Shan academic official figures are unreliable

Shan academic official figures are unreliable

War on drugs

In response to Rangoon's anti-drug official's claim yesterday that opium output had dropped to 865 tons in 2001 from 1,065 tons in 2000, a noted Shan scholar commented the official figures were "arbitrary." 

"(T)he methodology used to predict opium output - special photographs showing poppy fields taken from the air is extremely problematic," wrote Dr. Chao Tzang Yawnghwe, long time pro-democracy and federalist activist in his paper, The Burma Perspective: Drug Control and the War on Drugs, a copy of which S.H.A.N. has received today. "This is simply because some areas yield more opium than others." 

"Moreover, both plants and pods are susceptible to frost and hail, and when rain falls at the wrong time, the sap may be washed away. Furthermore, there are such factors as pest, birds, livestock, the labor factor, frequent fire-fights between various armies, etc., all of which determine the size of the opium harvest." 

"Hence," he concluded, "opium figures given and employed by the anti-drug establishment and experts all these years and currently as well are, it might be said, unreliable." 

He noted however that there was no way of disputing them. This was due to the absence of independent research, the nature of the crop and its unpredictable yield pattern and its illegality. "How does one do an estimate of the yield of an illegal crop, which no one can admit to cultivating it?" he argued. "Hence if, for example, the regime comes up with a figure of 1,000 tons (down from 2,500 tons) in order to claim success in drug eradication efforts... there is... no way to check the validity or accuracy of the figures produced." 

"The turning point in the war on drugs in Burma, or where Burma is concerned," Yawnghwe recommended, "is the restoration of democracy." 

An associated Press report that appeared in Bangkok Post today, 10 May, quoted Brig Gen Kyaw Thein, a member of Rangoon's Central Committee for Drug Abuses saying, that more than 10,500 hectares of opium poppy plantations had been destroyed this year.