Drugs Seized at Rangoon Airport and Outside Tachilek

More than 200,000 amphetamine tablets have been seized at Rangoon International Airport and near the Burmese-Thai border town of Tachelik, state-owned The New Light of Myanmar reported on Wednesday.

Twenty thousand tablets were found at the airport in the possession of a passenger as he prepared to fly from Rangoon to Sittwe, capital of Arakan State in western Burma. He was identified as Kyaw Soe Win.

The other haul, of 200,000 tablets, was made when police stopped two motorcyclists on the road from Mae Sat to Tachilek.

Both hauls were made on August 1, the newspaper reported.A police official in Naypyidaw, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the report to The Irrawaddy and said a major drug dealer suspected of involvement is hiding in Thailand.

The Bangkok English language daily Bangkok Post reported on August 1 that a major Burmese drug trafficker, Chen Tafa, aka Ar Fa, had fled to a Thai village, Ban Arunothai, in Chiang Mai's Chiang Dao district.

Chen Tafa, 46, who is a former close aide of the late Burmese drug baron Khun Sa, fled to Thailand after Burmese authorities seized a huge amount of drugs from a six-wheel truck at a border checkpoint opposite Chiang Rai's Mae Sai district on July 10, the newspaper reported.

The truck was heading to Burma's Tachilek when it was stopped and searched.

On July 10, Burmese police in Tachilek reported finding about 1,000 kilograms of heroin and 340,000 amphetamine tablets in a truck on the outskirts of the border town.

Later, more than 150,000 amphetamine tablets were also seized in the town.

The majority of drugs smuggled out of Burma end up in Thailand, according to a report released by the US State Department in March. The report said Burma is a significant player in the manufacture and regional trafficking of amphetamine-type stimulants.

Burma is listed as the second largest producer of heroin in the world after Afghanistan, according to experts from the United Nations and the United States.