Pubdate: Fri, 24 Dec 2004
Source: International Herald-Tribune (International)
Copyright: International Herald Tribune 2004
Contact:  http://www.iht.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/212
Author: Howard W. French, The New York Times
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

HEROIN GRIPS A POOR CORNER OF CHINA

BANLAO, China - The road to this town, treacherous and narrow, ends
after kilometers of knee-deep mud on a mountain path that looks down
upon the clouds. It was market day, and the gently sloping main street
was so choked with people and goods changing hands that for all the
tattered clothes and sun-creased faces, the place radiated a measure
of prosperity.

The magic of the larger market that has lifted so much of China out of
poverty has bypassed most of this region, where peasants live as they
have for generations, carrying firewood on their backs and farming the
steep, terraced slopes by hand. But Banlao, otherwise lost in the
shadows of tall mountains, where Myanmar, formerly Burma, looms
visible in the distance, has another source of wealth.

The authorities say that 10 percent of China's illegal narcotics
traffic enters through the surrounding Lancang Prefecture and that 85
percent of the arrests in this part of Yunnan Province are made in
this one hamlet.

During a simple lunch of noodles at a sidewalk restaurant, a local man
was asked where to look for signs of the illicit wealth. Barely
interrupting his meal, he gestured with his head to a storefront
across the street. With its slatted doors, big glass windows and new
tile roof, it indeed stood out, with the clean look of a Japanese
sushi restaurant.

"That was a restaurant built by a drug dealer," the man announced
casually. "He was arrested, then executed."

As he spoke, he lifted his hand to his head, mimicking a pistol, and
pulled the trigger. If what the man was saying was true, it would be a
typical fate.

Local residents say that perhaps 70 percent of the shops on the single
business street were built by people who made their money in the
heroin trade and that half of those arrested have been executed.

Heroin has a particularly repugnant resonance for the Chinese
government, tied up so deeply as it is with the country's subjugation
at the hands of Western powers in the 19th century, when British
trading companies promoted opium addiction among Chinese as a way, in
part, of balancing their trade.

Drug use was almost eradicated under Communist rule but returned after
the easing of border controls and social constraints in the 1980s.
Since then, year after year of strenuous campaigns have done little to
stem the flow of narcotics across the border from Myanmar and Laos.

The poverty here is one cause. The nearest junior high school is still
several kilometers away, on a road so bad that only tractors can
navigate it. Electricity arrived five years ago, and mobile phone
service came just last year.

Some here say 1 million yuan, or about $120,000, is not an uncommon
payback for those who are willing to hike the 30 kilometers or so into
Myanmar to sneak the drug back into China, where a portion will be
sold by crime syndicates for domestic use and the bulk of it exported.

"The police have been fighting this problem intensively since the
1980s, but people are so poor here there's no difference between being
alive or dead," said Mo Zaigang, a 36-year-old a peasant who together
with friends spoke with a stranger in the backyard of a tumbledown,
barrackslike home, where peas dried on the ground in the sun.

"The only way is going out," he said, using the common shorthand for
seeking one's fortune in the drug trade.

As his friends nodded in assent, Mo added, matter-of-factly: "I am
sure you can make a lot of money if you're not caught. Others get
nothing, though, and just lose their lives."

With that, the men's conversation shifted to the ebb and flow of
misery here, from the severest times they could remember, before the
reforms begun 25 years ago, when collective farming was still in force.

One man said people ate leaves off trees to survive.

As China's economic liberation gathered speed in the 1980s and the
borders opened a bit here, many people became migrant workers on poppy
farms in Myanmar, getting their first taste of the heroin trade. Then
came outright trafficking, followed by severe crackdowns, with big
police sweeps, compulsory re-education programs and frequent executions.

But the enforcement efforts have hardly dented the drug trade because,
many here say, poverty is not the only cause. Official corruption,
they say, a plague that spares little in China, is also a factor.

Tales abound of how relatives of trafficking suspects have offered
large sums of money to the police, only to have the cash disappear and
their relatives sent away for imprisonment or execution. In China
people can be executed for possession of as little as 50 grams of
heroin, less than 2 ounces.

Whether true or not, other commonly heard stories are more sinister
still, involving rumored collusion between Burmese drug lords and the
Chinese police.

"People buy the drugs from a boss in Burma, and the boss informs on
them to the police," said Mo Shuli, a resident in another part of the
town whose nephew was recently arrested, having been found with a
friend in possession of over 1,000 grams.

"The boss takes the money, and the police here get to boast of another
success."

Mo, whose wife cut and diced sections of heart of palm to feed to a
hog that grunted impatiently in its pen nearby, made no attempt to
declare his nephew's innocence.

"The boy needed money, and nobody warned him in time," he said. "He is
locked up now and has left behind his little daughter. I am sure he is
filled with regret."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin