Child soldiers fighting the drug cartels in native Mexican communities. Read the full report here

L'articolo Withstanding drug cartels proviene da InsideOver.

On the one hand Mexico is a paradise for tourists from all over the world, on the other it is the kingdom of narcos. These are the two faces of this country, where power is guaranteed by killing and the war between drug gangs is recording a remarkable increase in deaths.

So much so that many talk about “necromancy”, of a state ruled over deaths. But there are also those who won’t give in to the violence of gangs, like the inhabitans of  the village of Rincon De Chautla, that is constantly threatened by Los Ardillos.

Here women and children are forced to carry a rifle to defend themselves. Violence calls violence. And now Mexico is a heaven turning into hell.

L'articolo Hell in Mexico proviene da InsideOver.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime wants to facilitate civil society’s contribution in tackling corruption in South America and Mexico. The report, released on the 20th of this month, reveals that the UNODC wants to fast-track the United Nations Convention against Corruption’s (UNCAC) implementation in the region.

Tackling Mexico’s Monstrous Drug Cartels

In 2013, Mexico was one of the two most corrupt countries in Latin America, according to the Global Corruption Barometer. Last year, Mexico fell down to the 15th out of all eighteen Latin American countries, with 61% of those surveyed saying that the Mexican government is doing well in tackling corruption. But this is not enough.

A significant propellant of corruption and violence in Mexico is its illegal drug trade. In 2017 alone more than 30,000 people were killed in Mexico by drug cartels. The country’s brutal drug war kills tens of thousands of people yearly. Since 2006, murder rates have more than tripled in the country.

Drugs are an important global financial resource, along with oil and weapons. Our globalized financial system would not survive without the profit from the drugs trade. In 2017, Global Financial Integrity reported that the global market in drug trafficking had an annual estimate of between $426 billion and $652 billion. Although it is impossible to accurately calculate due to its illegality, the global illicit drug trade surpasses the GDP of many countries. It is the second most lucrative illicit market in the world, after counterfeit and pirated goods.

Mexico’s Troubled History of Drug Trafficking

In Mexico, the illicit drug market has a history steeped in neocolonialism. During the 1980s, under President Miguel de la Madrid, drug trafficking rates increased significantly. The creation of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) in 1991 accelerated these rates at incredible speed.

Executive Intelligence Review reports that free trade under the FTAA created “overnight, multi-million dollar fortunes”. Under this new drug boom, criminal activity grew, including among high-level and low-level officials. Presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio and other members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party would be politically assassinated, as huge profits spread corruption among Mexico’s leaders.

In November last year, US President Donald Trump, vowed to “wage war on on the [Mexican] drug cartels”, designating them terrorist groups, under the same classification as Al Qaeda in the Middle East. Under this new classification, Mexican drug cartels would be considered “foreign terrorist organizations”, leaving Mexico open to a US-led counterterrorism military operations in Mexico and other Latin American states.

The United States’ hard stance on Mexico’s drug trafficking is, however, a different development to the country’s stance prior to — and during — the creation of the FTAA, an extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Indigenous revolutionaries protesting against this imperialist trade agreement were crushed and murdered under the authority of Mexican officials. The FTAA deal brought in mass privatization of Mexican resources, sold to the highest US bidders. It proved to be highly successful, leaving the country’s citizens poor and susceptible to the financial profits offered for joining drug cartels.

‘US Agencies Allowed Him Access to His Money’

In 2017, Juan Pablo Escobar Henao, son of the infamous Medellin cartel drug kingpin Pablo Escobar revealed in an interview that his father “did not make his money alone, but with US agencies that allowed him access to this money.”

In his second book, Pablo Escobar in Fraganti, Escobar, writing under the pseudonym Juan Sebastian Marroquin, explained that Mexico’s drug cartels are only a part of “international ties of corruption in which [his] father had an active participation”.

The financial, globalized and governmental operations of the global drug trade is an intricate and interconnected – albeit illegal — market. From the powerful, hidden figures who control the drug trade under the protection of official titles, to those who buy the drugs globally, the question of who runs the Mexican cartels is a complicated one. Juan Escobar observes that the illegalization of drugs is a tactic for pro-drug propaganda: its illegal status gives it more appeal among users. (The illegality of products and services has always served to make its market more profitable.)

Those who profit financially from Mexico’s drug cartels manipulated the law to prohibit drugs, then manipulated trade agreements to benefit from this prohibition. It is safe to say that those who run Mexican drug cartels are those who propagate, and benefit from, our present capitalist-imperialist system.

L'articolo Who is Behind the Profitable and Vicious Mexican Drug Cartels? proviene da InsideOver.

In China, the fight against drugs is back in the news. The authorities, noting an increase, albeit minimal (1.9%), in the number of people who habitually use drugs, immediately sent a warning to all, with entire pages of newspapers intended to convey a clear and precise message to the citizens of the former Middle Empire: stay away from those substances. Beijing usually gives only one warning, so it is likely that very soon the Chinese Communist Party could launch a national campaign to eradicate the aforementioned social plague by using “Chinese methods”: efficient but brutal. Meanwhile, the government has to face two significant emergencies: a village, probably not the only one, in which most of the inhabitants are addicted to heroin, and the new arrival of a powerful synthetic drug ready to be shipped worldwide.

The hell of Xiamaguan

Xiamaguan is a town located in Ningxia, an autonomous region in the north-west of China. By Chinese standards, Xiamaguan is a small place and is home to only around a hundred families. Here, the population finds itself in a complicated situation, crushed between burgeoning drug dealing in the city on one side, and the disaster of drug addiction on the other. The average salary of ordinary citizens fluctuates between 150 and 400 dollars a month, the result of makeshift jobs and little else. To earn more money, increasing numbers have seen fit to turn themselves into heroin traffickers. As South China Morning Post revealed, in the 1980s, some citizens of Xiamaguan left their hometown to move to Guangzhou, where they began trading gold and precious stones.

Traffickers and addicts

Many of them did not know at that point what drugs were, but soon they came across a substance that earned far more money than gold. Expatriates brought these goods from Yunnan back to Xiamaguan over 20 years ago, and today the contacts and routes where the drugs were transported are still in place, despite government efforts. Soon the inhabitants of Xiamaguan fell into a vicious circle: the traffickers also began to become addicts. Arrests, separated families, children used as couriers and, more generally, the living conditions of the people have contributed to high social deprivation throughout the area. Since 2013, controls have increased and the situation has improved slightly. New regulations have brought a breath of fresh air to exasperated citizens: drug users, when caught in the act, are sent to special detoxification centres, whereas the smugglers end up in prison.

The Golden Triangle returns to shine

In addition to the outbreaks in small suburban centers, in some cases, drug trafficking is widespread. China has to deal with the increase in the flow of drugs coming from the Vietnamese border, where the so-called Golden Triangle lies – an area between Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Given the geography of the territory, comprising jungle and dense vegetation, it is almost impossible for the Chinese government to control the entire border area. In 2018, Beijing seized 37.5 tons of drugs and the substances needed to produce them, but many others managed to enter the country to be traded by criminal gangs all over the world. Meanwhile, as the New York Times notes, a new opiate from China, following the aforementioned path, is taking away work from the many Mexican farmers involved in the heroin production chain. Meanwhile, the Chinese police are rolling up their sleeves and are ready for action.

Translation by Laura Flower

L'articolo The Golden Triangle Returns to Shine: China Flooded by Heroin proviene da InsideOver.

L'articolo Bangladesh: the plague of drugs proviene da InsideOver.

L'articolo The drug war in Bangladesh proviene da InsideOver.

Squeezing his 18-month-old baby tight, Anson talks about his first time with heroin. He agrees to share his experience, as long as his surname is left out. “It’s his too now,” he says, addressing his young son. A drug addict, born and raised in a small Indiana town, his only crime as a teenager was to undergo surgery. “I switched from painkillers to heroin, then from heroin to fentanyl.”

Anson is 31 years old but started at 16 – and he’s not the only one. According to data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, he is just one of 19 million Americans who have entered a spiral of drug addiction. One of so many young people who moved on to hard drugs through their use of legal medication. He is one of the few who can say he has won his battle. At least for now.

When Anson talks about it, the tone of his voice wavers. “I can’t say that I am completely clean even today, but my goal is to find a balance.” And sometimes “I still use marijuana-based medication to avoid a relapse.” Anson is the victim of an epidemic that cannot be understood by simply criminalising drug use. To understand overdose episodes is to understand that the keyword first and foremost here is, in fact, painkillers. Since the mid-1990s doctors in America were advised to combat physical illnesses with tablets, not therapies ranging from Xanax to Oxycontin, an extremely powerful painkiller produced by the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma. “Society would tell us that feeling pain, even at its weakest, was not acceptable.” And until 2004, according to data collected for the book Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, by journalist Sam Quinones, an Oxycontin representative could earn up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses, in a multimillion-dollar sales market.

Figures show that the number of people in the United States, who have used prescribed opioids for non-medical reasons at least once, reached 25 million. Furthermore, in 2017, opioids were prescribed to 57 Americans in every 100, according to data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. And at least 218,000 people died of overdoses from drugs such as Oxycontin, from 1999 to 2017. “The issue has never been addressed using education and foresight,” says Anson heatedly.

“If you use heroin, you are considered a criminal to be marginalised.”

Between February and April, members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma were sued by attorneys general in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Utah as jointly responsible for the current opioid epidemic – an accusation denied by the family and still to be proven in the relevant setting. Meanwhile top executives of Insys Therapeutics, a manufacturer of a fentanyl-based painkiller, were sentenced in early May on charges of bribing doctors to prescribe the drug, even to patients who did not have enough symptoms to be taking it.

These are just two of the cases that have incited public opinion on the subject. Though it remains unclear how this will play out in the courtrooms, the effects of painkillers on the streets of the Midwest are all too clear, and they are giving the bill to people who became addicted years ago. “The government has cracked down on prescriptions but, because of this, people are resorting first to pills with a higher dosage to ease the pains of their addiction then to the black market.” Eric Yazel is a doctor and has worked for years in Jeffersonville, a city in the in the heart of Clark County, in the far south of Indiana, bordering New Albany and Kentucky. He commits himself to 80 hours a week, dividing his time between the emergency room and the Turning Point medical centre, a public residence that offers 30-day treatment programmes to support drug addicts. He is a coordinator at LifeSpring, a day centre open to drug abusers. He teaches at Louisville University Hospital and is the backbone of the Clark County Coalition, which meets every Monday at the Pearl Street Game & Coffee House, just down from Clark Memorial Bridge, which stands on the Ohio River and links Indiana to Kentucky. “We need to win the cultural battle by talking to patients and parents: simply handing out punishments does not solve anything,” explains Eric. A difficult challenge in states where “it is enough to have an empty syringe in your car to be arrested.”

In Jefferson, within the rooms of the medical facilities, Eric has seen dozens of young people like Anson – and the problem is still very much present even today. In 2009, the total number of overdose victims in Indiana was 903. In 2017 it doubled to 1852, 327 of which were from heroin. “It’s mainly because of fentanyl” says Anson. A tasteless and odourless opioid 100 times stronger than moringa and used by drug dealers to cut heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine, it can cause instant death to anyone who takes it. After the crackdown on prescriptions for pills, heroin mixed with fentanyl has become enticing in the eyes of many. “More powerful than Oxycontin and less expensive than Xanax,” says Anson. It’s also easier to find and less complicated to take.

While in Italy we are still debating legal cannabis, local provincial streets are also discovering fentanyl. Since October 2018, a worrying trend is growing. In October 2018 there were 6 arrests for trafficking fentanyl patches in the province of Cosenza, along with 20 grams seized in Rome and 2 grams in Cinisello Balsamo, Milan. There was a further arrest, in April, of a 42-year-old in Salò who was caught with 23 grams of fentanyl in his house and 1,400 euros in cash linked to their sale. To grasp the disturbing potential of this market in Italy, understanding what is happening in America is useful, particularly in the Midwest where finding a cocktail of drugs is so easy.

For US investigators, the rule for intercepting hard drugs is always the same: follow the money.

For the last twenty years, drug dealers have worked hard to divert the attention of authorities. The Xalisco Boys have become particularly famous throughout the United States for their delivery system. The Mexican group, named after their small hometown of Xalisco, are one of the largest producers of so-called “black heroin.”

The leaders of these families have in fact invented a heroin delivery system by car, predicting the era of the gig economy. The strength of this system was its ability to reproduce. The police put ten drivers in jail? Ten more appear. Investigators stop the leaders of one cell? They are replaced by a new one in a matter of weeks. On 12th June 2000, a gigantic operation by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), “Operation Tar Pit”, busted the system open and removed the advocates who introduced it. But even today, the heirs of the Xalisco Boys continue to perform at full capacity.

And for Midwest consumers, like Anson, the rule is similar to that of investigators but with a different target follow the river. Follow the Ohio River. Along its banks, which flow through Kentucky and Ohio, West Virginia and Indiana, just 8 dollars are enough to buy a ‘bag’ (a dose of heroin). Careful looks are exchanged any time and any place, whether buying or selling, in this forgotten part of America: in public car parks and petrol stations, in front of motel rooms and close to schools, behind churches and in front of rehabilitation centres. Drug dealers await the release of former drug addicts and try to send them straight back into oblivion. From the north of Indiana down to the south, where goods on their way from Mexico end up on the Indiana streets, having been sent to downtown Louisville, Kentucky; from the west to the east, affected by Ohio’s cities such as Columbus.

“But the decision to stop using is down to those who started in the first place.” Lisa Livingston is the founder of the Breakaway facility. With a past as a drug addict and a fearful present, Lisa became a court case after the Indiana Supreme Court revised a previous ruling that would have sentenced her to 30 years in prison for drug possession. In 2017, she opened the residence: two houses over two storeys, located along a tree-lined avenue in New Albany, a few kilometres from Kentucky. “A house for women, run by those who have quit,” explains Lisa. In the first house are residents who must complete a 6-month programme to receive the diploma confirming they are sober. In the second one, by contrast, are a group who have finished their journey. The programme involves 14 women and costs $100 a week: “I can’t say that we get anything out of it financially. Without private fundraising we would have closed a long time ago.”

Breakaway offers an alternative to those who are looking for a second life, whether on probation or not. “The path is hard, but we open up means to get them a job,” says Lisa. There are very young people like Carmada, 19, who started on Xanax at 11 and moved to methamphetamine at the age of 14, before switching to heroin. On probation, she was arrested for illegal drug possession. “My whole family is addicted to drugs. I had to choose between them and me.” Autumn, on the contrary, is 24 years old. Drugs took away all her teeth. She apologises because “I can’t speak very well anymore.” She knows that her dream of becoming a nurse in the future will be difficult to achieve. Not everything works out amongst the graduates of Breakaway. The two houses are dedicated to Carrie, who died at 35 years of age from an overdose, shortly after graduating in 2018. And Nicole, who was killed at 30 by a dose of heroin after weeks of abstinence. “We are aware that once is enough to relapse,” says Lindsey who, at the age of 23, tried everything: pills at 13, methamphetamine at 18, heroin at 22.

“I want a normal life now.”

Indiana has only recently opened its eyes to profiles like Anson and Lindsey. “Really only since middle-class people started dying of overdoses,” explains Eric, who in the Clark County Coalition works alongside educators and psychologists, pastors and social workers, lawyers and doctors, and even county judges. Brad Jacobs has been developing a programme called Clark County Addiction Treatment and Support (CCATS) for just over a year, allowing people arrested for illegal drug possession to enter a programme to integrate back into society. “85% of those I see in court go back to prison for drug possession shortly after their first release,” explains Jacobs. That’s why a project like CCATS is precious. Programme participants really rely on centres such as Lifespring, where Eric works: “In 2016, in Clark County alone, there were 89 deaths by overdose,” he recalls. It was the year when the spotlight of public opinion shone again on the Midwest: “It’s not only the homeless dying of drug overdoses, it’s also middle-class millennials: children of doctors and grandchildren of plumbers, builders and teachers, friends of professors and entrepreneurs.”

In Clark County, thanks to the established educational programmes and to an increase in federal funds, there has been a 40% decline in overdose cases over the past three years. However, in the other Clark Counties of America, what patients like Anson and Lindsey and experts like Judge Jacobs and Dr. Eric care about is that an educational process always prevails over criminalisation. Because heroin addicts are people to care for. “We are all different,” Anson repeats, embracing his little son. “We have come a long way, but the system must understand that we are human beings. We need to work quickly.”

L'articolo From medicine to drugs: no turning back proviene da InsideOver.

“‘Breaking Bad’ Style Outdoor Meth Lab Uncovered on London’s leafy Hampstea Heath,” says The Sun on September 15, 2018. Europe is seeing increasing headlines of this type in most of the countries in Western Europe and all of them in Eastern Europe.

Methamphetamine Use across Europe Based on Wastewater Analysis Source: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction

The World Drug Report of 2017 documents the rising use of methamphetamines in the UK, and across Western and Eastern Europe. The chart above shows the major centres of drug use (based) on wastewater analysis. The UK is not included. But another report shows that about 10 per cent of the UK population from the ages of 16 to 24 have tried meth.

Here’s the personal side of the story:

“I was first introduced to crystal meth when I was 25, and initially it was just another substance to add to the mix,” writes a former methamphetamine addict in London.

“The London gay scene had become raw. I found myself submerged in a scene with many people smoking crystal meth. The apps were awash with the offers of sex and ‘slamming’ parties (injecting crystal meth and having sex with unkowns), most of which lasted the majority of the weekend. I quickly embraced this new era. Being part of this new and hedonistically exciting ‘chemsex’ world was fun at first, but at the same time extremely dangerous. People didn’t seem to care about each other, who they slept with or, more importantly, about themselves.”

ChemSex is the new abnormal, and it’s building demand from all the new meth labs that are springing up in Western Europe. Once the cheap drug used mostly in Eastern Europe, now even Switzerland has a rising number of meth labs linked to prostitution, but also to a new kind of sexual experience.

Thai prostitutes who reached Eastern Europe, with most in the Czech Republic, brought meth with them – it is sadly popular in Southeast Asia. Their clients took the practice with them all over Europe, and demand rose as the weird ChemSex high took off all over Western Europe. As demand rose, so did the number of meth labs, which are very cheap and easy to start up. But the price of the drug rose steadily on the back of the increasing popularity of this new abnormal.

Meth kills

But meth kills. It’s that simple. It makes no difference if you shoot it or sniff it; your body will suffer devastating damage within months, your teeth will fall out, gradually your cardiovascular system will decay, you lose weight and soon after you die.

So ChemSex isn’t about life. It’s about death. And it’s spreading like a disease across the UK and Europe. “We are seeing an increasing numbers of methamphetamine consumers in the context of ChemSex, largely with men,” reports a spokesperson for the addiction recovery facility Zentrum für Suchtmedizin in Zurich, in an interview with Gli Occhi della Guerra.

Spain is seeing an rising epidemic of meth use and the meth labs that feed it; as you can see from the chart above, Germany has cities where the meth use has become epidemic. “Police in Malaga dismantle ‘Breaking Bad’ style Meth Lab.”

Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia are the cities with the highest European rates of illicit drug use to enhance sexual pleasure, a trend health experts say greatly exacerbates STD and HIV transmission. According to research at Madrid’s University Hospital, between 29 and 37 per cent of people taking part in ChemSex in Spain are HIV positive.

The problem is that having sex with unknowns under the influence of meth makes you do dangerous things, like forgetting to use protection. It also encourages getting violent. And the risk of contracting AIDS is extremely high, as the Spanish research shows. According to a study published in the BMJ, those who engage in ChemSex run a 30 per cent greater risk of contracting AIDs than other gay males.

And, in Germany, as the chart shows, the trend is just as alarming. “People want to test their boundaries with drugs, and overcome them,” says one Berliner, to get away from the normality and boredom of the day-to-day grind. The drugs help them to become intimate and trusting, or to get over shame.” Meth takes away the inhibitions and represses fears of risks.

As the chart shows, is the situation very different in France, especially in the Paris area. “Le chemsex, une pratique dangereuse,” warns the newspaper Le Figaro on May 9, 2018. “It was a great high,” writes one French addict. After two years of using meth, I cannot live without it and you cannot imagine how it takes control of a person’s life. My physical health is ravaged…I hope someday I will get away from it…”

L'articolo ChemSex Drives ‘Breaking Bad’ Meth Labs Across Europe and the UK proviene da InsideOver.

Adam Shay loved to paint, just like Karen Goodwin. They even received an award at the same invitational art show, albeit 21 years apart. A mutual acquaintance, a former brother-in-law, is another uncanny connection between the two. And then there was their shared enemy: substance addiction. For Adam, it was a slippery slope from prescription painkillers to heroin; alcohol was Karen’s demon. Now, despite no familial relation, they share flesh and blood – Adam’s kidney and pancreas live on inside Karen.

Adam Shay was 21-years-old when he died of a drug overdose in his hometown of Mentor, Ohio. He was a victim of the US’s spiralling opioid crisis, which – five years on from his death – continues to worsen. Just weeks before his passing, Adam had signed up to be an organ donor, a decision that would include him in what some call the crisis’s silver lining – the surge of organ transplants from drug-deceased donors.

“I was actually the second person on the waiting list,” says Karen, a mother of one. The patient above her refused Adam’s “gift of life”, as she puts it, because his drug use made him a ‘high risk’ donor. Karen’s time was running short, but it wasn’t medical urgency alone that made her accept. “At the time I was 13 years clean and sober. I thought that receiving a pancreas and kidney from someone who had battled addiction and lost was meant to be”.

America’s opioid epidemic kills some 60,000 a year – far more than gun violence or traffic accidents. So grave is the crisis that it has contributed to three consecutive years of falling US life expectancy, experts say. But the unique physical circumstances of drug related deaths has offered hope to those languishing on the 120,000-strong transplant waiting list.

Overdoses tend to kill by starving the brain of oxygen, which, assuming the victim is hospitalised in good time, prevents their internal organs deteriorating too quickly. Couple this with the fact opioid users tend to be younger and otherwise healthy, it’s little wonder the number of overdose donors has increased more than twelve-fold since 2000.

But there remains a stigma around transplants from opioid victims, says Dr. Ann Woolley of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts, who’s authored a new report on the subject. Fears that their organs could carry blood-borne diseases like hepatitis C – which is associated with needle sharing – shouldn’t prevent their use in transplants, Dr. Woolley argues. “From our experience as well as from national analyses of transplant outcomes in the US, drug intoxication should not exclude [drug users] from being potential suitable organ donors,” she told Il Giornale.

In Karen’s case doctors rigorously tested the organs, allaying her fears of infection – and, as she frankly acknowledges, she would “have died without a transplant much quicker”. The fact that a would-be donor is registered as ‘high risk’ shouldn’t deter those in need, she argues, pointing out that petty crime offences can land someone in the bracket. Besides, contracting disease from organ donation is uncommon and there’s a high chance that any transferred illness would be treatable, Karen says.

This is a view shared by more and more clinicians. Between 2014 and 2017 the number of transplanted organs testing positive for hepatitis C increased by some 172%, the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) reported. This, in part, was a response to the availability of powerful new antiviral medication that can rid the body of transferred infection after the operation is complete.

Dr Robert Montgomery, a transplant surgeon himself, is living testament to this. Suffering a terminal cardiac condition, Montgomery accepted a drug user’s heart that carried the hepatitis C virus. “I could have stayed in the hospital for months or even a year. You have to find a similarly sized person and the same blood group and there’s just not that many hearts available,” he said. As expected, Montgomery contracted hepatitis C – but after an intensive course of medication he was free of it just two months later.

Longer term, the outlook is good too. Dr Josef Stehlik of the University of Utah Health Sciences Center studied the recovery and survival rates of drug-related organ transplants. Little difference was found between these patients and those of more conventional donors, he told Il Giornale, noting that his “data would indicate [drug users’] organs are safe to transplant and likely to provide opportunity for many years of life for the recipients”.

For her part, Karen says she feels “incredible” five years on from the operation. She struggled to walk just ten paces prior to her transplant – now she travels all over the US and enjoys off-roading adventures and ziplining. “Immediately after my transplant it was like this fog I had been in for so long was gone,” she recalls. “Now my muscles don’t ache, I have more energy, and everyday is absolutely amazing and wonderful simply because I get to wake up!”

One thing she’ll never do is forget the human cost of her recovery. After the procedure, Karen connected with Adam’s family. From his mother Marlene, Karen learnt that he had been in and out of rehab prior to his death. Long battles with addiction can emotionally deplete a victim’s family, compounding their grief when their loved one passes. But amidst their sorrow, the Shays found gratitude. “Adam’s family actually thanked me for accepting his organs,” Karen says. “I didn’t understand it at first, but they said it means so much just to know that his last act on Earth was not that he was an addict or another number added to the list of ODs. He was a hero”.

Every year, Karen gives Marlene a coin to mark both her own and Adam’s sobriety. Talking about him regularly is important to them both – that way, “he will never be forgotten,” she says. And every so often, they volunteer together at the local organ procurement branch. To those thinking of becoming donors, Karen’s message is clear: do it. “We can all be heroes. We never know when our time to leave this world will come. I’m sure Adam didn’t expect to die at the age of 21, but because of him, I wake up grateful every morning”.

L'articolo The Gift of Life: Organ Donation Amid America’s Drug Crisis proviene da InsideOver.

When the audio clip of Ekramul Haque being shot dead on May 26th 2018 went viral online, it did two things.

First, it put on record the horrific reality of Bangladesh’s extra judicial killings.

The sounds of a wailing wife and children witnessing their husband and father being shot dead on the other end of the line, the repeat gunshots by a remorseless paramilitary unit and the groans of an innocent man begging for his life and telling his killers they’ve got the wrong guy. It’s a set of sounds that once played, simply cannot be unheard.

Second, the tape has, for the first time, made the Bangladesh government set up a formal commission of inquiry into unlawful killing by law enforcement.

As per official numbers, in the barely two months from April and May 2018, 157 people have been gunned down by the police and paramilitary in what they refer to as ‘crossfire’. Scores more have been picked up for questioning, only to then disappear or be detained indefinitely without charge.

The Killing of Ekramul

“Ekram was called on his phone by the local police and asked to come in to discuss a case,” an aide of the police commissioner recounted. “He was a local leader who was familiar with the community. This wasn’t the first time he had been ask to aid with an investigation. Ekramul thought this would just be another routine discussion where the police and intelligence agency needed his help.”

The forty-six-year-old Ekramul was indeed a local leader – for the ruling Awami League party. He’d made his way through the party’s ranks first as a student leader and then a leader of the Jubo League (youth win of the Awami League). At the time of his killing, he was a sitting city councilor in the city’s mayoral office.

“Honestly even the police had no idea this is how it would end,” the aide said. “From what I’ve heard, the paramilitary were looking for a different person with the same first name. Ekram even told his captors this when he was taken into custody. But they thought he was lying. They’d come ready to kill.”

Though InsideOver could not independently verify the claim, the actual name of the hit list is said to have been Ekramul Hassan, not Ekramul Haque. But Haque’s captors passed this off as a clerical error and concluded the deceased was simply lying to protect his skin, and went ahead with the execution anyway.
The meeting with the commissioner, however, can be corroborated from the tape.

In the first clip, Ekramul’s wife is clearly heard saying: “Please put me through to the commissioner – I’m his wife talking – hello…is the commissioner there?”.

And Ekramul is heard telling his little daughter to go to bed as his work at the police station will take him longer than expected.

“Honestly, the police had nothing to do with this,” the aide explained. “The paramilitary and intelligence people just took charge of him the moment he stepped in. The commissioner didn’t even have a chance to talk. They drove him off and the rest we all know.”

Not just the local police, but also Bangladesh’s agency for narcotics control has distanced themselves from the killing of Ekramul.

Within hours of Ekramul’s family releasing the audio tape at a press conference and challenging the agencies to prove their claim that he was an armed and dangerous drug dealer, the Department of Narcotics Control issued a statement saying: “We did not have any file on Mr. Haque and we’re unaware of any record of his involvement in drug dealing.”

Even the General Secretary of the Awami League, Obaidul Quader, grudgingly admitted that: “One or two mistakes can occur during ongoing anti-narcotics investigations.”

“Ekramul’s brother Ashraful worked with me in our campaigns against addiction,” Rashed Didarul, an anti-drug campaigner in the town of Cox’s Bazar recounted. “At one point in his life he was an addict, but later recovered under my care and was actively support of Ekramul. He actually worked alongside me in the USAID backed deaddiction and anti-drug program. It is just absurd to claim that this family was involved in the Ya ba (Methamphetamine-caffeine) trade.”

The Crossfire Doctrine

In all of the hundred and fifty-seven cases, the three agencies – the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), the Bangladesh Police and the Detective Branch – have claimed the men were killed in crossfire.

The agencies conducted a raid, the agents were fired upon and the men who died, died due to this retaliatory fire done in self-defense. This has been the standard line of explanation for all of the encounters. But the evidence to back this claim up has at best been thin if not outright dubious.

They tried something similar in Ekram’s case, but have thus far failed to make a convincing case. There are multiple witnesses who saw him unarmed and come in entirely voluntarily. As for the tape, the RAB have said they’re probing its authenticity – making the implication that it was doctored in order to discredit the drug war. No follow up statements were issued thereafter.

“This is no war,” Nur Khan put it bluntly. “Let’s just call it what it is – extra judicial killings carried out in cold blood by government forces.”

Nur is a human rights activist who runs the Human Rights Support Society in Dhaka. He’s been documenting extra-judicial killings and providing legal and logistical support to those wrongfully targeted by the government.

In May 2014, Nur himself narrowly escaped abduction by the intelligence agency. He was seen as a troublemaker who was talking too much.

“Let’s assume for argument’s sake that these people who’ve been killed were drug dealers,” Nur continued. “Does that make it right to shoot them dead without due process and access to legal recourse? Is that the law of the land? And this claim of crossfire is patently bogus. Even the RAB claims to have found just self-made guns and a few Ya ba pills on the bodies of these people. Let’s say the several witnesses who saw these being planted on dead bodies were all lying. Even then…even then…tell me, who in their right mind, armed with a shabby revolver engages in standoff with a team of military personnel armed with assault rifles?”

Extra Judicial Killings as State Policy

Even though the Bangla drug war has been likened to what Filipino president Duterte Rodrigo has been doing in his country, the crossfire doctrine isn’t necessarily taken from him. Bangladesh’s present government has been using extra-judicial killings as state policy since well before this drug war.

Ever since the attack at the Holey Artisan bakery in July 2016, extra-judicial killings have virtually replaced regular investigative and police work. Brute force has gone from being the last resort in law enforcement to becoming the weapon of choice in all matters from fighting Islamists to quelling student protests.

Soon after taking office in 2009, the incumbent government enacted the Anti-Terrorism Act with a claim that it would be used to quell Islamist tendencies. Despite widespread international criticism, the Act kept the definition of terrorist and terrorism vague and wide open. Bolstered by the successes of the War Crimes Tribunal that sentenced to death past Islamists who had collaborated with the Pakistani army in 1971, the terror act was amended in 2012 and sweeping powers were given to the State and the paramilitary to execute and detain suspects without trial.

In 2016, bypassing the legislature, the prime minister’s office signed executive orders that gave paramilitaries and special units of the civilian police large, unaudited budgets, and absolute autonomy of operations was additionally given. These measures essentially allowed the agencies to operate without any fear of judicial or executive oversight and to kill with impunity.

A host of human rights bodies like the HRW, as well as foreign embassies have raised concerns about the Bangladesh government’s trigger-happy ways. In April 2017, the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights expressly named the Bangladesh Police; Rapid Action Battalion, as being responsible for the extra judicial killings and enforced disappearances. The report says:

The Committee is concerned at the reported high rate of extrajudicial killings by police officers, soldiers and Rapid Action Battalion force members and at reports of enforced disappearances, as well as the excessive use of force by State actors. The Committee is also concerned that the lack of investigations and accountability of perpetrators leave families of victims without information and redress. It is further concerned that domestic law does not effectively criminalize enforced disappearances, and that the State party does not accept that enforced disappearances occur.

Political Fallout

2018 is the year of the general election in Bangladesh. The drug wars have stirred yet another violent complication in the already turbulent cauldron of Bangla politics.

“Yes, Ya ba addiction is a huge problem in this country and is serving to destroy the people’s future,” A. Hassan, the general secretary of the student union of the Bangladesh National Party –the principal opposition party, said in an interview. “And no, there can be no tolerance to the spread of this. But the question is what does zero tolerance mean? How should that zero tolerance be put into practice? Do you just go shooting people dead or do you actually create a framework of laws and launch awareness programs to wean addicts away?”

According to many observers—including members of parties who are in alliance with the Awami League—the incumbent government has hit a massive low in popularity. And the drug wars are in part a desperate attempt to be seen as assertive, in order to win over voters.

“The crossfires occuring in the name of the war on drugs are also a ruse to carry on with the political witch-hunt which this government has perfected,” Hassan continues. “The data is out there for everyone to see. Ya ba boomed in this country after the Awami League took power in 2009. And it’s an open secret that their leaders are the kingpins of the trade. But have you seen a single major dealer being shot dead? Akramul Haque was an exception and he too was at best a mid-level leader of the League. All the others killed have been just small fry—the mules who ferry Ya ba for minimum wage.”

In May this year, a secret report from the Department of Narcotics Control got leaked to the press. And it named Abdur Rahman Bodi – the Awami League’s member of parliament from Teknaf and longtime political strongman—along with his cousins and step-brothers as being the godfathers of the trade. They were the main gatekeepers of the stock coming in from Myanmar the report said.

In stark contrast with the alacrity with which the agencies have killed other people, the government dragged its feet in acting against Bodi or his family.

After trying to bury the story for a few weeks and threatening journalists who had reported the news of the leaked report, in early June, he fled to Saudi Arabia while his cousin and lieutenant Mong Mong Sen took shelter in Myanmar.

L'articolo Caught in the Crossfire proviene da InsideOver.