Thailand, Myanmar to boost cross-border anti-drug trafficking cooperation

BANGKOK, May 22 (TNA) - Thailand and Myanmar have jointly launched the “Anti Drug Related Crime Training Course”, aimed to boost their cross-border cooperation against drug trafficking. Organised by Thailand's Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) and Myanmar's Central Committee for Drug Control (CCDC), the course has brought together concerned officials from Myanmar to be trained on various drug prevention programmes, including developments in drug trafficking tactics and weapons used against state authorities, by experienced Thai experts on drug-related crime. ONCB Deputy Secretary General Sukhum Opasniputh acknowledged that the development of smuggling tactics and technologies used by traffickers has steadily increased flows of illicit drugs from Myanmar to Thailand. According to ONCB’s reports, drugs smuggled through the northern Thai border have, however, dropped as a result of improved cooperation between Thai and Myanmar authorities, but the strengthened bilateral cooperation has caused a shift of a cross-border trafficking route to Thailand's northeastern border; so, the ONCB is intensifying its cooperation with relevant agencies, covering beefed-up security along the border to fight the drug trafficking. The training programme was set from May 21-25 at the ONCB's head office in Bangkok and its training center in the capital's neighbouring Pathum Thani province. Meanwhile, similarly-intensified cross-border anti-drug cooperation had earlier led to the arrest of a wanted drug lord, No-Kham, the leader of an over 100 armed drug traffickers based in Myanmar’s Shan State, by Chinese, Laos and Thai authorities. It is believed that the gang has not only involved in drug trafficking, but also in kidnapping, murder and other kinds of crime along the Mekong River for years. (TNA)