generalspeaking

Going Forward With God

"When I first assumed this post, I said to my bosses, 'We need to take action to stop drugs. I was told, quite flatly, 'Mind your own business."
"Half the population of 8,00 (village of Nampakta, Myanmar) uses. It's not just opium or heroin anymore, but methamphetamines."
Senior government official, Nampatka

In this Jan 28 photo, Daw Li weeps before the graves of her two oldest sons, both victims of heroin overdoses, at Nampatka village cemetery, northeastern Shan State, Myanmar. In this village, roughly half the population uses heroin and opium. Residents once hoped new political and economic reforms sweeping their country would bring change to the wild hinterlands. Instead, many say their lives have only gotten worse at local authorities’ complicity and neglect

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that Myanmar (formerly Burma) produced 790 tonnes of opium last year representing a 26% increase over the year before; the highest figure recorded in a ten-year period. Drug eradication efforts plunged. According to President Thein Sein's spokesperson, Ye Htut, the decrease represents efforts to forge peace with ethnic rebel insurgents which control the majority of poppy growing territory.

Myanmar, until 2003, represented the world's largest producer of opium. Millions was spent on poppy eradication and drug syndicates focused on manufacturing methamphetamines. And then, poppy production began picking up again. The drug trade and the addiction that accompanies it, is running wild along the frontier of Myanmar, in its opium-producting regions. Since the country turned from a military junta to a civilian government three years ago, a breakdown of law and order has emerged.

In this Jan 28, 2014 photo, addicts are surrounded by discarded dirty needles and syringes at a cemetery in Nampatka village, northeastern Shan State, Myanmar. Every morning, more than 100 heroin and opium addicts descend on the graveyard to get high. Some junkies lean on white tombstones, tossing dirty needles and syringes into the dry, golden grass. Others squat on the ground, sucking from crude pipes fashioned from plastic water bottles. (AP

 , said Daw Li, one resident of the village of Nampakta, standing at the cemetery beside the graves of her two oldest sons who died of heroin overdoses. Everywhere around her junkies leaned on tombstones shooting up. They toss their dirty needles carelessly around them. They'll return to shoot up again before long, or to suck the crude pipes made out of plastic water bottles.

In this Jan 27 photo, a villager walks in a flourishing poppy field at Nampatka village, Northern Shan State, Myanmar.

"Everyone used to  hide in their houses. They'd be secretive", she said. "Now the dealers deal, the junkies shoot up. They couldn't care less if someone is watching. Why isn't anyone trying to stop this?"

In this Jan 28, 2014 photo, heroin and opium addicts and drug dealers gather at a road adjoining the cemetery to shoot up and draw at pipes at Nampatka village, northeastern Shan State, Myanmar.

Militias known as Pyi Thu Sit, aligned with the government, control the two states representing the country's biggest opium producers. They force farmers to grow poppies, they lend them the funding to pay for seeds, they protect the fields from eradication and make certain that buyers collect the opium, getting it to market while they collect fees every step of the process. In exchange for not noticing any of this soldiers and police get a cut themselves.

A former narcotics officer of the police force became a drug addict through his line of work: "Whenever we were trying to get to the drug dealers, we had to pretend we were drug addicts to make sure they didn't recognize us as police", he explained from The Light of the World Rehabilitation Centre, a Baptist facility where the 32-year-old Naw San checked in three days earlier with his wife, another addict, and their two-year-old daughter.

"My younger brother died already because of drugs and my other brother barely seems human anymore. I am the only one left for my mother to give her hope", he said. "I hope I will go forward with God and I will serve him. I pray for that."

"There is nothing I can say except that it makes me so sad, and angry" says one mother who hides in neighbours' homes, concerned that her sons might attack her if she refuses to give them money. "I expected my children to be great", she cried. She is angry "...at the drug dealers, at their friends, at myself, but also, of course, at authorities who aren't doing a thing to stop it.

"Now whenever I see young addicts on the streets, all I can say is, 'Please, don't use drugs anymore. Look at me, an old lady who lost two sons. Your parents will also feel so sad, just like me."

Labels: Drugs, Health, Human Relations, Myanmar

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, March 19, 2014