PROPPING UP A HEROIN REGIME

Interpol, the international policing agency, is staging the fourth
International Heroin Conference in Rangoon, Burma this week in the
face of an international uproar by human rights activists. Burma is
now called Myanmar by the politically correct, but not by the
politically concerned, including me.

RCMP drug experts from Vancouver and Bangkok were expecting to attend,
but the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade now says
the Mounties aren't there. The U.S., Britain, Ireland, Germany,
Sweden, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg are also
boycotting the conference.

By co-hosting and co-organizing the conference with Burma's military
regime, Interpol is fuelling the very crisis it hopes to address.
Heroin and opium trafficking from Burma have doubled under the State
Peace and Development Council, or SPDC, since its leaders seized power
in 1988. The CIA recently confirmed that Burma is the world's leading
producer of illicit opium and one of its largest exporters of heroin.

Interpol's policy for these drug conferences seems to be to hold them
in countries of supply. A previous meeting was held successfully in
Bogota, Colombia, where drug lords also rule. But circumstances in
Burma -- which hasn't had an elected government for decades -- are
profoundly different.

Wherever conference delegates gather in Rangoon they will be in the
shadow of that famous, crumbling house on University Drive where Nobel
Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi is held under virtual house
arrest. Her party won an 82 per cent endorsement from the Burmese
people in an election 10 years ago. The generals still refuse to talk
with her and continue to sentence her supporters to lengthy jail
terms. A trio of students this week was given a total of 150 years
among them.

Interpol says it won't be holding any bilateral meetings with the
outlaw regime. But just being there lends it credibility -- at least
in the eyes of its own supporters. The state-controlled media in
Rangoon are famous for trumpeting the goings and comings of foreign
visitors.

But today, startling as the increase in heroin trafficking is under
the SPDC (and CIA estimates of production have gone down in recent
years), the worst worry is the escalation of HIV-AIDS among millions
of Burmese, and among the Indians and Chinese who live along the
routes used by illicit exporters. Shared and dirty needles from
injecting drugs are transmitting HIV at an explosive rate.

Statistics from Burma are notoriously unreliable, but its neighbours
are taking note. According to China's Ministry of Health, Yunnan
province, which shares a long, wild border with Burma's prime
poppy-growing Shan and Kachin states, has 80 per cent of all HIV
infections in China and 60 per cent of all its confirmed AIDS cases.

On Burma's northwest side, Manipur state in northeast India is
struggling with an epidemic of heroin use. The Manipur Peoples Party
says one in five young Manipuris is now a heroin addict and 80 per
cent of them are infected with HIV -- one of the highest rates in the
world. Unlike Burma, Manipur has no known tradition of poppy
cultivation, and until 1991 heroin use was almost unknown.

These figures are taken from a report, "Out Of Control 2," issued by
the Southeast Asian Information Network, based at Chiang Mai
University in Thailand. Researchers there warn the "deadly interaction
of state repression, increasing heroin availability and a growing
commercial sex industry" is causing an HIV epidemic in Burma, and "the

evidence suggests high-level junta involvement with the export of
these narcotics."

Most Burma watchers suspect the military regime must be involved
because of its huge arms purchases from China while foreign reserves
were low. This report details some evidence.

For instance, heroin refineries are suspiciously close to regimental
headquarters in Kalemyo near the Indian border, where three SPDC
regiments are based. Other refineries are situated near regimental
bases in the Shan state and near the Bangladesh border. The report
names officers believed involved and describes the army's heavy
control of traffic through these remote regions.

And the SPDC's belated attempts to curb its own AIDS crisis haven't
affected this lucrative trafficking. A new route for illicit heroin
exports recently opened up into Xinjiang region of northwest China. A
few years ago, a Chinese study there showed growing heroin use and
addiction but no HIV. By 1996, another study by a professor in the
Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine found that one-quarter of drug
users were infected with HIV subtype C -- the virus common to Burma.

Drug use is officially banned in Burma and, in preparation for this
week's conference, the state press is publicizing recent seizures of
opium and heroin. But the crisis continues and spreads.

Interpol may hope it can do in three days what the United Nations and
some of Burma's neighbours have failed to do in 10 years. But the cost
- -- its implicit legitimization of this obdurate regime -- is much too
high.

--Penny Sanger is a member of the executive committee of Canadian
Friends of Burma