21 officials involved in village’s massive illegal drugs trade
Print Edition
Police and government officials were engaged in drug dealing in a village in Guangdong Province where 3 tons of crystal methamphetamine, or ice, was seized in recent raids.
Twenty-one Party and government officials were identified as being involved in the business in Boshe in the southern province’s Lufeng City.
Seven have been put under investigation, among them the head of Lufeng’s public security bureau anti-drug department, surnamed Guo, Southern Metropolis Daily reported yesterday.
Guo is reported to have been helping Cai Dongjia, the village’s Party chief. As a key figure in the village’s drug business, Cai used his relations with police and government officials for protection over the past three years, during which the village provided a third of the nation’s crystal meth, a dangerous and addictive substance.
Cai would receive tip-offs from police and officials before previous raids, the paper said.
Local police were said to have been taking bribes and two officers had even used police cars to transport drugs, said Qiu Wei, a senior official with the provincial public security bureau’s anti-drug department.
Authorities deployed helicopters, speedboats and paramilitary police in a raid on the village on December 29.
Security forces surrounded and then entered the village, where more than a fifth of the households were suspected to be involved in or linked to the production and trafficking of drugs, Guangdong’s police force said on its website.
A total of 182 suspects from 18 drug production and trafficking rings were arrested in and outside the village, along with the seizure of 2.95 tons of crystal meth and 260 kilograms of ketamine, a powerful drug used as a veterinary anesthetic. Police also found nine guns and 62 bullets, according to the police website.
Two more drug production spots were raided and four more suspects taken away by police between January 1 and 3, the Lufeng public security bureau said.
“The village has made criminal drug production a clan-based, industrialized operation with local protection,” police said. “The offenders have for a long time been brazenly committing crimes, avoiding investigations and even ganging up to violently oppose law enforcement.”
China routinely carries out operations targeting illicit drug rings but it’s unusual for such wide-ranging law enforcement resources to be deployed against a single village in one operation.
An aerial photo posted on the police website showed dozens of police vans parked in rows outside the walled village of densely built traditional houses. Another photo showed a helicopter taking off and one parked nearby. Speedboats were used to prevent suspects from fleeing the coastal village by sea.
The Yangcheng Evening News, a local newspaper, said the raid involved 3,000 police officers.
Photos showed paramilitary officers in camouflage uniforms and holding rifles beside boxes filled with packets of what was presumably crystal meth.
Boshe’s villagers had resisted anti-drug authorities for years, blockading the village entrance with motorcycles when word of a raid spread. They would brandish replica AK-47s, lay nail boards on the road and hurl rocks and homemade grenades at officers, said the Yangcheng Evening News based in Guangzhou, Guangdong’s capital.
The Boshe raid was part of “Operation Thunder,” an ongoing crackdown on illicit drugs launched in July which has resulted in the detention of 11,000 suspects and the seizure of eight tons of drugs.
Lufeng has sent six teams to Boshe and other villages, tasked with rebuilding the government structure and helping villagers find a way to make a legal living.
Boshe residents earned their living from agriculture before many of them became involved in drugs.
Harvesting herba ephedrae, from which methamphetamine is extracted, earned them 500 yuan (US$82) a day. A student could earn 10,000 yuan a month pouring powder into capsules.
The business made many villagers rich, but seriously affected the remainder. Those not involved found it hard to survive amidst rocketing prices and widespread pollution caused by drug manufacture.
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