Pubdate: Sun, 10 May 1998 Source: Sunday Times (UK) Contact: Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, Rangoon BURMESE JUNTA FORCES FARMERS TO GROW OPIUM THE military government of Burma, the world's biggest producer of opium, has driven thousands of villagers from their homes in a programme to transform rice fields into poppy plantations, despite receiving millions of pounds a year from the United Nations to combat drugs. An investigation by The Sunday Times and human rights groups has established that the junta is secretly expanding the number of opium farms in designated "drug-control areas". The regime has used video footage which appears to show poppy fields being destroyed to support applications for UN aid. But interviews with farmers, soldiers and former civil servants have confirmed that the military presides over a huge network of opium-producing villages in regions officially said to be drug-free. Last January 5,000 people were evicted from one village alone - Ngape, in the Arakan Yoma mountain range in central Burma. The government claimed they had been ordered out for refusing to destroy poppy crops. However, a farmer who sought refuge on Burma's border with India said: "We had never grown opium before. The soldiers said we had to plant poppies or lose our land." Opium farmers were brought in from other parts of the country, according to a 34-year-old woman from Ngape who left her home and possessions behind. "This was not a drug clearance scheme - the army hijacked our land to grow drugs," she said. Aid workers admit that restrictions on their movements render them powerless to make checks. "There is no independent monitoring," said a source at the UN drug control programme, which will spend £4m in Burma in the next year. Under the totalitarian rule of the State Peace and Development Council, Burma has become a narco-dictatorship. According to officials in Washington, Burma produces 250 tonnes of opium a year, more than twice as much as Afghanistan, the second-largest manufacturer. Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, says in a forthcoming report by the South Asian Information Network, a British human rights group: "The failure of the regime to address this issue, the production of heroin - indeed, their apparent willingness to abet and profit from the drug trade - deserves the strongest condemnation." The victims of Burma's burgeoning narco-economy can be seen in bamboo huts in many outlying areas, where addiction to opium is widespread. Pang Sak, in the northern Kachin state, has become known as the "village of the widows" following hundreds of deaths from overdoses. Doctors claim there are "drug addicts in every house here". Among those who died after being forced by the military to cultivate opium poppies instead of rice was the father of Aung Than, a seven-year-old boy who now uses an opium pipe himself. "The smoke makes my hunger go away," he said. Next door, the women of the Nhkum family are mourning three sons, aged 13, 17 and 21, all of whom died from overdoses of heroin. The poppies are everywhere. In Chin state, northwestern Burma, which the government has proclaimed free from opium production, retired police officers said poppy fields were plentiful. The army has set aside more than 15 acres of land around some villages to grow the crop. Each grower is obliged to pay an annual licence fee of about £25 to the Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control, a government department funded by the UN, and £13 to the police. Every cultivated acre yields 6kg of opium paste, which is sold for £220. Ten villages can yield enough opium to produce 80kg of pure heroin in refineries - worth £15m on Britain's streets. Farmers and former couriers say six new refineries to turn raw opium into heroin have sprung up along the Chindwin river - all reportedly guarded by Burmese army battalions. One former army officer said his superior had recently taken 35kg of heroin in his car and sold it for £500,000 on the Indian frontier. Myo Min, a border trader, told Images Asia, a human rights group based in Thailand, that he had seen many military officials transporting drugs. "Army officers and soldiers participate in the drug trade. I saw high-ranking military personnel buying and carrying opium and heroin. I have never seen them arrested." Other traders and drivers on the border of Burma and India said they had been issued with military passes signed by Khin Nyunt, one of the most powerful men in the junta. On the Thai-Burma border, a checkpoint guard in eastern Shan state said he had stopped a trailer loaded with heroin and had been presented with a pass signed by Khin Nyunt. He telephoned the general's office in Rangoon and was told to let the trailer pass as the drugs were being transported to a destruction centre. The load was never seen again. - ---