The Dragon Heads

Hole of Justice
by Peter Jimenea
 
Underworld Empire (Part 5)
The Chinese Warlords

                                                    

 
Gen. Li Wen-Huan, commander of the Chinese Koumintang’s (KMT) Third Army who fled from Mao Tse-tung’s Communist victory in 1949 brought with him 10,000 troops to Burma and had been a major force in the Golden Triangle for nearly four decades. (Source” Bangkok Post)

A dragon with prominence in the Golden Triangle is Kuhn Sa, a leading opium warlord in a rare 1987 picture taken by a visiting foreign newspaper reporter. With 15,000 strong Shan United Army, he controls 50% of all opium grown in the region. (Source: Asia Week)

Europe was not spared. The first Chinese dragon head is Chung Mon, a ranking member of the 14K gang, dubbed “The Unicorn” a symbol of strength and magic in the Chinese underworld. He was murdered by Triad rivals in Amsterdam, March 3, 1975. (Source: Royal Hong Kong Police)

Tse-Chiu “Eddie” Chan, an ex-Hong Kong police sergeant who became the undisputed dragon head of New York’s Chinese crime world during the late 1970s. He fled a Federal investigation in 1984, and his whereabouts are unknown. (Source: The New York Times)

Ng Sik-ho, nicknamed “Limpy” for a battered leg that resulted from a Triad fight in his youth is one of Hong Kong’s dragon heads in 1970s. He is serving a 30-year sentence for drug trafficking. (Source: South China Morning Post)

Lo Hsing-Han, a Golden Triangle drug trafficker was spared from death sentence in 1980 by Burmese President Ne Win. Released from prison, he has reestablished prominence in the opium region by commanding several thousand soldiers under the banner “Shan States Volunteer Force.” (Source: Bangkok Post)

The Ma Boys: Ma Sik-yu, dubbed “The White Powder” Ma and his brother Ma Sik-chun, “The Golden” Ma, are among the largest international heroin traffickers now living in Taiwan. Both are wanted by the police in the British colony. (Source: South China Morning Post)

Lui Lok, a former Hong Kong police sergeant, fled corruption investigations, first to Canada and then to Taiwan. He is called “the 600 million-dollar man,” the estimated size of his fortune. He is one of the forty ex-Hong Kong police millionaires living in Taiwan. (Source: South China Morning Post)

It was Gen. Li’s one-arm- chemist from Taiwan who discovered the production of the best heroin in the world – the “China White.” It is sent to the Bamboo Gang Triad (Equivalent of the CIA) in Taiwan, who in turn forwards the same to the 14K Gang in Hong Kong for distribution worldwide.

During the heroin refining process, when the narcotic starts to boil, it stinks like a rotten file of garbage. The wind can drift the noxious fumes for some distance and could cause alarm to the nearby residents. The reason probably on why some Triads have established laboratories on ocean-going yachts.

The same is true with the processing of “shabu,” the poor-man’s cocaine. In densely populated areas, it is difficult to synthesize the drugs in a kitchen refinery without a neighbor noticing it or complaining to the police. Thus, authorities have discovered and raided a lot of kitchen-type shabu labs in Metro Manila.

Hong Kong was ceded by China to the British as war reparation after the ill-equipped Chinese army was defeated in the battle dubbed “The Opium Wars.” It was also the French, the Dutch and other Western countries led by the British who doped the millions of Chinese people with opium. The Chinese Triads are now returning the favor to the West with a vengeance!

 
Last issue: The Philippine Drug Problem