CONTIDENA JAL
НК
BRITISH CONSULATE
CHIANG MAI
28 May 1973
3M SIVED IN
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY No. 14
'No. 190
(
J L Jones Esq BANGKOK
11
Dear Lynton
TACHILEK
t
AKK 19/3
€1 73
Бав
1. Recently a few more details about the events in Tachilek have emerged and I rescrd them for your interest. Burmose Consul-General, when he called to talk about Ne Win's
The visit, said that the Burmese Government had acted about the middle of last month to put down the KKY specifically because of their narcotic activities. As a result the majority of the KKY had elected to join the Burmese forces while a few had gone underground and about 100 had fled into Thailand. He confirmed that the Burmese Army had always been in Tachilek albeit that until they were re-inforced they had been unwilling to risk shooting it out with the KKY to discover who was "really" in control. Maung Kyi said that the KKY had been formed to use against the Communists but the Burmese authoritics had no arms or funds to give them, with the result that they had been forced to obtain funds by taking part in the opium trade - a rather charitable view, since these bandits were dealing in opium long before the Burmese Government tried to regularise their position by forming them into KKY. interesting remark made by Maung Kyi was that the Burmese
Perhaps the most Government had decided to act because of all the unfavourable publicity in the newspapers and because of international concern and pressure - particularly from the US. He said that the recent Thai - Burmese rapprochement had nothing to do with events in Tachilek, the Burmese had acted on their own, of their own free will.
2. The BNDD (Vernor. Parker) agreed with most of this.
They
had heard some unconfirmed reports that the Burmese Government had seized and burnt about 10 tons of opium, which if true was a welcome bonus but much more serious and, much less encouraging were the reliable reports which stated that the heroin refineries were being moved from Tachilek to a safer place where they could not be reached, be that in Thailand or Burma, view was that this would not hinder the trade but would increase
The BNDD the present trend for the traffic to go further and further underground. Nevertheless, although the old days of casy information and open trading might be drawing to a close, the
1
CONFIDENTIAL
/real