YANGON: Anti-drug activists said on Friday the military and local police are preventing them from destroying fields of opium poppies in northern Myanmar, a major cultivation area for the drug that can be made into heroin.

The Pat Jasan group has more than 1,000 members engaged in the current eradication campaign and is affiliated with Christian churches of the Kachin ethnic minority. The effort it started in late January is opposed by farmers and militias that profit from drug trafficking.

Three Pat Jasan activists have been injured by land mines and one 19-year-old member has been shot dead. The group claims to have destroyed many acres (hectares) of poppies. They say they were told that the military would not provide security for any future attempts at clearing the poppies because Pat Jasan is not a registered organisation.

Officials with the state anti-drug police did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.

Myanmar is the world’s second-biggest producer of opium after Afghanistan. Most opium is produced in Shan and Kachin states, and in Kachin state, drug use is especially common among the young and among migrants who scavenge the detritus from gem mines.

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2016