Burma: Human Rights or Drugs

[strider@xxxxxxxxxxx]

/* Written 10:20 am  Jun 18, 1994 by DEBRA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx in igc:hrnet.asia-pac */
/* ---------- "Burma: Human Rights or Drugs" ---------- */
## author     : jherman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
## date       : 16.06.94

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[This article has been excerpted.]

    WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Asian countries are urging the
    United States to set aside its human rights concerns and
    resume anti-drug-trafficking cooperation with Burma's
    ruling junta, the top U.S. anti-drug official said
    Thursday.

    In remarks likely to fuel continuing debate in Congress
    and in the administration, Lee Brown, director of the
    White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said
    Burma and China were ``essential partners in any
    international effort to counter heroin production and
    trafficking.''

[...]

    As part of efforts to isolate Burma's junta in the late
    1980s, the United States suspended a multimillion-dollar
    anti-drug program that underwrote an opium eradication
    campaign. U.S. outlays for the program totalled $9.4
    million in 1987 and $5 million in 1988 before being cut
    off entirely.

    The junta, which calls itself the State Law and Order
    Restoration Council, has refused to recognize the 1990
    election victory of pro-democracy forces led by Aung San
    Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner in her fifth year
    of house arrest without charge or trial.

    Brown declined to spell out his own view on whether
    human rights concerns should be less important than
    fighting the drugs trade.

    Timothy Wirth, the State Department's undersecretary for
    global affairs, has already recommended a resumption of
    anti-drug cooperation with Rangoon, a change opposed by,
    among others, John Shattuck, assistant secretary of
    state for human rights and humanitarian affairs.

[...]

    In recent years, members of the Senate Foreign Relations
    Committee have shown greater concern over Burma's human
    rights violations than over its burgeoning heroin
    output.

    Richard Baum, a former congressional aide who now
    publishes Drug Policy Report, a newsletter on drug
    control, said he doubted lawmakers would suppport a
    resumption of any aid to Burma under present
    circumstances.

    ``The SLORC doesn't have to become a bunch of boy
    scouts, but until Aung San Suu Kyi is freed, Congress is
    not about to give the green light for drug aid for
    Burma,'' he said.

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    BANGKOK, Thailand (Reuter) - Thai anti-drug police said
    Friday they detained an eight-year-old girl after
    finding heroin hidden in her underpants.

    They decided to search the child while looking for her
    parents on a drug-related matter in Samut Prakan, 15
    miles south of Bangkok. Police said they found 14 small
    bottles filled with heroin.

    The child will be charged with being a heroin courier.
    It was likely the juvenile court would send her to a
    reform school, police said.