HUNDREDS of smugglers stormed one of Vietnam’s main land border
crossings with Laos, leaving six customs officers wounded as they
rammed through a huge convoy of contraband, checkpoint commanders
said on Thursday.
The mob captured and threatened to kill one officer in Tuesday
night’s attack on the Cau Treo checkpoint.
Deputy customs chief Nguyen Quang Thanh described it as the most
violent in a growing spate of attacks on the crossing on the main
tourist bus route between Hanoi and Vientiane.
”We had just 13 officers and we were attacked by hundreds of
people with sticks and stones,” said Thanh.
”There were so many people, we couldn’t count them. They even
included local people.
”They caught one of our men and put him on the back of a truck
and threatened to kill him.”
Thanh said officers were unable to resist the mob as standing
orders barred them from opening fire on the smugglers for fear of
igniting a firefight.
The crossing, in the remote mountains west of the north central
port of Vinh, is regularly used by tourists, although Thanh said
none were around when the smugglers struck shortly after midnight
(1700 GMT) Tuesday.
Attacks on customs officers and other security personnel at the
crossing had become routine as the smugglers resorted to ever more
violent methods to get their lucrative cargo across the border,
Thanh said.
”Working here we get attacked by the smugglers so often, they
throw stones at us every day.”
Vietnamese customs had received a tip-off that a large convoy of
some 50 unlicensed flat-bed trucks was amassing on the Lao side of
the border ahead of Tuesday night’s attack.
They had not reinforced the crossing because they had not
expected such a violent attack.
Order was eventually restored with the arrival of the border
guard, but not before all 50 trucks had successfully crossed into
Vietnam, presumed headed for the main consumer markets of Hanoi and
Ho Chi Minh City.
Thanh said he did not know what was in the convoy, although
fruit juice and electronic goods were the most common contraband.
The mountainous north-central provinces of Ha Tinh and Nghe An
are also notorious for drug smuggling as they afford the least
protected route into Vietnam for convoys of opium and heroin
crossing from Laos and the other poppy-growing countries of the
Golden Triangle beyond.
Unusually Tuesday’s attack was reported in the ruling communist
party’s mouthpiece daily Nhan Dan (The People).
Clashes of this scale with the security forces are rarely
reported in Vietnam’s state-run media as the communist authorities
pride themselves on a reputation for tight security. – Sapa-AFP