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SCMP-Junta 'in league with drug bar



South China Morning Post
Saturday  October 3  1998

Junta 'in league with drug barons' 

WILLIAM BARNES 
The SAIN report blames the Burmese military regime for the wave of heroin
addiction and the associated outbreak of HIV in Burma and its neighbours.

Few observers go so far as to claim that the military junta actively
encourages the heroin trade, but the cash-strapped regime appears happy to
milk profits from its huge narcotics industry.

Domestic heroin use became rampant only after the regime signed
business-as-usual ceasefire deals with most of the main ethnic drug
trafficking groups a decade ago, the report argues.

It claims that ethnic traffickers have used official passes to move heroin
to the borders.

The granting of security passes, heroin refineries situated close to
Burmese army regiments, and drug barons in joint ventures with Rangoon show
the extent of the regime's links with the drug trade, the report says.

Estimates by outside experts that 500,000 Burmese are HIV positive - about
double the official figures - seem "reasonable".

The shadowy commercial sex industry appears to have expanded rapidly.

Most injecting heroin users are young men. Only two per cent of sexually
active Burmese adults use condoms.

An additional tragedy is the two-way spread of HIV between Burma and
Thailand: up to a third of women in northern Thai brothels are from the
Shan state. "Perhaps 80 per cent of them will acquire HIV," says SAIN.

The regime has been slow to respond: in 1996 only 40 per cent of the
648,000 condoms donated by agencies were distributed.

Thailand, by contrast, distributed 60 million condoms that year.