Anti-economic crime police seize 10 cubic metres of rosewood at the home of a district policeman in Ratanakkiri province’s Andong Meas district in August. The policeman’s wife admitted to owning the wood but no arrests were made. PHOTO SUPPLIED
Early on Monday morning, at about 1am, two trucks carrying roughly 10 cubic metres of illegally felled timber were bouncing down the road between Oddar Meanchey and Siem Reap.
Police stopped the trucks – one of which bore military plates – and seized the haul, but the drivers, a Siem Reap police official said, “escaped into the dark”.
A little over six months after Prime Minister Hun Sen issued a circular ordering authorities to step up their efforts to stamp out illegal logging, luxury timber seizures are a regular fixture of media reports, but incidents such as the one above have come to typify the crackdown on illegal logging.
There have been at least a dozen timber seizures covered by the Post since the premier’s announcement on February 21. In one, a suspect died in a car chase with Forestry Administration (FA) officers. In another, police promised to summons a suspect for questioning, though no arrests were made.
But out of those dozen seizures, only one resulted in actual arrests – a situation that observers and rights groups say typifies the enforcement of the Kingdom’s anti-logging laws and betrays a lack of will, or possibly scruples, on the part of enforcers.
Chhay Thy, a coordinator for the rights group Adhoc who has dealt extensively with illegal logging in Ratanakkiri province, said the line between officers and offenders in the illegal timber trade was blurry at best.
“They are the same group, so police alert the offenders before raiding. Some arrests are just an excuse to make a report,” he said, noting that officers rarely perform due diligence when it comes to tracking suspects.
