In 1999, animal bone contaminated heroin killed 40 people in Glasgow.

MP DEMANDS ACTION ON HEROIN BAN BURMA FROM THE OLYMPICS By Ian Hernon Glasgow Evening Times.

MARIA FYFE wants to ban Burma from this year's Olympic Games.

The Maryhill MP's parliamentary campaign was sparked by the evidence that much of the heroin hitting the Glasgow streets comes from there.

She has written to Cabinet Enforcer Mo Mowlam and her deputy Ian McCartney- whose own son died of an overdose last year- urging the government to back an international bid to bar Burma from any international sporting event.

Mrs Fyfe said "If Burma could be forced out of the Sydney games, it would be an enormous boost to anti-drugs campaigning in Scotland and the UK, and show that we mean business." She added : "I feel strongly about this because drug addiction is wasting lives - and bringing about early deaths - of more and more young people in my constituency and Glasgow as a whole."

"This kind of action will, I believe, really encourage a fightback that will arrest the attention of the many people who watch sports and are keen on the Olympics."

Mrs Fyfe is backing the campaign from the Music Industry Human Rights Association, whose chairman, Roger Bunn, was a leading campaigner for the sports embargo upon South Africa under apartheid. Mrs Fyfe said : "Sport is important to most young people. This is an imaginative way of fighting the drug problem which effects most, if not all, families in my part of Glasgow." "It is time that the international sporting authorities got involved in the fightback."

Mihra then asked the UN to follow the lead set in 1964 in Tokyo, when S Africa was first excluded, and oust the Burmese junta's racist team from Sydney 2000. Sandro Tucci of the UNDCP, the UN anti drug team in Vienna, himself once a prisoner of the junta, thought pressure on the UN would be impossible to promote. "This is Security Council affair."

Labour MP Mike Hancock, proposed an Early Day Motion suggesting :

"That this House, notes Burma as being one of the world's largest producer / transporters of illicit opium; notes that the military regime's record on human rights is appalling; notes that the International Olympic Committee's consent for an ethnically unrepresentative team to compete in the Sydney 2000 Olympiad adds credence to the regime; and calls upon the IOC to ban Burma from Sydney 2000. This House also calls for more pressure to be brought to bear upon other major sports events that sanitize those participant nations which are increasingly involved in the hard drug trade, and calls for an expansion in Golden Triangle hard drug / human rights abuse education for the UK."

Ron Corben of APP on March 20 2000.

"International money laundering by criminal syndicates, estimated by the United Nations at $US500 billion ($A821.29 billion) a year, was the "common challenge" for all nations. 

Minister for Customs and Justice, Amanda Vanstone, "The challenge that we all face that's in common is one of money laundering,"  "While the criminals at a high level keep themselves away from the crime - they get someone else to do the robberies, someone else to do the murders, someone else to carry the drugs -but they are never very far from the money."  "The fight against money laundering - in a cooperative sense - is extremely important because that's the fight that will take you to the top level criminals."

Oh yes? How nice.

But, it was it not a sharing with national borders with UNSC Member China, and the rest of the Triangle, and a lacklustre performance by the other Members of the UNSC. Which had in terms of culture, hammered the longest nail into the Burma Out! campaign coffin?  In reality they were responsible for turning the 2000 Games, the "Opium Olympiad" into an UN / IOC anti drug farce of major proportion?

But all was not all doom and gloom in the world of sport sanctions being "of no use". Occasionally, as during the latter days of S African apartheid, we come up with a coup ourselves. In November 2000, a very rare event took place. Due to play in the FIFA World Cup against Iran, Guam and Tajikstan. Burma"withdrew" costing Rangoon only a pittance in terms of its secret billions in drug money. A mere 40,000 swiss francs, $22,000 and their entrance fee.  But the loss of face on an international stage hurt the junta. 

"Off with their heads!" Shouted Alice, throwing knives at her favourite picture of a dancing J Edgar Hoover and Randolph Hearst. "They deserve no better than universal contempt" "If they get paid to, but cannot conduct a war upon the giant producer transporters." 

However, the Dutch, who are consistently critiqued by their surrounding nations for holding the most civilised drug policies in the western world, and have every right to be angry at those whose inconsistent policies are permanently grabbing the world headlines, were taking a different angle

HOLLAND : Telegraaf 20 January 2000 Sydney involuntarily hosting Drug State Burma By Menzo Willems The invitation to the Sydney 2000 Oympic games of East Asian Burma, number two in the top 25 list of narco-nations, has greatly appalled both the host nation Australia and international human rights organizations. Personally invited by IOC boss Antonio Samaranch, to take part this summers Olympic Games in Sydney. His friendship with and invitation to this dictatorial junta regime, nowadays Myanmar (land of the happy) but once called Burma, also means that Australia will receive it's illegal 'house- dealer' - (providing 86 % of the 'in the land down under' circulating heroin) - as an official guest. Australian parliamentarians have already alerted Michael Knight, the Minister responsible for "Syd 2000". But all he could give as an answer to their questions was "If Samaranch invites the junta, then I cannot prevent that." For the time, European governments have not protested against participation of Burma, after Afghanistan the world's largest producer of opium. And where a ruthless military junta rules with iron hand, profiting in gold and cash over the heads of poppy cultivating farmers from the export of hard drugs. The capitals of Europe refer to Brussels when an issue is a possible sportsboycott of Rangoon. On which a weapon embargo is already in place. But before a policy from this European capital will be effective, all EU members must comply with such a boycott.

To the international Human Rights organization MIHRA the invitation of Samaranch, who on top of all is campaigning against doping, is so heavily condemned by evidence that the IOC boss is an unreliable, corrupt figure, is a double standard policy. "How can one pursue an anti-doping policy if Burma is admitted to the Games", says MIHRA spokesperson Roger Bunn from London. "Such politics is merely a farce when the largest producer of hard drugs in SEAsia is not being targeted."

MIHRA does not rest it's case. Under the slogan "Burma Out!" Roger Bunn, a 57 year old ex-musician who campaigned successful for sports sanctions against South Africa in the days of the apartheid, and his organization launched a campaign against the participation of the East-Asian country to the 'Millennium Olympics'.The activist admits that there are more narco- nations participating in the Olympic Games. There is no representing team from Afghanistan, exporting country number one, but countries like Columbia are participating. "Unfortunately we can only concentrate on one country at the same time", says Bunn, who played bass in the band of Marianne Faithfull in the early sixties. "After the Games we will lobby the international football organization FIFA to prevent the participation of Colombia in the World Championship in 2002. In the meantime the junta in Rangoon continues to attempt to convince the world of the fact that the drugs economy in Burma is being tied down. A number of journalists were proudly taken on a tour recently to a mega project in which 50 000 opium farmers in a period of three years will be forced to leave their homes at the Chinese border and live to grow longan-fruit, some 160 kilometers further in the area close to Thailand. The Wa State army, with whom the junta maintains a cease fire, will take care of the transportation of the farmers and their families. But Roger Bunn is most skeptic about this operation. "It's uncontrollably. I doubt whether such policies can be effective, while by so doing, the whole social structure of the country is being damaged. The military regime at times burns down some poppy fields. But in the meantime enough are left over. The whole Burmese economy floats on drugs. Without opium production, the junta could not exist." - end -

But, although in the USA, much was trumpeted and many were jailed and robbed of their possessions. There was "no such thing" as a genuine war upon drugs anymore.  A subject on which in 2002, Mihra gave evidence to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee. And the concept for the future wherein Afghanistan heroin would flow into Europe in quantities never dreamed possible when the Twin Towers went down. Would be changed to one of institutionalised ad hoc "containment", with a lack of doctors willing to prescribe clean state heroin to the addicted.