May 2, 2017
YANGON: Two military
officers and two other men have been arrested in Myanmar's restive Rakhine
State with hundreds of thousands of meth tablets in their car, police sources
said Tuesday (May 1).
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| In this photo taken on October 15, 2016, an armed Myanmar border guard patrols the border fence along the river dividing Myanmar and Bangladesh located in Maungdaw, Rakhine State following attacks that killed nine border police. (Photo: AFP / YE AUNG THU) |
Experts say growing
demand for methamphetamines in neighbouring Bangladesh is driving a surge in
drug trafficking through the volatile border region, where the army has carried
out a bloody military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims.
A local border guard
police officer said the four men were arrested at a checkpoint while travelling
from Rakhine's Butheedaung Township to Maungdaw.
"A major and
his fellow soldier and two Rakhines were arrested with stimulant tablets by a
combined team on Monday morning," he told AFP on the condition of
anonymity.
"The military
officer and soldier will be dealt with according to the military's rules and
regulations, so we have already transferred the two to the local military
command."
He estimated the
pills had a street value of around 880 million kyat (US$650,000).
Police major Kyaw
Mya Win in Maungdaw town confirmed the arrests, but declined to say who was
involved.
"Border guard
police seized 440,000 stimulant tablets Monday morning from a vehicle that was
travelling from Butheedaung to Maungdaw," he told AFP.
Myanmar is one of
the largest drug-producers in the world, churning out vast quantities of opium,
cannabis and millions of caffeine-laced methamphetamine pills known as
"yaba".
Last year police
confiscated a record 98 million of the tablets, nearly double the 50 million
seized in 2015. Drug prosecutions also jumped by around 50 per cent to 13,500.
Most pills are made
by armed ethnic groups along Myanmar's eastern border with China and then
exported across Southeast Asia, with clients running the gamut from truck
drivers to wealthy party-goers.
Military figures
have also been accused of profiting from the drug trade but prosecutions of
army officers are rare in the former military government-run country.
Meth tablets headed
for Bangladesh are often smuggled across the Naf river that divides the two
countries by Rohingya Muslims, a poor and persecuted minority.
More than 70,000
Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in recent months to escape a bloody army crackdown
in northern Rakhine.
State media has been
reporting almost daily seizures of the pills in the area over recent months. In
February a Buddhist monk was caught hiding more than four million tablets in
his monastery.
Source: AFP/nc