Bangla ‘tokhang’ nets 102 lords

A day after the release of a survey result showing 66 percent of respondents believe their communities in the Philippines were freed of the narcotics menace, Bangladesh reported some 102 meth dealers have surrendered to authorities in an anti-narcotics crackdown patterned after President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.

The tokhang-style campaign sows fear among kingpins, Agence France Presse reported.

“Imitation is the best form of flattery” best described the decision of the Bangladesh government to launch last year a “war” on drugs patterned after the Philippines, following a proliferation of illegal substances in the nation of 165 million people, mostly of cheap methamphetamine pills locally known as yaba.

Last January, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena indicated his firm intention during a state visit to adopt the methods employed in Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena. Sri Lanka rides bandwagon

Sirisena even visited the Philippine National Police (PNP) headquarters in Camp Crame to get a first-hand look at the police program.

“He was impressed with our campaign against illegal drugs and the firm leadership of our President,” PNP chief Director General Oscar Albayalde said then of Sirisena.

Albayalde said the Sri Lankan leader reiterated his desire to replicate the Philippines’ anti-illegal drugs campaign.

According to the Sri Lankan leader, Duterte is an exception to some world leaders who had avoided an aggressive posture against narcotics fearing that this might put their lives at risk.

“The world must respect the Philippine’s difficult task of dealing with illegal drugs,” Sirisena said.

Bangladesh police said 24 yaba “godfathers,” as well as lieutenants and peddlers, surrendered to the country’s home minister in Teknaf town, which is the key gateway for narcotics smuggling into the country from Myanmar, where the pills are manufactured by the millions.

The dealers also surrendered 350,000 vanilla-scented, small red yaba pills, whose name comes from a Thai word meaning “crazy medicine,” and 30 illegal firearms.

Bangladesh police chief Mohammad Javed Patwary said authorities would advocate lesser prison sentences for those who had surrendered and would “assist” them in returning to normal life.

But he promised “harsh upcoming days” for those who had stayed away.

“Those who are in hiding, don’t get carried away. You’ll not be spared,” he told the mass gathering of several thousand locals who came to witness the event.

Teknaf is situated in Cox’s Bazar district — home to around a million Rohingya refugees — bordering Myanmar.

Cox’s Bazar is flooded with yaba, with many of the Rohingya refugees used as “mules” for carrying the pills.

The pills have become an easy source of income for the Rohingya, some 740,000 of whom have poured across the border since Myanmar launched a military crackdown in August 2017 that the UN has described as an ethnic cleansing.

The mass surrender comes during a concerted crackdown on drug traffickers, which has left nearly 300 people dead, including 40 from Teknaf and seen about 25,000 arrested since May last year.

On Friday, Bangladesh security forces seized 570,000 yaba pills in separate drives in the border region next to Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state.