wmlro.com: Malaysia finds trafficking routes

Pudu Raya is Kuala Lumpur's main bus terminal for long-distance travel. Buses are the primary mode of transport for many Malaysians.

In fact, one can travel from Singapore in the South to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand with changes only in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. That's a distance of some 2,000 kilometres. And the cost can be as little as USD30.

The borders, particularly the Malaysian / Thai border, are far less strict than airports. But the real reasons that so many use buses is low cost and city centre - city centre convenience.

Kuala Lumpur is becoming a regional hub for backpackers. The district of Tong Shin, just a few hundred metres from Pudu Raya, is seeing a boom in backpacker hostels and low-rent hotels. More than a decade ago, before a major clearance was undertaken, the Tong Shin and lower Bukit Bintang districts were KL's primary red light areas.

In the other direction, Kota Raya is also just a few hundred metres from Pudu Raya. It's the main meeting point for filipina maids in KL.

Next to Pudu Raya is where international prostitution rings house their (willing) prostitutes. There is a route. Women from Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and China all hop onto what is, effectively, a circular tour. Myanmar women join in Bangkok, along with Thai women; Laos and Cambodian women often make their way there, too. But the tour takes in the places where there are men with money: Shanghai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and then it all starts again. The girls are given a quota to meet: most of the money they earn goes to the organising gang. If they fail to meet their quota, they have to make up the money either from that which they have saved or - in a small number of cases - by finding day-time victims and robbing them. The incidence of cases in which men have been found drugged and robbed in hotel rooms, sometimes having been asleep for more than a day, has caused concern across the whole region. Illegal Chinese prostitutes have been implicated in such activity in Pudu Raya.

The ready availability of transport by bus makes it easy for someone to disappear quickly and effectively. On a bus, everyone quickly becomes anonymous. And people travelling long distances alone are the norm not the exception.

But it is the drugs smuggling routes that are causing the Malaysian authorities the most concern - and resulting in the latest crack-down.

Recently, a number of cases were discovered of a man, said to be carrying a Nigerian passport, actively recruiting women as drug couriers, despite the penalty of death for drugs trafficking. News papers and even news broadcasts have carried warning messages to women not to be taken in by such schemes.

But the rewards are, by the salary expectations of many in this part of the world, enormous.

In the west, the culture of the amah or maid is comparable only to that of the au pair, something seen as elitist. But in much of Asia Pacific, a maid is not a status symbol, it's normal for a very significant part of the population. Many maids earn very little: there is currently a debate between Indonesia and Malaysia where Indonesia wants Malaysia to apply a minimum monthly salary of MYR800 per month - about USD250 - for live-in maid: many Malaysian families are resisting. Filipinas earn a little more - but it's still rarely more than USD350 per month. In many cases almost all of that goes home to pay for family welfare and children's education. Many maids see their children for one week every two years.

So maids are becoming the target of drug runners. And the maids congregate in Kota Raya.

Last week, a maid was arrested in possession of a quantity of drugs that she is alleged to have brought in from Thailand. The rumour in the Filipina community is that she had made the trip several times before and had been careless: spending freely on clothes, handbags and shoes that no other maid could hope to afford. It's no co-incidence that KL's primary market for fake brands is right over the road from Kota Raya and close to Pudu Raya.

An old trick has just been discovered for the first time in KL: the stuffing of photograph frames with cocaine. This has been used many times into Australia, the UK and the USA. The woman arrested at Pudu Raya this week allegedly tried to smuggle 2kg of cocaine.

She had flown from Bangkok to Johannesburg, then Lima (Peru) and then to Kuala Lumpur. Her plan, police believe, was to simply get on a bus and travel back to Thailand.. The drugs, worth some USD500,000 in Malaysia, were hidden in frames stuffed in her bags. For someone on such a long journey, even one reaching its end, she was remarkably cash poor. She had just 10 Malaysian Ringgit - that's around USD2.5, 4500 Thai Bhat (that's around USD120), USD150 and 49 Peruvian Pesos.

The woman is said to be 22 years old, unmarried and about two months pregnant. Malaysian police say that they had been tipped off by Thai police that they suspected she had made two previous drugs runs.

Kuala Lumpur is also cracking down on drug running out of India - particularly fake pharmaceuticals. This trade is concentrated on the district of Brickfields - where the fast train from the airport arrives in a suburb. During the past year, several arrests have taken place and last weekend, a man was arrested at a karaoke bar on the opposite side of the city. It is alleged that he was attempting to bribe officers to release four alleged members of a Brickfields-based drugs gang arrested last week.

Given the above it may be surprising to learn that Malaysia does not have, compared to many countries, a significant domestic drugs problem. Little is produced in the country and while there are known to be several places where drugs are openly taken, the vast majority of the country is drugs-free or very nearly so. Increased intelligence gathering and surveillance has produced good results in recent years.All visitors are warned, just before airlines close the toilets for landing, that smuggling narcotics into the country is punishable by death and all sign a declaration with that warning prominently displayed; there are notices all over Malaysian airports before Customs. If anyone is stupid enough to carry drugs in, they are given ample and multiple opportunities to dispose of them before Customs.