Mergui
More actions
| Mergui | |
|---|---|
| ActiveRecorded as grown here since 2000 | |
| Geography | |
| Country | Myanmar |
| Province/State | Tanintharyi Region |
| Coordinates | 12.09, 99.01 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 19,000 km² |
| Terrain | Forested hills and the valleys of the Tenasserim, Lenya and Pakchan rivers; approximately Tanintharyi, Bokpyin and Kawthaung townships |
| Growing history | |
| Earlier names | Tenasserim township; Lenya and Maliwun township (Mergui district) |
| Dated news reports | 2018 |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 0 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Mergui is a cannabis growing area in Tanintharyi Region, Myanmar, in the eastern tracts of the old Mergui district along the border with Thailand. H. G. Batten, Deputy Commissioner of Mergui, told the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1893–94 that hemp had been grown for smoking in the parts of the district populated by Siamese before its cultivation was prohibited. In January 1891 he convicted a Siamese man for growing the plant in a village of the Tenasserim township "to prepare the ganja".[1] In March 2018 soldiers, police and officials destroyed marijuana plants in a village of Tanintharyi Township.[2]
Setting
Mergui district was the southernmost district of Burma. It ran south to the mouth of the Pakchan river and the Isthmus of Kra. On the east it bordered Siam.[3] The Tenasserim township was the largest in the district and the only one without a seaboard: very hilly jungle country, thinly peopled, with the Tenasserim river running through it. The Lenya river lay in the Bokpyin township, a mass of forest-clad hills. In 1901 just over half of Bokpyin's people spoke Siamese; they lived inland along the watercourses, the Karens in the hills and the Malays and most of the Burmans on the coast.[3]
The eastern boundary of the Maliwun township ran for most of its length along the Pakchan river, with the Siamese state of Renong, today's Ranong, on the other bank. The township's Siamese farmed the rice plains on the right bank of the Pakchan. Its headquarters moved in 1891 from Maliwun, a tin-mining centre on a tributary of the Pakchan, to Victoria Point. Outside Mergui town the Siamese were mostly farmers.[3]
Cultivation before the prohibition
Ganja was made contraband in Lower Burma in 1872–73.[4] Batten had come to Mergui in January 1890. He drew most of his account from Mr Leslie, an Assistant Superintendent of Police who had been in the district since 1861 and had spent most of that time on the Siamese frontier on the Pakchan.[1]
By Leslie's account, hemp was formerly grown in parts of the Tenasserim township and in "the Lenya and Maliwun township", the parts of the district populated by Siamese. It was sown and tended in clearings, in the way usual with tobacco. The Siamese cut the plants while they were in bud, before they flowered, and dried leaves, buds and stems together in the sun. The bundles were wrapped in cloth and kept for smoking, which was chiefly a habit of men. Burmans in other parts of the district grew a little hemp and mixed the dried leaf into chicken curries.[1]
Batten called the plant pi-san-bin, "the plant from which nets and ropes are made", and the drug seg-yauk.[1] In its chapter on cultivation, the Commission repeated his statement that before the prohibition the plant was cultivated in parts of the Tenasserim township.[5]
After the prohibition
Leslie told Batten that when the new law came into force in Lower Burma, "the growing of hemp on our side of the frontier practically ceased". Asked whether the plant was still cultivated, Batten answered "Not now, except secretly", and then only "to a very small extent". The Siamese man he convicted in January 1891 was convicted under the Arms Act at the same time.[1]
On the Siamese side of the frontier, Leslie said, the growing went on "to a certain extent, but not to the same extent as before", because Siamese officials, the Raja of Renong above all, discouraged it. On the British side, Batten wrote, ganja was used only by a few new arrivals from Siamese territory, who brought what they needed from across the frontier. The Subdivisional Officer at Maliwun had recently convicted a Gurkha military policeman for possessing ganja that he said came from across the river, in Siamese territory. A small illicit trade carried ganja "from Tonka and Kopa to Burmese ports" on Chinese steamers, but as far as Batten could learn none of it came into Mergui.[1] The Commission's report noted his mention of cultivation "in Siam beyond the frontier of Burma".[5] Renong now lies in the Southern Thailand growing region.
Eradication in 2018
The Karen Human Rights Group reported that on 2 March 2018 the military police of Tanintharyi Township, government officials and villagers held a "marijuana clearing event", a search for and destruction of marijuana plants, in Kyweh Htein Kon village. Soldiers of Light Infantry Battalion 561, the township's police chief and the head of a village militia took part.[2]
The Commission's doubt
Batten also reported a wild hemp, "abundant throughout" the district and dense in open spaces and clearings, which he said was not used because its leaves had "neither strength nor flavour".[1] The Commission distrusted this report. It noted that he had known the plant in Kumaon but had left that district more than 15 years before, that no other witness used the name pi-san-bin, that the alluvial loam and hot, damp, low-lying country he described were not conditions its information showed to favour hemp, and that he sent no specimens. His phrase "the cultivated variety of hemp" suggested to the Commission "some plant in which the distinction between wild and cultivated forms is more marked than is the case with Cannabis". It judged his evidence of wild growth "falling far short of proof".[6]
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
| Article | Date | Category | Locality | Plants |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| News:2018-03-02/Eradication/tatmadaw-military-police-officials-and-villagers-clear-cannabis-in-kyweh-htein-kon-tanintharyi-township | Eradication |
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Mr. H. G. Batten, Deputy Commissioner, Mergui". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. VII: Evidence of Witnesses from Bombay, Sind, Berar, Ajmere, Coorg, Baluchistan, and Burma. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. Burma witness no. 11, pp. 384–385 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Mergui-Tavoy Situation Update: Tanintharyi Township, November 2017 to March 2018". Karen Human Rights Group. 28 September 2018. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Andrew, G. P. (1912). Burma Gazetteer: Mergui District, Volume A. Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma. pp. 1–2, 7, 29–32 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. III, "The existence, prevalence, and character of the spontaneous growth", para. 73, p. 30 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. IV, "Extent of cultivation, and its tendency to increase or decrease", paras. 136–138, pp. 52–54 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. III, "The existence, prevalence, and character of the spontaneous growth", paras. 74–75 – via Internet Archive.