Hong Kong, China cargo ports crucial to stopping transnational drug smuggling: UN request to sign up to global crackdown
UN operation signs up Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia, needs Hong Kong as the crucial link in the drug smuggling chain
A top United Nations anti-drug official has called on China and Hong Kong to sign up to a global initiative to crack down on transnational drug smuggling.
The call comes amid the continuing flood of illegal narcotics – in particular the powerful stimulant crystal meth – from the mainland through Hong Kong to Australia. This was highlighted again last week with the seizure of crystal meth – also known as “ice” – worth A$1.26 billion (HK$7 billion) in Sydney and the arrest of three Hongkongers and a mainland associate.
If you look at the container volumes out of Hong Kong and south China, it’s enormous
Jeremy Douglas, the regional representative for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has also urged countries in the region to stop “a lot of talk and no action” and cooperate to tackle the problem.
The Global Container Control Programme is led by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Customs Organisation. If China and Hong Kong joined, that would allow container shipments from the two countries to be risk profiled to other places, greatly improving the security of the container trade, said Douglas.
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The programme trains staff in local jurisdictions to expertly identify suspicious cargo consignments by risk profiling manifests including names, addresses, businesses, cargo descriptions and payment methods to find inconsistencies with the information. For example a business named on a cargo manifest may raise suspicions if no information appears on the internet for that firm.