Drug fugitives return

No.09 - 6/2007
20 June 2007
Drugs
 
Drug fugitives return
 
Following Bangkok's plan to re-survey and issue new identity cards for non-citizen residents since April, hundreds of ethnic Chinese and hilltribe people have been coming across the border to receive new identities, according to both civilian and official sources.
 
Among them are family members of drug suspects who had taken refuge in Burmese territory since an all-out war on drugs was declared by the former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra on 1 February 2003.
 
Reliable sources told S.H.A.N. at that time that the town of Nakawngmu, 29 miles north of Nong Ook, the village on the Chiangmai-Shan State border, alone had been host to 104 fugitive families.
 
According to Yang Chaoching, an associate of druglord Wei Hsuehkang, at least 65 families slipped across the border before 8 June, said a Nong Ook resident.
 
Some 2,500 were said to have been killed extra-judicially during the height of the anti-drug campaign.