Pegu Yoma
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| Pegu Yoma | |
|---|---|
| HistoricalGrown here in the past; no recent record either way | |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 18.85, 96.03 |
| Country | Myanmar |
| Provinces/States | Bago Region,Naypyidaw Union Territory |
| Area | 12,600 km² |
| Growing history | |
| Grown | until 1979[1] |
| Earlier names | Pegu Yoma; Pegu Yomas; the Yomas |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Pegu Yoma is a historical cannabis growing region on the Pegu Yoma (Bago Yoma), the low forested range between the valleys of the Ayeyarwady and the Sittaung, mostly in Bago Region, Myanmar. The district gazetteers of Toungoo (1914) and Tharrawaddy (1920) stated that Karens grew ganja in remote parts of the range, from where it was carried down and sold in the plains.[2][3] In November 1921 a combined drive by the five districts bordering the range "destroyed numerous plantations",[4] and Burmese police destroyed plantations in the Pegu Yoma again in 1975 and 1979.[5][1]
Geography
The Pegu Yoma is a chain of hills running north and south from about 17°20′ to 20° N and forming the watershed between the Ayeyarwady and the Sittaung. Its northern end lies in the old Yamethin district and its southern ridges run into Rangoon, where one of its last mounds carries the Shwedagon Pagoda. The chain is about 200 miles (320 km) long. Its crests divided the districts of Magwe, Thayetmyo, Prome, Tharrawaddy and Hanthawaddy on the west from Yamethin, Toungoo and Pegu on the east. The highest point is only about 2,000 feet (610 m) above the sea, but the hills are steep and rugged. Their forests are rich in teak, which was floated down the Myitmaka to Rangoon. In 1908 most of the people of the Yoma were Karens, with a few villages of Chins in the north.[6]
In Toungoo district the Pegu Yoma rose on the west of the Sittaung valley. It climbed more gradually than the ranges east of the river and seldom reached 2,000 feet, but the country was irregular and barren and was probably crossed less often by travellers and traders than the eastern ranges.[7] Most of the district's Karens lived east of the Sittaung, but they had a number of settlements among the foothills of the Pegu Yoma.[8] On the other side of the range the Pegu Yoma formed the eastern boundary of Tharrawaddy district and was its only considerable hills. The range's highest point lay in that district, at 17°55′ N. The slopes were steep and the valleys sharply cut, so that the range was hard to cross. A few pedlars took five or six days to reach Pegu district with their wares.[9]
The region is drawn on the range itself: the land above about 120 m between the two valleys from 17°20′ to 20° N, about 12,600 km². Its northern end lies in Naypyidaw Union Territory.
Cultivation history
The Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94
British Burma prohibited the sale and cultivation of ganja in 1873.[10] J. S. D. Fraser, the Deputy Commissioner of Pegu, told the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission that before the prohibition the plant was reported to have been cultivated in small quantities in his district "near the Yomas and Shwegyin district". It used to be grown on slopes at the foot of rising ground, on hills low enough to give enough moisture but not too much, with the plants set about three feet apart. He knew of no cultivation in the district at the time. The preparations of the drug had formerly been made by "Karens and Talaings" (Mon). The Karens, he said, gave ganja to their elephants. Fraser had no personal experience of the drug and framed his answers from enquiries among officials and residents of the district.[11]
Major W. F. H. Grey, the Deputy Commissioner of Toungoo, answered "No" when the Commission asked whether the plant was cultivated in the province. He had heard that it was sometimes cultivated in toungyas (jungle clearings) in Prome district, but that the practice was uncommon.[12]
Ganja from the Yomas, 1899–1920
In 1899 a large traffic in ganja was carried on in Toungoo district. The District Superintendent of Police believed the drug to be "systematically cultivated at out-of-the-way places at the foot of the Yomas". The Deputy Commissioner was not convinced: "If ganja is produced in the district, I shall no doubt hear definitely about it."[13] In 1902 the railway police seized 12,256 tolas of ganja, almost all of it "brought from the Pegu Yomas by Natives of India".[14] The next year Toungoo district seized 15,088 tolas. Smuggling in the district was mostly confined to the railway towns of Oktwin and Pegu, the latter "noted for such smuggling on account of its proximity to the Yomas". In Henzada district the police reported a large trade with Tharrawaddy district carried on by "natives of India who purchase it from Shans in the Pegu Yomas".[15]
The Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908) wrote of Toungoo district that "ganja grows wild on the Pegu Yoma" and was brought down by agents who sold it illicitly to customers on the railway line.[16] The district gazetteer of 1914 placed the growing in the district's western hills, on the Pegu Yoma side of the Sittaung valley,[7] "where it is grown, in remote spots by Karens". The ganja was carried down by Burman traders and sold in the plains. Several thousand tolas were seized every year. The 166 offences detected in 1909–1913 were more than for any other liquor or drug except opium. The gazetteer said that consumption was "confined to natives of India".[2]
In Tharrawaddy district, on the western side of the range, about 800 seers of the hemp plant were seized in 1912–13 "where it was being grown in the hills".[17] The gazetteer of Pegu district (1917) thought that ganja had "probably been grown in small quantities in the Yomas since early times" and that small supplies reached Rangoon by way of Kyauktaga.[18]
The Tharrawaddy district gazetteer (1920) wrote that ganja was "said to be indigenous in the Yoma". At first it was collected only as a medicine for the elephants working in the teak forests, "but the Karens, finding that there is a market for it, have taken to cultivating it in outlying parts of the Yoma". It was brought down in baskets and sold to Indians who came up to Gyobingauk, Zigon and Nattalin for it. The Excise staff made raids every year and had found plantations of about an acre each.[3] Karen villages had stood for generations in the Yomas along the headwaters of the district's streams.[19]
The drives of the 1920s
In 1921 the Excise Department made "a determined attempt" to find "the plantations in the Pegu Yoma from which ganja is produced". Officers of the surrounding districts made a number of large seizures. A combined drive through the hills in November 1921 by the five districts bordering the Pegu Yoma "proved a great success and destroyed numerous plantations". The province seized 932,632 tolas of ganja in 1921–22, more than four and a half times the amount of the year before.[4] No drive of the same kind was made in 1922–23. Seizures fell heavily.[20] In 1923–24 a raid on hemp cultivation in Tharrawaddy succeeded, but two officers died of malaria "contracted in the hills".[21]
Plantations destroyed, 1975 and 1979
Burmese newspapers of 3 November 1975 reported mid-October raids by the police on "known" ganja plantations in the Pegu Yoma area, in which eleven acres holding more than 20,000 plants were destroyed. The raids were part of a larger operation that had already seized 281 kg of marijuana and destroyed another 35 acres of plants.[5] As the operation went on, 10,685 plants were destroyed in the Pegu Yoma area in the last week of November.[22] In 1979 state and division police forces, working with local people under the guidance of the local party and People's Councils, destroyed "clandestine marijuana plantations" in the Irrawaddy Delta, the eastern part of the Western Yoma and "the eastern and western part of Pegu Yoma".[1]
Growing Areas
No growing areas documented yet.
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
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See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Joint Publications Research Service (29 November 1979). Worldwide Report: Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (FOUO 50/79) (Report). Foreign Broadcast Information Service. "Near 4,000 acres poppy fields destroyed in three months", from The Working People's Daily (Rangoon), 2 November 1979, pp. 1, 8. JPRS L/8789 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Swithinbank, B. W., ed. (1914). Burma Gazetteer: Toungoo District. Volume A. Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma. p. 66 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Grantham, S. G.; McDowall, R. G.; Swithinbank, B. W., eds. (1920). Burma Gazetteer: Tharrawaddy District. Volume A. Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma. pp. 93–94 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Government of Burma (1923). Report on the Administration of Burma for the Year 1921–22 (Report). Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma. paras. 118 and 232, pp. 69, 135 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 United States Embassy, Rangoon (15 November 1975). Joint Weeka #42 (Diplomatic cable). United States Department of State. section 2, item 7, "Narcotics". Rangoon 3168 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ "Pegu Yoma". The Imperial Gazetteer of India. Vol. XX (New ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1908. pp. 99–100 – via Digital South Asia Library.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Swithinbank, B. W., ed. (1914). Burma Gazetteer: Toungoo District. Volume A. Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma. pp. 1–2 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Swithinbank, B. W., ed. (1914). Burma Gazetteer: Toungoo District. Volume A. Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma. p. 19 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Grantham, S. G.; McDowall, R. G.; Swithinbank, B. W., eds. (1920). Burma Gazetteer: Tharrawaddy District. Volume A. Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma. pp. 4–5 – 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. XVI, "Provincial systems examined", paras. 692–695, pp. 338–342 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Mr. J. S. D. Fraser, Deputy Commissioner, Pegu". 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. 16, pp. 387–389 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Major W. F. H. Grey, Deputy Commissioner, Toungoo". 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. 8, p. 383 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Report on the Police Administration of Burma for the Year 1899 (Report). Rangoon. 1900. Section XIII, para. 62, p. 31 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Report on the Police Administration of Burma for the Year 1902 (Report). Rangoon. 1903. Section XXXVII, para. 80 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Report on the Police Administration of Burma for the Year 1903 (Report). Rangoon. 1904. para. 44 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ "Toungoo District". The Imperial Gazetteer of India. Vol. XXIII (New ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1908. p. 431 – via Digital South Asia Library.
- ↑ Government of Burma (1914). Report on the Administration of Burma for the Year 1912–13 (Report). Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma. para. 146, p. 44 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Page, A. J., ed. (1917). Burma Gazetteer: Pegu District. Volume A. Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma. p. 106 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Grantham, S. G.; McDowall, R. G.; Swithinbank, B. W., eds. (1920). Burma Gazetteer: Tharrawaddy District. Volume A. Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma. p. 50 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Government of Burma (1924). Report on the Administration of Burma for the Year 1922–23 (Report). Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma. para. 152, p. 88 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Government of Burma (1925). Report on the Administration of Burma for the Year 1923–24 (Report). Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma. para. 140, p. 73 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ United States Embassy, Rangoon (24 December 1975). Joint Weeka #49 (Diplomatic cable). United States Department of State. item 5, "Narcotics: Police Actions". Rangoon 3622 – via Internet Archive.