Military-ruled Myanmar's rebel ethnic groups are increasingly cashing in their illegal drugs hordes on expectations of a junta crackdown, a UN expert said Thursday.
Minority groups that feel under threat from central government are using drugs trafficking to sustain themselves and keep control of their territories, said Gary Lewis, a representative for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). "What we have seen is an increased movement of products across border," he said in Bangkok at the launch of a UNODC report on amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) and other drugs in East and Southeast Asia. The trafficking from Myanmar includes opium and morphine-based products as well as ATS, he said.
There has also been "an increased degree of cashing (in) of the products within Myanmar, in anticipation of exposure of those products through contacts with law enforcement and military counterparts," he said.
The new report said the "unsettled" political situation in Myanmar could result in the relocation of clandestine manufacturing sites across the border. Lewis said that the drugs were not just moving through Thailand, where increased law enforcement may have curbed direct trafficking, but also through other nearby countries such as Laos, Vietnam and India.
Myanmar's military regime has in recent months stepped up its decades-long campaign against minority groups because it wants them to come under its control ahead of elections planned for 2010. Analysts say that while in the past the junta often tacitly assented to ethnic minority involvement in the drugs trade, it is now using it as a pretext to put pressure on groups that do not want to join the Burmese security forces. The report said methamphetamine in particular has "rapidly become more prominent" in several countries.
More than 31 million methamphetamine pills were seized across the region in 2008, up by more than a quarter from 2007, according to the report. "What we have seen at a social level is the use of these drugs...to a significant degree to increase the mental and physical acuity of those who take them, so they can work longer hours and maintain a higher degree of concentration in their manual and intellectual work," he said.