Myanmar claims war on drugs but protects barons
Myanmar claims war on drugs but protects barons
By John Sweeney
RANGOON: It was like the opening scene of the Hollywood film Traffic: Jeeps with smoked glass windscreens, laden with heavily armed soldiers, zoomed through the Myanmarese rain forest, protecting a very important person.
The dignitary was not the military junta's anti-drugs tsar but someone much more powerful -- Myanmar's godfather of heroin, Lo Hsing Han.
An investigation by The Observer and BBC Radio reveals the multi-million-pound empire of Lo, the protection he receives from the Myanmarese junta -- which proclaims it is cracking down on heroin -- and his money-laundering operation in Singapore.
Lo and his American-educated son, Steven Law, also known as Htun Myint Naing, come and go freely between the island state and Myanmar, running their Asia World combine -- an upmarket front for one of the world's biggest heroin rackets.
And business is about to get even better. The decision that opium farming in Afghanistan is "unIslamic" has led to a cut in opium growing from 200,000 acres in the two key provinces to just 25. That means "China White" heroin from Myanmar will move into the gap made by the drop in supply of "Afghan Brown".
The bad news is that "China White" is much more likely to be injected than "chased" (smoked), worsening the public health risk of AIDS and hepatitis.
The Myanmarese regime, a pariah in the West, trumpets a tough anti-drugs policy. The reality behind the pretense is far uglier.
Lo's protectors, the Myanmarese generals who run the State Peace and Development Council (popularly known by its former title, SLORC), play very rough with anyone who gets in the way of Heroin Inc.
When Saw Lu, a prince of the Wa people opposed to the heroin trade, informed the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration about the drug trafficking activities of a regional army intelligence chief, Maj. Than Aye, word got back to the junta.
According to a report of the Administration, Saw Lu was held upside down for 56 days with an electric lead attached to his penis. His torturers poured urine on his face; he was beaten with chains; his captors tormented him by throwing him down next to an empty, freshly dug grave.
Saw Lu's life was spared. Others have not been so lucky. The heroin shipment Saw Lu reported to the DEA was destined for Lo. Maj. Than Aye supervised the torture. For his diligence he was promoted to a high position in SLOCR.
Lo, who has been identified as a narco-terrorist by the U.S. State Department and spent time on death row in Yangoon in the 1970s, before he bought his liberty, lives in lavish style in two homes, one in the Salween Village and the other in the smartest area in Yangoon close to the 16th tee of the city golf course.
The Observer/BBC team took up golf for the day to establish his precise address: 20-23 Masoeyein Kyang Street, Mayangone, Yangoon. The house is all but shielded from view by a high encircling wall and a forbidding steel gate.
Lo's infamous brand of "China White" heroin is industrially produced in the Mong Hom-Mong Ya valley on the Chinese border, opposite Mangshi. His operational headquarters is the Salween Village near Nampawng, south of the town of Lashio, a base for farmers, chemists and gunmen, serviced by local prostitutes and burlesque dancers from Ukraine.
Lo has made so many millions from heroin that he built and runs Yangoon's main port. Two years ago Australian police seized a ship carrying almost half a ton of heroin originating in Myanmar -- a huge find, enough to give every man, woman and child in Australia a hit of heroin. The street price of heroin in Sydney did not drop a cent.
The plainest evidence of the closeness between SLORC and Lo's heroin empire emerged at the 1995 wedding of his son, Steven Law, to Singaporean businesswoman Cecilia Ng.
Guest of honor was Hotels and Tourism Minister Lt. Gen. Kyaw Ba, accompanied by three other SLORC generals and four Cabinet Ministers.
Law is the managing director of Asia World Company Limited. Started in 1992, it reports its "authorized capital" to be about US$40 million. It has put an estimated $200 million into construction projects around Yangoon. Asia World is running a joint venture with SLORC, building and running the main new port in Yangoon, which handles 90 percent of Myanmar's exports.
Law is not such an honored guest in the United States. He has been declined a visa, due to "suspicion of involvement in narcotics trafficking", according to a State Department official.
The Asia World racket also runs a supermarket chain, Myanmar's biggest bus company -- good cover to ship the product -- and a plastic bag factory. To make plastic bags, Lo imports large quantities of acetic anhydride. The other use of acetic anhydride is the manufacture of heroin.
The millions from Lo's heroin racket are reportedly laundered in Singapore from a plush suite of offices on the 10th floor of Shenton House, an office block on Shenton Way, in the heart of Singapore's business district.
The Singapore company registry lists two companies run by Law, neither of which is called Asia World. But the giveaway is a large display sign in the Shenton House front office, depicting a globe with the letters A and W.
Law was not there when we visited; staff said he was out of the country.
In the past 10 years Singapore has executed at least 100 drug traffickers for possession of small amounts of heroin, according to Amnesty International. But the island state lets off at least one Mr Big, scot-free.
In the heroin addict ward in Bangkok's biggest hospital, one of the victims of the Myanmarese heroin barons lay on a bed, his skin stretched like paper over his bones, a hideous fungal infection creeping over his face, suggesting to the doctor that he was suffering from AIDS.
You can see heroin addicts like him in every major city in the world. Different faces, same dead eyes.
-- Observer News Service