ON THE MEKONG RIVER — A thin line divides tourism, trade and terror in the Golden Triangle, where the lawless borders of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet.
In Myanmar, where the jungly banks of the Mekong River vanish into the mist, lies an anarchic realm of drug smugglers, militiamen and pirates on speedboats. "I'm scared to go any further," says Kan, a 46-year-old boatman, cutting his engine as he drifts just inside Myanmar waters from Thailand. "It's too dangerous."
It was here, according to the Thai military, that 13 Chinese sailors on two cargo ships laden with narcotics were murdered in early October. It was the deadliest assault on Chinese nationals overseas in modern times. But a Reuters investigation casts serious doubts on the official account of the attack.
The Thai military says the victims were killed upriver before their ships floated downstream into Thailand. But evidence gleaned from Thai officials and unpublished police and military reports suggests that some, if not all, of the sailors were still alive when their boats crossed into Thailand, and that they were executed and tossed overboard inside Thai territory.
Their assailants remain unknown. Initially, the prime suspect was a heavily armed Mekong pirate who terrorizes shipping in Myanmar. But then the investigation turned to nine members of an elite anti-narcotics taskforce of the Thai military.
New patrols by Chinese gunboats were supposed to restore peace to the region. But a visit to the Golden Triangle also found that attacks on Mekong shipping continue.
Incongruously, just across the river from where the ill-fated ships were found moored, on the Laos side of the triangle, Reuters also discovered a vast casino complex catering to Chinese tourists. Its Chinese owner regards it as a "second homeland"; others worry it could morph into a strategic Chinese outpost.
China's Mekong ambitions
The geopolitical murder mystery is unfolding at a time when Myanmar is in the international spotlight. The country's decision last year to end a half-century of isolation by freeing political prisoners and reaching out to the West has the potential of to reshape this promising but impoverished nation and the entire region.
But the killings also underscore the backdrop of lawlessness, rebellion and international power politics bedeviling Myanmar.
The geopolitical murder mystery is set against the backdrop of Southeast Asia's famed Mekong River, which flows from the Himalayas through China, where it is called the Lancang, and into Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Sukree Sukplang / Reuters A man stands on a small boat traveling along the Mekong River in front of the Kings Roman casino opposite Sop Ruak in the Golden Triangle region.
Around 60 million people depend on the river and its tributaries for food, transport and many other aspects of their daily lives. Beijing has invested heavily in the Mekong as part of a strategy to expand its economic and diplomatic influence in Southeast Asia, dynamiting some sections to allow bigger ships to pass, streamlining import and export procedures, and improving shipping support facilities.
The Mekong is an increasingly lucrative trade route. Cargo volumes between Thailand's Chiang Saen and ports in China's Yunnan province have tripled since 2004, with about 300,000 tones of mainly agricultural goods now transported along the Mekong every year, Mekong River Commission statistics show.
All Chinese shipping on the Mekong was suspended after the October massacre, which sparked popular outrage in China, with photos of the sailors' bodies circulating widely on the Internet. Shipping resumed five weeks later, with the departure of 10 cargo boats from the Mekong port of Guanlei -- protected by heavily armed Chinese border guards on speedboats.
The patrols, ostensibly conducted with Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, are a major expansion in Beijing's role in regional security, extending its law enforcement beyond its borders, down a highly strategic waterway and into Southeast Asia. They come as the U.S. re-engages with Asia, where Thailand is one of its oldest military allies.
"This tough new China policy toward any obstacles to their Mekong commerce could in future be met with charges of gunboat diplomacy," said Paul Chambers, an American academic who co-authored "Cashing In Across The Golden Triangle" with Myanmar economist Thein Swe. "In the future, some Mekong states may increasingly turn to the U.S. to offset China's influence."
Meth madness
But as Chinese influence grows, it is encroaching on a region dominated for decades by a much more profitable trade: narcotics. The mountainous Golden Triangle is probably named after the gold once used to barter for opium. Today, Myanmar is the world's second-biggest opium producer after Afghanistan. Methamphetamine production here is soaring as well.
Even a show of strength by China hasn't tamed this wilderness. Three Myanmar soldiers were reportedly killed in December when their joint patrol with Laos clashed with armed bandits about 20 km (12 miles) upriver from the Thai border town of Sop Ruak, near the Mekong pirate Naw Kham's haunt of Sam Puu Island.
It was here that the two Chinese vessels were supposedly attacked.
China Daily / Reuters Chinese policemen in patrol boats accompany a cargo vessel along the Mekong River after departing from Guanlei port, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan province, China, in this Dec. 10, photo.
On the morning of October 5, the two cargo ships, Hua Ping and Yu Xing 8, drifted down the Mekong into Thailand. The Hua Ping was carrying fuel oil; the Yu Xing 8 had apples and garlic. Sometime after they crossed the border, the ships were boarded by an elite Thai military unit called the Pha Muang Taskforce, named after an ancient Thai warrior king. On the Yu Xing 8's blood-splattered bridge, slumped over an AK-47 assault rifle, was a dead man later identified as its captain, Yang Deyi, the taskforce said. The Hua Ping was deserted.
Aboard the two ships were 920,000 methamphetamine pills with an estimated Thai street value of $6 million.
The corpses of the 12 other crew members were soon plucked from the Mekong's swirling waters. Their horrific injuries were recorded in a Thai police report. Most victims had been gagged and blindfolded with duct tape and cloth, with their hands bound or handcuffed behind their backs. Some had massive head wounds suggesting execution-style killings; others had evidently been sprayed with bullets.
Li Yan, 28, one of two female cooks among the victims, also had a broken neck.
Thai involvement?
As a furious Beijing dispatched senior officials to Thailand to demand answers, a suspect for the massacre emerged: Naw Kham, the fugitive "freshwater pirate" of the Mekong, a member of Myanmar's ethnic Shan minority whose hill tribe militia is accused of drug trafficking, robbery, kidnapping and murder.
Naw Kham is not the only suspect. On October 28, nine members of the Pha Muang Taskforce appeared before police in the northern city of Chiang Rai to answer allegations of murder and tampering with evidence. During a visit to Bangkok in late October, China's vice minister of public security, Zhang Xinfeng, described this as "important progress" and concluded: "The case has been basically cracked."
