RANGOON: Mobile government teams tasked with curbing smuggling along the Burma-China border near Muse have seized illicit goods, including gemstones, timber, wildlife and precursor drugs, with an estimated total value of US$27 million in the past two years, according to Ministry of Commerce officials.
Yan Naing Tun, deputy director general of the ministry’s commerce and consumer affairs department, said mobile teams had set up checkpoints and conducted surprise checks on the road to the Muse-Jiegao border crossing and other known smuggling routes in northern Shan State to seize unregistered goods on cargo trucks on their way to and from the Burma-China border.
“Smuggled jade and jewels are the largest number [of goods] that we have seized in the past two years. These are going to China via Muse border areas, but smugglers weren’t going through the border check points, they used other ways around the check points,” he told The Irrawaddy.
Yan Naing Tun said 600 officials had formed several teams—comprising officials from the ministry, the Customs Department and police officers—that seized smuggled jade and rubies worth $3.8 million.
He said illegal timber, forest products and wildlife was also being smuggled out of Burma on a large scale, with officials seizing various kinds of hardwood and luxury timber. Goods smuggled from China into Burma included textiles, tobacco, alcohol, electrical appliances such as mobile handsets, and precursor chemicals used in illegal drug production in Shan State.
“More than 10,000 logs of various kinds of timber have been seized within two years,” said Yan Naing Tun, adding that 11,000 kilograms of precursor chemicals were confiscated on their way from China into Burma. Seized goods were later auctioned by the ministries involved in the anti-smuggling operations.
He added that the mobile teams inspected cargo on trucks while police teams conducted the search for illicit drugs, such as opium, heroin and methamphetamine, being trafficked from Burma to China.
Muse is Burma’s largest border crossing and its main gateway to China. Some 900 trucks cross into China daily, while around 500 trucks head in the other direction. There are another five crossings on the Burma-Thailand border, most important among them Myawaddy-Mae Sot crossing, but the government anti-smuggling teams have yet to step up operations there.
Recently, mobile teams expanded their operations to international airports and ports in Rangoon and Mandalay.
