for a
Chinese who grew opium [the name and home town of the owner were
given but are deliberately omitted from this report].  He was from
northern Shan State.  I'm not sure where he was born, but he could
speak Burmese.  There are many opium growers in the area.  Almost
all the field owners are Chinese, and the field workers are Shan
and other ethnic groups in the area.  The field owners only use
Thai Baht as currency.

The owner sent all his opium to the Thai border by horse. 
Sometimes the other field workers and I had to go along with the
horses.  I was sent three times last year.  Each time the Chinese
owner gave each of us an M16 automatic rifle, and we walked one and
a half days to the Thai border.  The owner went along.  When we got
there he took all the opium off the horses and laid it out.  Then
he talked with some people there, they gave us rice and other foods
which we put on the horses, and then we went back.  I never saw any
money, but the owner stayed behind and didn't come back with us.

While I was working at the opium field I often saw SLORC officers
and soldiers from 49 Regiment come and talk with the field owner. 
I was never close enough to listen, so I don't know what they
talked about.  Each time after talking for a while the SLORC men
left.  This went on for the whole 2 years that I worked in the
field.

When I came as a porter, the SLORC officers gave opium to the
porters.  I saw the officer keeping about a half kilogram of opium,
which I think they got from our home area.  Twice every day, the
officer said "Who are the opium addicts?  Put up your hands".  Then
he took opium on a stick and shared it out to the porters.  Then he
handed out headache pills to them and told them to mix it and take
it. [Note: this is normal practice when taking opium.]  After
taking the opium, the addicts looked very strong, and could climb
the mountains.

Note that while this was occurring, the same SLORC troops were only
giving out a handful of rice, once per day or once per two days, to
the same porters, and nothing to eat with it.  The porters were
starving, emaciated, sick and suffering from constant beatings.

The "opium tax" discussed above amounts to 10 percent of the entire
crop, local, domestic, and export, of opium in the entire Shan
State.  Opium and heroin from Shan State accounts for an estimated
60 percent of the entire supply on the streets of the world's
cities.  Since 1988, SLORC control over Shan State has greatly
increased, and opium and heroin production have simultaneously more
than doubled.  Perhaps it is time the world reviewed its policy of
providing the SLORC "drug eradication" money and applauding them
each time they ceremonially burn a few kilograms of heroin, and
began looking at what is really going on in Shan State.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Karen Human Rights Group
Box 22
Mae Sot, Tak 63110
Thailand

(Email for the KHRG sent to strider@xxxxxxxxxxx will be forwarded
to them)