New Delhi – The Burmese military junta has claimed that its drug eradication campaign has brought about a drastic decline in opium cultivation in the country. It has decreased from 140,000 hectares to 27,700 hectares within a decade.
Burma's Minister for Home Affairs and Chairman of the Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control, Maj-Gen Maung Oo, on Thursday said the drug eradication programme has effectively brought down cultivation of opium in Burma, regarded as the second largest producer after Afghanistan by the United Nation.
"Thanks to the drug elimination efforts, opium cultivation has dramatically decreased from 140,000 hectares to 27,700 hectares in a decade ending 2007 and won praise from the world," Maung Oo said during a commemorative function of 'International Day Against Drug', on Thursday.
While Burma's ruling junta claims that the Drug Elimination Programme, initiated in 1998 by the UN Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC), has yielded good result in bringing down the volume of opium cultivation in Burma, independent researchers said Burma has not really made progress in the over all drug production and consumption scenario.
Khunsai, an editor of the Thailand based Shan Herald Agency for News (S.H.A.N), who independently conducted research on drug production said Burma has not made any progress in the over all production of drugs and cultivation of opium poppy.
"Our research showed that while in a few areas, people have stopped cultivating opium poppy, these people have just shifted to other parts where the Drug Elimination Programme does not focus," Khunsai told Mizzima.
S.H.A.N has independently published several reports on the situation of poppy cultivation and drug production in Burma's Shan state, which is one of the major state's that produces and cultivates opium poppy.
Khunsai said, while the remarkable decrease in the number of people involved in cultivating poppy does not indicate the over all decline, it shows that a new system of monopolizing the cultivation has emerged in areas, which the Burmese junta has targeted.
According to him, the junta's failure is mainly because of the political instability and administrative corruption in the military.
While several villagers, who earn their living by cultivating poppy, have given up cultivation, another emerging threat is an increase in the clandestine production of Amphetamine and Methamphetamine pills.
"Lately, since 2005, there is a remarkable increase in the production of Yaba (Amphetamine and Methamphetamine)," said Khunsai, adding that the failure to provide efficient substitution for the livelihood of former cultivators has given rise to the increase in producing such pills.
Meanwhile, the Transnational Institute (TNI), a non-governmental research institute on drug policy, said the UNODC is rewriting history in its 2008 World Drug Report to hide its failure to curb increasing drug production and cultivation.
The world is not any closer to achieving the 10-year target set by the 1998 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs, instead global production of opium and cocaine has significantly increased over the last ten years, TNI said in a press statement on Thursday.
"There is overwhelming evidence that the current approach to drug control has failed," Martin Jelsma, coordinator of the TNI Drugs & Democracy Programme said in the statement.
"Instead of setting unrealistic targets, we need to introduce a more rational, pragmatic and humane approach to the drugs phenomenon," added Jelsma.
While acknowledging that there is useful information in the World Drug Report, TNI's coordinator said, "Drug control policies should be based on evidence, fully respect human rights and take a harm reduction approach."
"Otherwise we will see another ten years of failure." Jelsma added.
