The discovery of 28 abandoned human-trafficking camps and multiple unmarked mass graves in the dense jungle of Wang Kelian near the Thai-Malaysia border in May 2015 sent a shock wave through ASEAN and the rest of the world. Almost 800 victims were suspected to have been held in squalid conditions, in crudely built wooden cages and barbed wire that were too small for adults to even stand in.
Porous borders and a lack of enforcement contributed to the record seizure of methamphetamine in East and Southeast Asia last year.Drug trade in the Golden Triangle – a region where the borders of Myanmar, Lao and Thailand meet – is booming thanks to an increase in transnational organised crime groups operating, manufacturing and trafficking methamphetamine and other drugs in the region, according to a recent report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).Substantial quantitie
In a hut on the top of a fog-licked mountain in northern Lao, Vo Pali is getting high.His poison is opium, a sap extracted from poppies grown illegally by the poor hill tribes in the Communist state's rugged, inaccessible uplands."I smoke three times a day," the 60-year-old ethnic Hmong villager says in a barely audible rasp of his 30-year habit. "It has damaged my life. I have no income.
The discovery of 28 abandoned human-trafficking camps and multiple unmarked mass graves in the dense jungle of Wang Kelian near the Thai-Malaysia border in May 2015 sent a shock wave through ASEAN and the rest of the world. Almost 800 victims were suspected to have been held in squalid conditions, in crudely built wooden cages and barbed wire that were too small for adults to even stand in.
