Khun Sa's old village may become a tourist attraction

[dirtydog]

DEVELOPMENT DRUG LORD'S FORMER HOME
Khun Sa's old village may become a tourist attraction
SUBIN KHEUNKAEW

Chiang Rai _ At least three investors are trying to convince local authorities to turn a northern border village which was once home to late drug warlord Khun Sa and his troops into a tourist attraction. However, local authorities are still reluctant to agree to the idea, fearing the village's history will be distorted by investors, who may focus only on their own benefits.

Apinand Apinandtherdthai, the kamnan of tambon Therd Thai in Chiang Rai's Mae Fa Luang district, said since the death of Khun Sa late last month several investors had approached local authorities to develop Ban Therd Thai, formerly known as Ban Hin Taek, and renovate Khun Sa's former military camp and make it a tourist attraction.

In 1982 the Prem Tinsulanonda government launched a military offensive against the drug warlord, forcing Khun Sa and his troops to leave their bastion at Ban Hin Taek, where they had stayed for many years.

The camp and living quarters of Khun Sa's troops were still in good condition. Only a gun turret, underground bunkers and trenches were partly damaged and needed to be restored.

Paintings and photos of Khun Sa, the former leader of the Shan United Army who was also known as Chang Chi Fu, have been shown in an exhibition in the camp. There are more than 1,000 photos of military exercises by his troops in the exhibition, which have drawn a number of tourists to the village.

The village committee has a development plan for the village. Under the plan, resort hotels with 100 rooms would be built at Ban Therd Thai to accommodate tourists.

Mr Apinand said at least three investors have shown strong interest in developing the village and following the plan.

However, the village committee had yet to agree to any of the investors' bids. It fears the investors will focus mainly on making profits and ignore the culture and traditions of the locals and distort the history of the village where the former drug warlord made many contributions.

Bangkok Post

[Mid]

Khun Sa: The good things about him

No.14 - 11/2007
20 November 2007
General



In Germany, saying anything good about Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) could cost you your job.

At Ban Therdthai aka Ban Hintaek, Mae Fa Luang District, Chiangmai Province, it is the other way round. Saying anything bad about Khun Sa, ex-Mong Tai Army (MTA) leader who died on 28 October under virtual house arrest in Rangoon, could cost you a short stay at the village. Maybe a bang of the door in your face. Please find your way out of my house, Mister.

No doubt it is no sweat to find faults with Khun Sa (1934-2007). He had lots of them: assassination of several prominent Shan leaders including Zam Mong, Hseng Harn and Sai Lek, favoritism to yes-men especially those of ethnic Chinese origins, his insatiable appetite for the opposite sex, and others. His surrender in 1996 had brought a lasting disgrace to the Shans. His downfall could be traced to his ill-considered declaration of independence in 1993 after which he found himself totally surrounded by enemies where the only way out was to give himself up to the Burma Army.

But having worked with him for ten years (1985-1995) after he “borrowed” me from my late boss Gawnzerng (1926-1991), I know he had his good side.

You don’t have to look far. In some bookstores in Chiangmai, you’ll find copies of Khun Sa: His own story and his thoughts still lying around, from where one can sample how he thought about what he was doing:

• If you have your own country but not your own government, nothing you own is secure. The money you earn is for others to take and squander; the rice you grow is to feed them; the home you build is for them to burn down; your sons are to be press-ganged as their cannon fodder and porters; and your daughters are to be raped and sold as prostitutes.
• We have a population of eight million made up of one million families (eight members to a family). If each family furnishes a soldier, then we will have an armed force of one million troops and the war will be won with ease. Shouldn’t each family be responsible for contributing one soldier?
• The Soviet Union and China, with hundreds of races and tribes, succeeded in forming nations. If we, with only 26 races, cannot do it, we are unworthy of an independent state.
• Why is Burma always in turmoil? It is because the Burmese never want to elevate any race other than their own. We cannot follow the Burmese way if we wish for a peaceful and prosperous nation. We must promote races other than the Tais to become national leaders.
• The present Union of Burma can be likened to an open human hand. The seven states are the fingers and Burma a nut in the depression in the palm’s center. If every finger is strong and each act in concert with the rest, the nut can be crushed with ease.
• Poppy cultivation was terminated in China because it had its own government. By the same logic, the termination of poppies in the Shan State is inseparable with the set up of an independent Shan government. The independent Chinese government never found the need to get any urge from foreign government to do it. Neither will we.
• Our bodies are like machines, the longer we use them, the poorer their capacities become. Unlike them, our brains are like knives, the more we whet them, the sharper they become. Therefore, we can let our bodies age, but our brains, never.
• Don’t behave like drums and gongs: they make sounds only when beaten. Act like clocks: they sound off every time the need arises.
• I want to ask those people who refuse to improve themselves: Are you afraid of Shan State becoming independent?

He was also the one who introduced Shan leaders and those aspiring to be leaders Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the Chinese classic whose clear moral is that one cannot enter politics solely on the basis of lofty ideals like truth, sincerity and principles.

I have also never known any Shan leader other than him strongly exhorting the idea that the war against the Burma Army could be won without fighting. “If you don’t want to fight, you have to have a strong army,” he used to say. “On the contrary, you will have to fight all the time, if you have a weak army.”

But six months after a mutiny took place on 6 June 1995, the panicked Khun Sa accepted defeat and surrendered himself to his sworn enemy the Burma Army.

Which proved once again that to be a successful leader, big ideas are not enough. One also need a big and stout heart and Khun Sa did not have it. “His biggest fault was he did not practise what he preached,” summed up one of his cousins who had since decided to end up his days in Thailand.

Notably, among those who mourned his downfall was the late expert on Shans, Gehan Wijeyewardene, who wrote in the Thai-Yunnan Project News, June 1996:

In Burma, attention now focuses entirely on the moral force exerted by Aung San Suu Kyi. One can only hope that this will succeed. But there can be no doubt that the forcing of Khun Sa into the arms of SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council, the former name of Burma’s ruling military council) has done Burmese freedom a great disservice.

Khuensai Jaiyen

shanland.org

[Mid]

Chinese tycoon building Khun Sa museum
Tuesday, 11 January 2011

He was defeated by China, but the late Khun Sa who died in 2007 without achieving his lofty ideals is being honored by a successful young Chinese businessman, who has invested millions to construct a museum for the controversial Shan freedom fighter, according to sources from Xixuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China.



Khun Sa
(Photo: Asiaweek)

Zhao Kun, about 35, President of the Yunnan Hai Cheng Industrial Group Stock Co.Ltd., himself a native of Xixuangbanna, reportedly thinks his money is well spent for the man who had once said, “Opium is the Shans’ nuclear weapon.”

The museum site is on a 200 acre land northeast of Jinghong, the prefecture capital. “He might be a druglord,” Zhao was quoted as saying. “But not a grain of his white powder (i.e. heroin) was exported to China.”

Nevertheless, Khun Sa’s 25,000 strong Mong Tai Army, then regarded as the strongest armed opposition movement, came to the beginning of its end in 1994, when, on China’s suggestion, he moved the bulk of his troops from the Thai border in the south to the Chinese border in the north. His former closest aides say the MTA was sold off by Beijing’s agents to the Burma Army which then launched a devastating operation against it.

Khun Sa died broken-hearted in 2007 under the custody of the military security service in Rangoon. He was 73.

Zhao Kun is also planning to renovate the museum constructed by Khun Sa’s followers in Ban Hintaek aka Therd Thai, Mae Fa Luang district, Chiangrai province, Thailand.

Khun Sa aka Zhang Chifu was born of a Chinese father and Shan mother in Loimaw, one of the former three top producers of opium in 1934. He became a Burma Army backed home guard leader in 1960. The world first took notice of him when he fought against the ex-Kuomintang forces in the triangle area between Laos, Thailand and Burma in 1967, which brought about “The Golden Triangle” into a household name. In 1969, he was imprisoned in Mandalay. But five years later, he returned to freedom following a spectacular kidnapping of two Russian doctors working in Taunggyi. He surrendered in 1996 after a mutiny broke out among the ranks in the wake of his disastrous northern expedition in 1994.

For more information on the museum project, please visit 海诚集团.

shanland.org

[Mid]

No memorial to drug warlord

Even in death, Chang Chi-fu, better known as Khun Sa, is stirring controversy.

A museum was to be built in Ban Hin Taek in Mae Chan district of Chiang Rai dedicated to the life of the world's best-known drug warlord.

The village of Ban Hin Taek, now renamed Ban Therd Thai, used to be Khun Sa's military camp. Plans were afoot to make it a tourist attraction, but the attempt to build a museum to chronicle Khun Sa's life has been futile.


Khun Sa in his heyday: Still controversial

In 1982, Prem Tinsulanonda's government launched a military offensive against the ''Opium King'', forcing Khun Sa and his troops to leave their bastion at Ban Hin Taek where they had been for years.

The camp and the living quarters of the troops were still in good condition. Only a gun turret, underground bunkers and trenches were partly damaged and needed to be restored.

A source familiar with the issue said two problems _ money and political correctness _ have prevented the planned museum from materialising.

Businessmen keen to invest in a project to develop the village into a tourist attraction with the museum as its centrepiece could not come to an agreement with the local administration organisation over the economic interest to be generated by the scheme.

The project calls for a comprehensive tourism blueprint that includes the construction of resorts and accommodation.

Also, complaints have been made by critics who insisted it was inappropriate to even entertain the idea of setting up a museum devoted to the life of the ex-leader of the now-defunct Mong Tai Army rebel group.

They claimed that no monument of any kind should be built to remember a man who once said that opium was the Shan State's nuclear weapon.

However, some academics and residents have cautioned that such a museum should not be presumed to carry a negative spin. After all, a museum is where history is archived and remnants are put on display so that people can learn from them and not repeat past mistakes.

The life of Khun Sa has also drawn mixed reviews. Many loathed the warlord while others were intrigued by his stories.

Khun Sa was on the world's most wanted list for operating a vast drug-trafficking ring out of the Golden Triangle region that links Thailand, Laos and Burma.

Some of his underlings have painted a morbid picture of the drug baron. They said he deceived the Shan people when he promised their lives would be better.

They claimed Khun Sa created a false facade by saying he had campaigned for the independence of the Shan people when he was really using money for himself that had been intended to buy arms.

Khun Sa died in Rangoon in October 2007 at the age of 73. The cause of death was not known, though he had suffered from diabetes.

bangkokpost.com