Medan's flourishing drug trade blamed on poor law enforcement
Medan's flourishing drug trade blamed on poor law enforcement
Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan
Poor law enforcement has allowed the sale of illegal narcotics
to flourish in Medan, North Sumatra, causing a serious concerns
for local residents, according to a prominent drugs analyst.
Kamaluddin Lubis, a founder of the Anti-Narcotics Movement
(GAN), told The Jakarta Post on Monday that bad law enforcement
was apparent in the performance of police, prosecutors and
judges, who routinely doled out lenient punishments for drug-
related crimes.
"That's why Medan has recently become a trading hub for
drugs," he said.
Medan Police Precinct Chief, Sr. Cmr. Badrodin Haiti conceded
that the drugs trade in Medan had increased by up to 60 percent
as of March 2002. "It continues to rise every year," he said.
The increased trading volume means that Medan now not only
gets drugs from Aceh, but from other places, too. Heavy trading
in Medan, for instance, has encouraged the cultivation of drugs
in nearby areas.
In addition, it has also sharply increased the production of
ecstasy.
"There is an abundant production of ecstasy and marijuana in
Medan. The marijuana is planted in Sibolangit among other
places," he told The Jakarta Post, without elaboration.
However, he said that drugs sales for the past year had a
street value of more than Rp 36 billion.
Kamaluddin said that GAN investigations had often found that
police officials freed drug traffickers upon arrest, despite
ample evidence of crimes that could easily warrant a trial -- if
not a conviction.
In the cases in which the suspects did make it to court, once
police submitted their dossiers, prosecutors demanded only
lenient punishments.
"Once we wrote a letter to the national police complaining of
an incident in which a man named T. Tampubolon was freed -- even
though it was clear that he was involved in the narcotics trade.
Only then did the police re-arrest him, and return him to jail,"
he said.
But Badrodin denied that his subordinates protected the
criminals. "What we're doing now is conducting an intensive
crackdown on drug-related crimes," he said.
North Sumatra's Regional Police Chief Insp. Gen. Ansyad Mbai
led a ceremony recently in which 1.5 tons of marijuana were
burned. The marijuana had been confiscated from 15 drug dealers
during recent drug-related arrests.
Badrodin said that, of the 600 criminals currently in the
custody of Medan police, some 300 were in custody on drug-related
charges -- including cases involving two military officers, and
police official.
The executive director of Anti-Narcotics Information Center in
North Sumatra, Zulkarnaen Nasution, said that throughout last
year, the number of people involved in drug-dealing exceeded
15,900.
Up to 90 percent of drug users, he added, were people under 27
years old.