FIVE days after a huge pre-dawn raid in which police seized three tons of methamphetamine, an uneasy quiet has descended on Boshe, a Guangdong village of 14,000.

    Evidence of the crackdown can be seen throughout the community — empty houses with smashed windows, a police car at the entrance of the village and suspicious locals.

    The few residents who will speak say many people vanished in the darkness when helicopters and 3,000 paramilitary troops and police officers raided the village, arresting 182 suspects.

    Most villagers are wary of strangers, refusing to offer any information and saying they know nothing about the raid.

    But one elderly man was happy enough to talk. “I bet many gang members ran away during Sunday’s raid,” he said. “Many of them were in Shenzhen or other cities. It’s so easy for locals to flee from the village. The drug gangs have made our village and even the whole township notorious. No one dares to buy our crops or vegetables. Girls who are of marriageable age can no longer find husbands. Men can’t get married either.”

    The man said there was a large wealth gap in the village between the farmers and those families involved in the drug trade. “As a farmer, I can earn just 700 yuan a month. Honestly, I have no idea whether my son has had any connection with those people,” he said.

    A young villager in his 20s said some villagers envied those who joined the drug rings.

    “We are envious of those drug manufacturers who recently pulled themselves out of poverty and built new houses,” he said. “We didn’t do it because we feared for our lives.”

    There are many luxury cars in the village. Villagers said they belonged to the Boshe people who lived in and earned big money in Shenzhen. But they refused to offer further details.

    However, a native of Lufeng, the city that administers Boshe, who works in Shenzhen said it was an open secret the border city was a base from where ringleaders traded and transferred drugs across the mainland and to Hong Kong and Macao.

    Professor Chen Zhonglin, an expert on drug-related crimes at Chongqing University, said poverty and the area’s remoteness made it ideal for drug production.

    “Basically this is a family clan business,” Chen said. “The tight family connections have made anti-drug operations harder.”

    The young villager said police estimates of the extent of the network seemed exaggerated, as it was not that easy to join the drug rings.

    “Only those family members or relatives of the ringleaders have the chance to join them,” he said.

    (SD-Agencies)