Burma, China launch joint drugs crackdown

Myo Gyi
Mizzima News: 27July, 2006 

Burma and China have launched a new joint operation to crackdown on drug production and trafficking across the border between China and Kachin State.

Burma’s Army Security Affairs joined a Chinese drug enforcement team led by police commissioner of Long Chuan district in Yunnan province to launch the initiative.

A source in Army Security Affairs said that while Burmese businessmen arrested during the crackdown will be arrested and detained in the Loije police station, Chinese nationals will be handed over to Chinese authorities.

The operation runs along the Zhang Peng-Loije-Bhamo trade route, which also falls under the control of the Kachin Independence Army’s 3rd brigade—an armed ethnic group that has a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese government.

According to local residents, Burma and China have along history of conducting annual joint operations along their mutual border, particularly in the townships of Mansi and Moe Mauk in Kachin State and in Zhang Peng in China.

But residents say drug dealers are still operating in the area.

“These days the drugs smuggled in to China are not in the form of powder but in solid plates. It is about half an inch think and about six inches in length and four inches in width. It weights about 1 hong (A Chinese measurement equivalent to a pound),” a resident told Mizzima.

A small medicine bottle of heroin is reported to cost about 12,000 kyat (about US $10) in Burma while amphetamine tablets cost between 800 and 1000 kyat.