Farmers surround police

Press, 11 January 1986, Page 9

Farmers surround police

NZPA-PA La Paz About 17,000 coca fanners surrounded a camp of 245 anti-drug police who had been making arrests and disrupting processing plants in the heart of Bolivia’s cocaine country, said police and United States agents yesterday. Authorities said the trouble started when two of the Bolivian policemen raped a woman in the tropical region called the Chapara, the source of 80 per cent of Bolivia’s coca

The siege of the camp, occupied by Bolivian antinarcotics agents known as the Leopards, began on Tuesday but was not reported until yesterday because heavy rains and floods knocked out communications with the region. Agents of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency said the situation at the camp was tense and was likely to worsen because food supplies were dwindling.

The police said a message sent out by the Leopards indicated that the fanners might attack the camp with dynamite. The Leopard camp is in the village of Ivargazama, the maih centre in Bolivia for turning coca leaves into the paste that is refined into cocaine.

The illegal drug trade is an economic mainstay in Bolivia, which has been ravaged by astronomical inflation rates and low prices for tin, its chief export.