Vietnam border sealed against loggers

Vietnam border sealed against loggers

Tue, 19 January 2016

Mech Dara, Igor Kossov and Phak Seangly

Cambodia's military police said yesterday that they have sealed the Vietnam border against wood transport following a major crackdown on two tycoons’ logging warehouses on Sunday. Local observers and experts, however, suggested the actions were little more than a hiccup for a long-tolerated illicit trade.

According to military police officials, forces have been deployed to known major border crossings and to checkpoints in Mondulkiri, Ratanakkiri, Kratie and Prey Veng provinces, collectively staffed by 205 personnel. Regular travel is permitted, but both legal and illegal wood is being halted.

At Prime Minister Hun Sen’s urging, government officials have created a new committee to combat illegal logging, with representatives from police, military police, the Forestry Administration and the border provinces.

Deputy national military police chief Vong Pisen said his forces observed loggers departing the woods empty-handed after the crackdown. About 300 empty trucks reportedly left the forests in Kratie and Mondulkiri on Friday. Usually, these would be loaded with wood.

National military police chief Sao Sokha – who has been tasked with leading the crackdown, and who has himself been previously accused of involvement in the illegal timber trade – said, “The situation has become calm and there is no transportation of wood from Cambodia to Vietnam and inside the country.”

However, a community group in Mondulkiri’s Pech Chreada and O’Raing districts told rights group Adhoc that timber was still being felled and moved across the border, especially at night.

“Everything is not like what the prime minister’s order said. The new committee has not acted on the forest crime here yet,” said Adhoc coordinator Sok Ratha yesterday.

Police also yesterday revealed a portion of their haul from raids on the Tbong Khmum warehouses of tycoon Lim Bunna – who had been named by a government spokesman, along with tycoon Soeng Sam Ol, on the heels of the premier’s call for action.

Bunna’s warehouse contained more than 2,000 pieces of timber, adding up to more than 815 cubic metres, with officials still counting. One of Sam Ol’s warehouses that was also raided near the border did not have much wood, Pisen said.

Both military police and Agriculture Ministry spokesman Eang Sophalleth said they did not know whether the wood was acquired legally or illegally.

“[Police found] some documents that were issued for them by some state institutions,” said Sokha, but added that officials have yet to study them in depth.

Police also said they found three illegal logging sites in Mondulkiri’s Keo Seima district, with a total of 1,000 and 2,000 cubic metres of timber piled up.

They also found sites in Kratie’s Sambor district, including timber carried in from Stung Treng, Mondulkiri and Kratie.

Military police chief Sokha said that this was only the first step, and that his forces are on permanent standby. The logging committee has two military helicopters to make patrols easier.

But environmental groups said they did not have high hopes that this momentum will last.

Marcus Hardtke, the Southeast Asia coordinator for German conservation group ARA, said that similar crackdowns with military police participation happened in the past in the Cardamom Mountains, but logging reappeared after a few months.

Such raids usually happen when some businessmen try to defy the illicit agreements that govern illegal logging in the country, he added.

Jonathan Eames, a program manager with BirdLife International, said that these crackdowns have the effect of thinning the herd of illegal loggers, leaving more profits for “the chosen ones”.

Preap Kol, director of Transparency International Cambodia, noted that a “network of authorities and officials” benefit from the logging business at varying levels, and likened the crackdown to “a thunderstorm, which will last a short period of time”.

Eng Hy, a military police spokesman, meanwhile, denied that there is a “conspiracy” between officials and illegal loggers.

However, an expert working with forestry officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, maintained that Sam Ol had an “agreement” with powerful people to trade timber from economic land concessions in Mondulkiri, and had a presence in Tbong Khmum.

Meanwhile, Adhoc coordinator Neang Sovath called Lim Bunna the “king of the wood” in Tbong Khmum. “There was nobody that could touch him,” Sovath said.

Chinese military ships bully Vietnam’s fishing boats | Look At Vietnam - Vietnam news daily update

Chinese military ships bully Vietnam’s fishing boats | Look At Vietnam - Vietnam news daily update: "-

Chinese military ships bully Vietnam’s fishing boats

June 3, 2011 about News, Politics

VietNamNet Bridge – On the afternoon of May 31, three Chinese military ships opened fire to threaten four fishing boats from Vietnam’s Phu Yen province, in the sea of Vietnam.

A fishing boat of Vietnam.

The Border-guard forces of Phu Yen province have asked for the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry’s intervention.

Colonel Nguyen Trong Huyen, Commander of Phu Yen Province’s Border-guard forces, said that according to fishermen’s report through the phone, while four fishing boats of fishermen from Phu Yen’s Tuy Hoa city were catching ocean tuna, only five miles to the southeast of the Da Dong Island in the Truong Sa (Spratly) Islands of Vietnam’s Khanh Hoa province, three Chinese naval ships approached.

At the distance of 40 meters from the Vietnamese ships, they fired to the water to threaten Vietnamese fishermen.

Captain Le Van Giup, of one of the four Phu Yen’s fishing boats, said that he quickly steered to avoid hitting the Chinese ships. According to Mr. Giup, the three Chinese naval ships, numbered 27, 28 and 989 were equipped with weapon.

According to the fishermen, the three Chinese ships closely followed Vietnamese fishing boats in the afternoon and night of May 31. Vietnamese ships had to move toward the shore to avoid threats from Chinese military ships.

In the morning of June 1, Captain Giup called the Phu Yen Border-guard forces to inform them of this case.

Colonel Nguyen Trong Huyen said that since early March 2011, it has become popular that many Chinese fishing ships illegally entered Vietnam’s waters and threatened Vietnamese fishing boats. “But this time, according to fishermen’s description, these were military ships because they are equipped with weapon,” he added.

Phu Yen Border-guard forces have told local fishing boats to avoid Chinese military ships, but continue their catching. “This is our traditional fishing ground which belongs to Vietnam’s sovereignty,” Huyen confirmed.

Colonel Huyen also said that he reported the case to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and asked for their intervention to protect fishermen and Vietnam’s sovereignty.

This is the latest move after the Binh Minh 02 ship case on May 26.

PV

Russian defense minister arrives in Vietnam for military talks

Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov will discuss military cooperation with the Vietnamese authorities during his visit to the south-east Asian state on Tuesday, his spokeswoman said.

Serdyukov, who arrived in Vietnam on Monday, would meet with the country's President Nguyen Minh Triet and the defense minister, Gen. Phung Quang Thanh, during his stay in Hanoi.

Russia and Vietnam have cooperated in the military sphere since 1953. In 1998, Moscow and Hanoi signed an intergovernmental agreement on military cooperation, and a relevant Russian-Vietnamese intergovernmental commission was established in 1999.

In October 2008, during the Vietnamese president's visit to Moscow, Russia and Vietnam set up a strategy of military and technical cooperation until 2020 by signing a relevant intergovernmental memorandum.

Serdyukov's spokeswoman said 'starting from 2008, we observe a stable increase in purchase of Russian military equipment by Vietnam.'

Military contracts signed by Moscow and Hanoi in 2008 were estimated at more than $1 billion, she said. In 2009, Russia and Vietnam signed deals with a total worth of $3.5 billion.

According to the spokeswoman, contracts signed since the start of 2010 are estimated at $1 billion.

HANOI, March 23 (RIA Novosti)"

South Asians Left Jobless, Homeless In Iraq

Tens of thousands of poor South Asians have made their way to Iraq since the U.S. invasion, in the hopes of making money to send home to support their families.
Dishwashers, cleaners, drivers and cooks from countries like Bangladesh, India and Nepal form part of an army of contractors that service America's expensive war.
But the system that gets them to Baghdad is riddled with corruption and exploitation, leaving some South Asians living in hovels, jobless and afraid.
Four months ago, Sushil Khadka, 26, left his wife, his two children and his home country of Nepal for Iraq.
"I'd dreamt of a good job, sending home my salary every month to feed my family, to send my children to school. That's why I came here. But that never happened. The opposite happened. It's terrible," he says.
Now Khadka sits in a hut made out of salvaged cardboard, huddled next to a chain-link fence in a dusty corner near Baghdad's international airport. Flies swarm around splattered bits of old food and dirty blankets.
"They made fools of us," he says. "Had we gotten work, it would've been alright but they took our money and ran away."
He sold the family jewelry — all they had in the world — to pay a recruiter in Nepal $5,000. He says the recruiter promised him a job working for American contractor KBR that would earn him $800 a month — a fortune in Nepal. The average income there is $340 a year.
But when he arrived in Iraq he was told there was no work, he says. The agent who was supposed to help him was arrested and the visa in Khadka's passport was ripped out. He was left to his own devices, scrounging around the airport to find shelter and food.
Khadka is not alone. The 40-or-so men who live with him in this makeshift camp tell similar tales.
Upendra Das, 17, sits on the floor chopping vegetables on a dirty plank of painted wood.
"We eat once a day. Sometimes we can't even do that," he says. "I've been here three months so far. To get here I borrowed from the village moneylender. They charge a lot of interest. I can't leave so I'm still waiting, hoping that I will get some work."
Another group of 1,000 South Asians have been held in a nearby warehouse for several months by KBR subcontractor Najlaa Catering Services, a company based in Kuwait. The men say they had their passports taken away and were confined in substandard conditions.
The U.S. military and KBR say they are investigating.
The U.S. State and Defense departments have issued contracting guidelines that are supposed to protect workers in Iraq.
"As in all things, in Iraq there is a policy in place but there is no one really there to enforce it," says investigative journalist T. Christian Miller, who works for Pro Publica and has written a book called Blood Money about the mismanagement of Iraq's reconstruction.
He says that the abuse of South Asian workers in Iraq is common.
"It's definitely a situation of exploitation. You are talking about the most vulnerable people in the world," Miller says. "The U.S. has contracted some of the most dangerous and dirties jobs to some of the poorest people in the world. At this point, five years into the war, there are no excuses for U.S. companies not to be aware of the issue of human trafficking or labor trafficking."
Back at the Baghdad airport, a representative from the International Organization of Migration (IOM) has just showed up offering the homeless South Asians free repatriation. The IOM heard about the men only 10 days ago.
The men crowd around as Thair Issan hands out forms for them to fill out if they want to go home. Issan says the men's plight is desperate.
"Those are victims," he says. "You see the conditions they're living in. It's a very big humanitarian crisis."
Bangladeshi Mohammad Nazrul Islam says he wants to stay here but he's been told he'll be jailed if he does.
"The Iraqi authorities say ... they will jail us if we stay. If we leave right now, it's OK. But we don't want to leave because we've all paid a lot of money to get here," he says.
Where will we find the money to pay off that debt? he asks desperately, adding that he wants to stay but no one will give him a job.
ed note: The scares of a War President.

Thai government urges Thais in Cambodia to evacuate_English_Xinhua

Thai Foreign Minister Sompong Amornvivat Wednesday urged Thai nationals in Cambodia to leave forhome immediately after a gunfire broke out Wednesday afternoon along the disputed border between Thailand and Cambodia.
"Thai businessmen who have no need to be in Cambodia now, please rush back to Thailand," Sompong said.
Tharit said his ministry already coordinated with Thai Airways (THAI) to bring them back to Thailand, and three Thai flights wereavailable to the neighboring country.
Approximately 1,000 Thai people lived in Phanom Penh and about 400 to 500 Thais were in Siem Reap.
In the Northeast, officials told residents of the border to be ready to move out quickly in case hostilities resume and escalate.
In July, tensions ran high after the ancient Preah Vihear Temple was awarded world heritage status by UNESCO, angering nationalists in Thailand who still claim ownership of the site.
The tension later turned into a military confrontation.

Shooting rampage by Vietnam soldier leaves 5 dead

A Vietnamese soldier shot and killed four people and seriously injured five others before shooting himself dead, state media and witnesses reported Wednesday.
The soldier, identified as Nguyen Manh Hung, 23, reportedly became enraged after being accused of stealing a mobile phone. He grabbed an assault rifle from a locker and began shooting inside an army compound in Hanoi on Monday night, the Tien Phong (Pioneer) newspaper said.
Hung killed three soldiers and a civilian woman, the newspaper said.
"I heard at least two series of gunshots which were several minutes apart," said a resident whose house was next to the walled military compound. "The area was quickly sealed off and local residents were asked to go home," she said, declining to give her name for fear of government reprisal.
A police officer at Hang Bot precinct, where the army unit is located, said he and some other colleagues rushed to the area after hearing the shots.
"When we arrived at the scene, an army colonel stood at the gate and told us to leave saying this is military internal affairs," he said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
City military officials declined to comment Wednesday, but the story was widely publicized in Vietnam's state-run newspapers with military sources quoted.
Murder, or any type of violent crime, is extremely rare in Vietnam where use of arms is strictly prohibited.