[Vietnamization] Cambodia claims illegal timber trade to Vietnam over

Cambodia claims illegal timber trade to Vietnam over

 

Turkish Daily | 21 April 2016 

 

The Cambodian government has claimed its new anti-logging task force has successfully cracked down on the illegal timber trade from Cambodia to Vietnam, according to local media Thursday.

The statement comes just three months after the inception of the taskforce -- established to investigate the illegal trade of wood between the two countries.

At an inter-ministerial meeting held in mid-January, Prime Minister Hun Sen installed the country’s National Military Police Commander Sao Sokha, with leading the committee.

Sokha has himself been accused of being a key player in the illegal wood trade by Global Witness, which named him in a report in 2004.

He denies the allegations.

 On Thursday, the Phnom Penh Post said the commission had sent a report to Hun Sen’s office Monday, in which it touted successes in seizing 70,000 cubic meters of illegally logged wood and bringing cases against 51 people and companies.

It quoted military police spokesman Eng Hy as having said that the group had managed to stop the smuggling issue already.

 The illegal trade in Cambodian timber to Vietnam was worth an estimated $386 million in 2015, environment watchdog Forest Trends said in a report in January, just days after Sokha was announced as the taskforce leader.

 When the Post spoke to Seng Sokheng, coordinator for the Prey Lang Community Network, a forestry protection group, he argued that the taskforce report was exaggerating its success, and that trucks continue to leave easterly border provinces, laden with wood and bound for Vietnam.

 “Illegal logging is still happening and timber abuse still continues,” he told the Post, adding that the taskforce would not be able to stymie the issue long-term.

 How serious the government is on the issue of deforestation continues to raise eyebrows.

The screening of a documentary about one of the country’s most high-profile forestry activists, Chut Wutty, was banned this week, without proper explanation from the Culture Ministry.

Wutty was shot dead by a military policeman in Koh Kong province four years ago.

In September last year, Global Forest Watch reported that deforestation had accelerated at a higher rate in Cambodia than anywhere else in the world between 2011 and 2014, and that Cambodia “lost four times the area of tree cover in 2014 as it did in 2001”.