Myanmar burns US$525mil worth of illegal drugs

YANGON: Myanmar authorities torched on Friday seized drugs worth an estimated US$525 million, according to the home affairs minister who blamed rebel factions for the war-ravaged country’s booming trade in illegal narcotics.

Analysts say crumbling governance since a military putsch in 2021 triggered a civil war has allowed all sides to profit from the illicit drug trade.

Myanmar has emerged as the world’s largest producer of opium after the Taliban government surged back to power in Afghanistan in 2021 and cracked down on the sedative narcotic.

Myanmar is also currently Southeast Asia’s largest national source of methamphetamine, according to the UN office on drugs and crime.

Police in Yangon incinerated 31 different classes of drugs to mark the UN’s International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, local officials said, sending plumes of thick black smoke into the sky.

On an industrial zone compound on the outskirts of Yangon, officials gave a three-second countdown before setting the petrol-doused drugs ablaze in a fire lasting 30 minutes.

Firefighters then extinguished the flames.

“Ice, also known as methamphetamine, is the largest in quantity among the drugs that were seized,” anti-drug police officer Aung Myat Soe told reporters.

“There are more than 28 tonnes of it,” Aung said.

“Drugs slated for burning in ceremonies across Yangon, Mandalay and Taunggyi – the capital of eastern Shan state, epicentre of Myanmar’s opium trade – were double the quantity of last year,” officials said.

Rebel factions “have exploited periods of political uncertainty to expand their involvement in the illicit drug trade”, home affairs minister Nyunt Win Swe said in a speech printed in state media.

“These activities not only prolong the existence of insurgent groups but also pose a persistent danger to the stability of our nation,” he said.

In January, Myanmar authorities said they had captured a trio of record-sized jungle drug laboratories responsible for making a third of all the methamphetamine seized in Myanmar over the previous year.

Nestled in the hills of Shan state some 180km from the China border, the sites were the size of villages with their own elaborate power and water infrastructure.

Drug production, unregulated mining and online scam centres have all flourished in the chaos since the democratic government of Aung San Suu Kyi was toppled, analysts say.