Fear and suspicion courses through opium capital's veins

THE lovely old-fashioned town of Kengtung, beneath the forest-covered hills of Burma's eastern Shan state looks like Shangri-La, a Burmese Brigadoon frozen in time, with its skyline of white Buddhist pagodas, Catholic and Protestant churches, saffron-robedmonks and tranquil streets.

But Kengtung, unofficial capital of the infamous opium-growing Golden Triangle, is a Shangri-La manque, a flawed paradise with secret police, forced recruitment of young men into the army, a pervasive fear of informers and now an AIDS epidemic devastating its young women.

The traveller reaches Kengtung, closed to the outside world for more than four decades, by four-wheel-drive vehicle along a rough 166-kilometre, cliff-hugging track from the town of Mae Sai, the northernmost point in Thailand.

The name of Burma's pro-democracy leader, Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, is taboo and the Burmese military junta's xenophobic messages on billboards, about ''crushing'' the enemy, are matched by signs announcing public meetings to spread the word about AIDS.

There is a ramshackle office of Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), which won the 1990 election by a landslide but was not permitted to take power.

But it is closed and part of the building is used as a video parlour where hard-core pornographic and Hongkong-made kung fu films are shown to packed houses.