DJAKARTA/BANGKOK (Reuters) – Instability in Burma since a military coup a year ago has caused drug trafficking in the country and across Southeast Asia to rise at a rapid pace. that nothing seems to have to slow down, declared Tuesday a senior official of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
At least 90 million methamphetamine tablets and 4.4 tons of crystal meth were seized last month, most of them coming from a production area in Myanmar’s Shan state, according to the UN agency.
“Methamphetamine production increased last year in Burma from already extreme levels and there are no signs that it will slow down,” said Jeremy Douglas, UNODC representative for Southeast Asia.
“Drugs and conflict remain inseparable in Burma, one feeding the other,” he added. “Chaos and instability work in favor of traffickers.”
Faced with the shortages that have prevailed since the putsch in February 2021, farmers in Shan State will probably return, for lack of alternative options, to growing opium in the medium or long term, predicted Jeremy Douglas.
Drug production in the “golden triangle”, an area covering northern Burma, part of Laos and part of Thailand, is carried out by criminal gangs associated with armed groups from ethnic minorities.
For its part, the ruling military junta “operates like a criminal enterprise, committing murder, torture, kidnapping, forced displacement, while looting income and seizing property belonging by right to the Burmese people”, accuses in a press release the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Burma, Tom Andrews.
According to the UN Human Rights Office, 11,787 people have been illegally detained in Burma since the coup, of whom 8,792 are still in detention.
A call for a “silent strike” was launched Tuesday in the country to mark the anniversary of the seizure of power by the military.
(Report Tom Allard in Jakarta, Panu Wongcha-um in Bangkok, with Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse, edited by Blandine Hénault)