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Editorial;Shameful action by Interp



Subject: Editorial;Shameful action by Interpol 



February 27, 1999 

Editorial

Shameful action by Interpol

An international drugs conference has been held this week in Rangoon, with 65
delegates from 28 countries attending the closed-door meeting. Participants
included Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland and Asean states, but the
United States and most European nations stayed away.

Normally such conferences are low-key, low-controversy affairs, but the
decision by organisers Interpol to hold the meeting in Burma has generated
plenty of publicity, although not of a kind the international police
organisation desires.

The decision on the venue has to be viewed as nothing short of astonishing.

Burma is not quite an international pariah of the level of Libya or Iraq, but
many nations prefer to deal with the ruling junta at arm's length, making at
least token efforts to protest at the lack of human rights, the abuse of
ethnic
minorities and the suppression of the results of free and fair elections by
the
military rulers.

That was one of the reasons the US and Europe stayed away this week.
And that's without even considering the fact that the nation, and the
military,
are known to be heavily involved in the drug trade themselves.

Burma's generals have known links to the drug trade and they have protected
well-known heroin traffickers like Khun Sa and Lo Hsing-han. Khun Sa is
believed to live in Rangoon under government protection and Lo Hsing-han is
believed to be involved in business in Burma.

Responding to these charges, Interpol officials this week were reduced to
claiming that having Khun Sa in Rangoon as an honoured guest was at least
keeping him out of the drug trade in the north, and to suggesting that since
the government was dealing with an insurgency, it sometimes has to make pacts
with the "devil".

Whatever the circumstances, however, even ignoring the issues of the
government's illegitimacy, it is surely not up to the organisation charged
with
policing the world to condone pacts with key criminals in the trade.
Even other members of the international anti-drug fraternity have been
moved to
protest. Christian Kornevall, the East Asia and Pacific representatives of the
Un International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) was outspoken this week in
stating Burma is not doing enough to tackle drugs, and was refusing to
consider
UN proposals to speed up alternative development programmes for
opium-producing
areas. He said the UNDCP would like to see a great deal more resources
directed
towards curbing and preventing the production of opium.

International organisations such as Interpol are often accused of being too
cautious and conservative, but this week's conference showed why such caution
is often justified. Interpol took a controversial. and ill-considered step and
it has been left weakened and diminished in the eyes of many.
Burma, in contrast, has benefitted from the not inconsiderable foreign
exchange
the conference no doubt drew, and from the stamp of legitimacy its cosmetic
anti-drug efforts have attained. Pictures of its key officials laughing and
joking with junta generals, of its chief benevolently blessing a meaningless
drug-burning ceremony, are going to haunt the organisation, and benefit
Burma's
rulers, for a long time to come.

The gamekeeper-Interpol-has lost the plot on the issue of Burma. The drug
producers and their allies, that is the junta, can only be enjoying this
week's
undeserved public relations coup.
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© Copyright The Post Publishing Public Co., Ltd. 1999
Last Modified: Sat, Feb 27, 1999
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