Myanmar vigilante opium stand-off continues

A stand-off is continuing in Myanmar between police and Christian anti-drug vigilantes, who want to destroy poppy fields in the northern state of Kachin.

Police have stopped members of the Pat Jasan Christian group - some wearing military-style uniforms - outside the town of Waingmaw.

Farmers says they will fight back if the campaigners are let through.

Myanmar is Southeast Asia's top opium producer - and the world's second largest after Afghanistan.

Opium has traditionally been used as a medicine to treat diarrhoea, dysentery and other ailments. over the last decade commercial poppy production has taken hold.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its Southeast Asia Opium Survey 2015 that opium poppy grown in Myanmar and Laos had been refined into about 73.1 tonnes to 82.3 tonnes of street-quality heroin.