GANGSTERS IN BURMA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 28 June 1945, Page 7

GANGSTERS IN BURMA

HEADACHE FOR BRITISH Rugby, June 26. Gangsterism is a major headache to the British Military Administration in Burma to-day, writes a correspondent at the South Asia Headquarters. Well-organised gangs of dacoits, armed with Japanese automatic weapons, are terrorising outlying districts with daring attacks, robbing, plundering and killing. In pre-Japanese days dacoits, armed with aged hit-or-miss rifles — some almost museum pieces—were kept under control but during the Japanese occupation dacoity became, rife. Veteran dacoits serving long sentences in local gaols were released by the Japanese and armed themselves with British and Japanese weapons left on the battlefields. To-day they are armed with every type of Japanese automatic weapons, including heavy machineguns, hand grenades and two-inch mortars. Attacks on households and bul-lock-cart convoys are a daily occurrence. The dacoits do not hesitate even to attack armed police. British administration and police officers are meeting the dacoit menace with a village home guard equipped with captured Japanese weapons and new locally recruited military armed police. The small town of Shwebo in the heart of Burma’s rich paddy granary has always been Burma’s gangster headquarters. Its dacoits are legendary. In 1941 at Schwebo the ‘‘Dillinger’’ dacaoit, Nga Phyw, notorious throughout Burma, was shot dead and his two lieutenants captured. Burma to-day has many Nga Phyw’s but a look at Shwebo police records since the re-occupation of the town gives an encouraging picture of the manner in which British military administration is handling lawlessness. Since the re-occupation of the Shwebo area 175 dacoits and robbers have been arrested. Two are awaiting penalty. Five dacoits have been killed in pitched battles.