Authorities from five provinces set nearly 200kg of drugs on fire at the Stung Treng airport compound in Srah Russey commune’s Sre Por village in Stung Treng district on Tuesday. TD NEWS
Some 200 kg of illicit drugs were set on fire in Stung Treng province on Tuesday after five provincial courts ruled that their hauls be transported there to be destroyed, said the deputy National Police chief Mak Chito, who is also deputy secretary-general of the National Authority for Combating Drugs (NACD).
The drug burning ceremony was held at the airport compound in Sre Por village in Stung Treng district’s Srah Russey commune.
Attending the ceremony were Minister of Justice Ang Vong Vathana, provincial governor Mom Saroeun, five provincial deputy governors, Chito and some 2,600 students and residents.
Chito told The Post on Tuesday that Stung Treng was marking International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, which fell on June 26.
Anti-drug chiefs from the five provinces – Kratie, Preah Vihear, Ratanakkiri, Mondulkiri and Stung Treng – had also requested that the seized drugs be set on fire, he said.
The 193kg of illicit drugs, Chito said, had been seized by the five provincial authorities since early last year.
The provincial courts recently ordered that the drugs be set on fire, while cars, motorbikes, houses and other confiscated property were held as state property pending a further court order.
“We have a Ministry of Justice press release on burning drugs and teams led by their provincial prosecutors. But the Ministry of Justice has a national level team which monitors the work in all provinces."
“When we receive the order, we gather together and burn the drugs in one place. We also destroyed the drugs so people could clearly see what we were doing. We don’t want to keep them. If the drugs are kept, it can be complicated and they are difficult to take care of."
“If we seize more drugs in the future, we will keep them at first and wait for a court ruling ordering that they are burned and we’ll do that every year or six months once,” Chito said.
Stung Treng provincial police chief Mao Dara said that among the haul were crystal methamphetamine, WY tablets and ketamine.
“We burned the drugs from all the provinces together. We will continue to carry out more crackdowns and won’t spare any effort. After we’ve confiscated the drugs, we’ll set them on fire again,” he said.
Ratanakkiri provincial police chief Yin Chamnan said he had assigned an official to join the ceremony, but he was unsure of the amount of drugs taken from his province to Stung Treng.
“I assigned my specialist official to go because this Tuesday I’m busy with another programme. I’m not sure of the quantity of drugs from Ratanakkiri that were burned,” Chamnan said.
Hou Sam Ol, Stung Treng provincial coordinator for rights group Adhoc, lauded the burning of the drugs and said the authorities should persevere despite the achievements they had already made.
“I’ve seen that in recent times, the authorities have really made an effort and we’ve seen a series of crackdowns."
“But we are still concerned because even though there have been large scale raids, dealers still dare to import drugs and it seems as if they haven’t learned a lesson or been daunted by the authorities,” he said.
He pointed out that more than two tonnes of illicit drugs were set on fire on June 26 in Phnom Penh in the presence of Minister of Interior Sar Kheng.
A recent NACD report showed that since June 2017, the authorities have seized more than two tonnes of drugs, including amphetamine, ecstasy, heroin, ketamine, methamphetamine, nimetazepam and pyrovalerone.
