From: [c--l--r] at [pinyon.libre.com] (Don Collier) Newsgroups: alt.drugs Subject: Burma Heroin News 1 of 3 Date: 22 Jun 1994 18:56:30 -0700 From: [s t rider] at [igc.apc.org] Newsgroups: soc.culture.burma From: /*10:20 am Jun 18, 1994 by [D--B--A] at [OLN.comlink.apc.org] in igc:hrnet.asia-pac */ /* ---------- "Burma: Human Rights or Drugs" ---------- */ ## author : [j--r--n] at [uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu] ## date : 16.06.94 ------------------------------------------------------------- [This article has been excerpted.] WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Asian countries are urging the United States to set aside its human rights concerns and resume anti-drug-trafficking cooperation with Burma's ruling junta, the top U.S. anti-drug official said Thursday. In remarks likely to fuel continuing debate in Congress and in the administration, Lee Brown, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Burma and China were ``essential partners in any international effort to counter heroin production and trafficking.'' [...] As part of efforts to isolate Burma's junta in the late 1980s, the United States suspended a multimillion-dollar anti-drug program that underwrote an opium eradication campaign. U.S. outlays for the program totalled $9.4 million in 1987 and $5 million in 1988 before being cut off entirely. The junta, which calls itself the State Law and Order Restoration Council, has refused to recognize the 1990 election victory of pro-democracy forces led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner in her fifth year of house arrest without charge or trial. Brown declined to spell out his own view on whether human rights concerns should be less important than fighting the drugs trade. Timothy Wirth, the State Department's undersecretary for global affairs, has already recommended a resumption of anti-drug cooperation with Rangoon, a change opposed by, among others, John Shattuck, assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs. [...] In recent years, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have shown greater concern over Burma's human rights violations than over its burgeoning heroin output. Richard Baum, a former congressional aide who now publishes Drug Policy Report, a newsletter on drug control, said he doubted lawmakers would suppport a resumption of any aid to Burma under present circumstances. ``The SLORC doesn't have to become a bunch of boy scouts, but until Aung San Suu Kyi is freed, Congress is not about to give the green light for drug aid for Burma,'' he said. -------------------------------------------------------------- BANGKOK, Thailand (Reuter) - Thai anti-drug police said Friday they detained an eight-year-old girl after finding heroin hidden in her underpants. They decided to search the child while looking for her parents on a drug-related matter in Samut Prakan, 15 miles south of Bangkok. Police said they found 14 small bottles filled with heroin. The child will be charged with being a heroin courier. It was likely the juvenile court would send her to a reform school, police said.