Troops, rangers unite in fight against violent illegal loggers
South China Morning Post
November 8, 2000
HUW WATKIN in Hanoi
VIETNAM - Troops and armed police have joined forest rangers to combat escalating violence over illegal logging and the trade in wild animals.
The new strategy comes amid a string of gunfights and other incidents between forest protection officers and illegal loggers, the latest of which reportedly saw two people killed.
According to a report in the Thanh Nien newspaper, an explosion last week killed Hoang Dinh Ky, police chief of Ky Hoa district, in northern Ha Tinh province, and his five-year-old daughter.
"Police believe the bombing was an act of revenge for a recent crackdown on illegal logging activity," the report said.
Such acts were until recently virtually unheard of in Vietnam, where police and security forces are closely integrated with the community.
In the five years to the beginning of this year, 12 forest rangers had been killed and 490 injured in clashes with illegal loggers and wildlife smugglers. But the past eight months has seen at least four deaths in 17 armed assaults against forest protection officers.
In one incident in southern Dac Lac province earlier this year, armed men destroyed forestry department vehicles and held three officials at gunpoint until they released a group of illegal loggers who had been arrested.
Rangers are being trained in self-defence, but forest protection officials say they need increased powers to deal with offenders who are reportedly often protected by powerful district and provincial officials.
Legislation stipulates that rangers are only allowed to use weapons in self-defence, but the violence has frayed tempers.
Late last month officers from the forest protection unit in northern Thanh Hoa opened fire on a bus carrying 46 people after the driver refused to stop at a checkpoint set up to search for smuggled wildlife. No one was injured in the incident.
Environmental groups say Vietnam has become a major player in the international wildlife trade and that up to one million cubic metres of timber is illegally extracted from protected areas each year.