How many people does a reporter or NGO have to witness dying under conditions that resemble ethnic cleansing, before they either report it, or become an accessory to the crime?
They say there is a rule, that every story must be covered by two reporters. So who was the other trick?
The US gets in bed with Reuters to tell the world what a saviour it is to the people of Laos, the Lao Government says that Opium Eradication was shoved down their throat, and they are being blamed for the humanitarian fallout.
“The US Govt. acts like it owns Laos just like before the war.”
Welcome to the second American war in Laos. The secret Drug War. UNODC, NCA, who ever, its all spelled USA drug prohibition at any cost, keep the prices high in Afghanistan.
Interesting to note with a burp and a smile Cropley tells how the CIA was big time drug dealer in Laos before.
What was amazing was how fast the article was sanctioned as safe and reasonable journalism to feed the masses that there is no US led genocide in Laos, no War Crimes against the innocent, God forbid, its just all coming up roses. Reuters, Yahoo, the Bangkok Post, scattered across the world in a few days.
Then they bring out a fascist from the US Embassy in Vientiane, take their skirts for a helicopter ride, and tell them how wonderful it was that the mountain people got off opium, how life is so much easier when you are dead.
Clifford Heinzer, they don’t get more stupid than that. 8 kilos of opium per hectare? Not likely any time soon. But only a small source of income? You must be dreaming, even four kilos would be plenty for survival income for a mountain family, cash on the barrel head. And opium keeps good and solid for three years, so hey, sell when you are ready.
But Heinzer he goes on that now the mountain people are waiting for their money for years, while the fruit trees grow to sell fruit that no one wants, or tea, as slaves for the Chinese.
Death, famine and disease, how is that easier than opium? How much corn would an Akha woman have to plant in order to match the money on opium? How much forest would be destroyed? How many tons will the family have to carry from the fields and shuck? Heinzer is clueless, he is assuming that no one in the world has a clue what is going on in the mountains of Laos, what the realities are.
While everyone keeps their mouths shut on the deaths US and UNODC policy has brought on the poorest of the poor for at least the last ten years.
Lets look at some statistics. 2006
From the National Statistic Office of Laos
One Opium Growing District, that grows no longer.
From the list of 47 poorest districts in Laos.
Long District, Luang Namtha Province
91 villages total.
3557 poor households of 4412 total households
85 poor villages of 91 villages total
62 villages without access to health services
58 villages no access to clean water
51 villages no access to education
61 villages no road access
1692 households lack enough rice to eat
1566 households lack enough clothes
1795 households lack money for health services
2453 households lack money for education
14% of the population has to travel more than 8 hours to a hospital
5.1% have long term illness or disability
62% of population has short term illness that prevents them from working, compared to 32% for Vientiane
Only 16% have access to a pharmacy
Crude Death Rate 5.2%, real stats not available.
Death rate for Vientiane is 3.7%
So Heinzer says that admist all of that, was great to eliminate the main cash crop the people had? Districts in Phonsali look no better.
No mention that most of Laos opium got smoked as just that, opium, not used as heroin. But heroin use will go up, needles, HIV, that will be the crop the US substitutes in Laos. Yes, pre-emptive right to war on all peoples of the earth.
And asparagus, oh yeah, we’re smoking dope now!
Forced relocation, anything was ok, as long as the Opium War was won. How many died? Yeah, well send someone besides the Reuter’s best to find out.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060309/lf_nm/laos_opium_dc
War on opium gives Golden Triangle a different hue
By Ed Cropley Thu Mar 9, 8:24 AM ET
PHONGSALI, Laos (Reuters) – The mountains of northern Laos have changed color.
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In the past five years, the opium poppy fields that for the last two centuries lent splashes of color to the pervading green of the jungle have become a thing of the past.
In their stead, small plantations of tea, peach trees and even asparagus are springing up in the heart of the “Golden Triangle,” the lawless opium-producing region at the junction of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.
“In 2001 at this time of year, those hills would have been a sea of pink and white,” said Clifford Heinzer, a U.S. anti-drugs official, with a sweep of his hand across a lush — and entirely green — valley in the northernmost Lao province of Phongsali.
“I’m not going to kid you that if you walk into the jungle, you won’t find a single poppy,” said Heinzer, who works in the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Vientiane. “But it would only be one of a few plants grown by an addict for personal consumption. Commercial cultivation is over.”
In concert with donors and the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Laos has gone from being the world’s third-biggest producer of heroin, which comes from opium resin, in 1998 to declaring itself free of poppy cultivation in February 2006.
The announcement leaves military-ruled Myanmar as the only member of the Golden Triangle trio with a heroin habit.
“LAND OF THE LOTUS EATERS”
Although the landlocked southeast Asian nation has never rivaled the likes of
Afghanistan, which had an estimated 324,000 acres under cultivation in 2004, or neighboring Myanmar, opium has nevertheless been a part of life for generations.
As it spread from China in the early 19th century, Laos’ laid-back population took to the drug with such relish — both for medicinal and recreational purposes — that French colonialists dubbed the country the “Land of the Lotus Eaters.”
More recently, during the Vietnam War, the
CIA’s infamous “Air America” airline teamed up with anti-communist Hmong hill tribesmen to smuggle opium out of the jungle to help fund America’s “secret war” in Laos.
However in 1999 its communist rulers declared war on a drug that was exacting a heavy toll on many of the country’s 5.7 million people, with thousands of families enslaved to the drug habits of opium-addled husbands and fathers.
“Many women and children are happy that they no longer need to endure daily hardships to earn money to buy opium for the head of the family,” the government’s top drug-buster, Soubanh Srithirath, told a recent drug eradication conference.
“Many ethnic children now have the opportunity to attend school, many families that used to grow opium poppy and had become addicted are living healthy lives,” he said.
HOW TO KICK THE HABIT
With a multi-pronged approach ranging from slashing poppy fields to hunting down known traffickers, the government has managed to cut opium cultivation from 67,000 acres eight years ago to effectively nil today.
Over the same period, education campaigns among the remote hill tribes where opium had its deepest roots, as well as treatment programs claiming only 20 percent relapse rates, have seen the number of addicts drop from 63,000 to just 12,000.
To make the change lasting, the government, UNODC and donors such as the United States, have followed up with “crop substitution projects” to give ex-opium farmers — many of whom made less than $1 a day — a livelihood in a mountainous region unsuitable for rice.
“Weaning people off the opium here was not that difficult, because it only yields about 8 kg (18 pounds) per hectare,” said Heinzer on a recent helicopter trip into the mountains to visit villages now growing fruit and vegetables instead of opium.
By comparison, the UNODC estimates that yields in Afghanistan are over 88 pounds per hectare, making it a far more lucrative cash crop and making the Lao route to kicking the habit unworkable in the harsher climate and terrain of central Asia.
Despite the success, some aid groups have privately accused Vientiane of using opium as an excuse to force ethnic minorities, many of whom fought the communists in the Vietnam War, to move from the hills and closer to roads — and government control.
Spokesman Yong Chanhthalansy admitted infrastructure had in some cases struggled to keep pace with the eradication campaign but said the government was often playing catch-up with remote communities desperate to get closer to new communication links.
“Outsiders accuse us of forcing people to relocate but it is not true. It was a spontaneous relocation and they moved to get closer to roads. Sometimes the government was having to run after them,” Yong said.
The criticism might also be driven by fiercely anti-communist Hmong refugees now living in the United States, he suggested.
“People were telling us to crack down on opium, and we did. And now we are being told we did it too fast,” he said with a shrug. “We just can’t win.”
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A lot of people aren’t winning as America becomes the worlds most dangerous nation to the lives of women and children everywhere.
