Myanmar military helicopter crash-lands in Shan, at least four injured

A Myanmar military helicopter carrying foreign military attachés on Friday crash-landed in a village in Shan State shortly after take off on Friday. Photos: Ei Ei Toe Lwin/The Myanmar Times. Sketched by the Pan Pacific Agency.

KUTKAI, Mar 7, 2020, Myanmar Times. A Myanmar military helicopter carrying foreign military attachés on Friday crash-landed in a village in Shan State shortly after take off, injuring at least one of the diplomats and three crew members. The helicopter has just taken off in Kaungkha village in Kutkai township in Shan State when it experienced mechanical failure and had to make an emergency landing, Myanmar Times reported.

“We heard that a person was injured. We haven’t been allowed to get off the helicopter so we don’t know the details,” said Ei Ei Toe Lwin, chief of staff of The Myanmar Times who was aboard on one of the four helicopters. “The incident occurred 10 seconds after the helicopter took off.”

“I can confirm that a military attaché from Thailand sustained injuries on his hands,” she said.

The ill-fated helicopter was one of the four military helicopters that ferried journalists, diplomats and officials to a press conference in Kaungkha Village, where a huge cache of drugs and drug-making equipment were recovered earlier in the week.

Government troops conducted raids on several villages in the area and found cache of drug hoard and drug-making paraphernalia estimated to be about US$64 million (K91 billion) in at least two abandoned buildings.

Maj Gen Tun Tun Nyi, a spokesman from Tatmadaw (military) True News Team, said the helicopter ascended about 30 metres from the ground before its rotors stopped rotating.

“Due to correct decision and skills of the pilot, the helicopter landed straight,” he told reporters “Three air staff including the pilot sustained small injuries.”

“The rest of the passengers were fine,” he added. “A part of the helicopter tail blade was damaged. The military attaches are alright. They only got a bit bruised from the fall to the ground.”

Ko Linn, a local cameraman for the Singapore-based Channel News Asia (CNA), was aboard another helicopter when the accident happened.

“The engine sound in my aircraft was so loud that we couldn’t hear anything outside,” he told CNA. “But we realised something was wrong when the engine of our aircraft was turned off.”

The northern Shan State the centre of heroin and synthetic drug production in Asia as it is part of the so-called Golden Triangle, which borders Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, a lawless area where various armed ethnic groups and crime syndicates operate.

The drug haul in this week’s operations in Kutkai is the biggest in the past two years, surpassing the $64 million worth of methamphetamine and heroin seized in the same township in 2018. But no suspects were arrested in the raids.

The Tatmadaw said the operation will continue despite questions by local and international groups about why no suspects are ever arrested in the raids.

The Brussels-based security think-tank International Crisis Group said the suspects might have received advance information about the raid so they were able to flee before the troops arrived.

Among the armed groups operating in the area is the pro-government Pyithu Sit (People’s Militia), the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, the Kaungkha People’s Militia, which is allied with the Tatmadaw. The Kachin Independence Army also sometimes operates in Kutkai.

According to the Home Affairs Ministry, more than 8.7 million stimulant pills were seized in 2019.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in a report last month that the illegal trade generated billions of dollars annually.

The agency said that while opium poppy cultivation had declined steadily in the country, the production of synthetic drugs such as meth had soared, but organised crime still earns an estimated $1 billion annually from heroin.

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