Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
point of Ratanakkiri province where the borders of Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos con-
verge. Of the 23 protected areas created by royal decree in 1993, Virachey was among
the most important; it included a crucial watershed supporting the Mekong River and vast
tracts of semi-evergreen and deciduous forest that were home to endangered cat and prim-
ate species. It also contained the remote Veal Thom grasslands, which one ecologist de-
scribed as “a secret world of golden light and open vistas carved out of the middle of the
ive management structures in Virachey, they could then be extended to protected areas
nationwide.
For a while things seemed to be going well. Then, during a routine surveillance flight in
May 2004, World Bank officials were shocked to discover a large-scale logging operation
in the heart of the Virachey sanctuary. Glenn Morgan, one of the Bank representatives
on the flight, said the logging was taking place on an “industrial and commercial scale”
had been setting up ranger patrols, ecotourism ventures, and other “best practice” park
management procedures, $15 million worth of timber had been brazenly harvested and
2006, just before that year's donor aid summit, Hun Sen announced that key officials in
Ratanakkiri had been removed from their posts. In November, seven people, including
Ratanakkiri's governor Kham Khoeun and the director of Virachey, were found guilty of
involvement in the Dragon's Tail logging operation and sentenced to lengthy jail terms.
But the mirage was thick in Virachey. Of the seven only one, the provincial police
chief, was ever arrested. After being fired, the others had disappeared into hiding. The
government had a good idea where they had gone—Khoeun was known to have friends
and business interests over the border in Laos—but they made no real attempt to track
them down. The truth is that responsibility for the Virachey logging scheme extended
much further up the chain than Ratanakkiri. Kham Khoeun was known to enjoy the pro-
tection of Bou Thang, a high-ranking member of the CPP Central Committee who be-
longed to the same Tumpoun ethnic minority group as Khoeun. In 1973 Thang, a Hanoi-
trained communist, had mutinied against the Khmer Rouge and led hundreds of minority
peoples over the border into Vietnam. After the fall of Pol Pot in 1979, the Vietnamese put
him in charge of Cambodia's northeast provinces and he had maintained a strong influ-
ence in Ratanakkiri ever since. He personally appointed the province's governors, who,
according to the dictates of patronage, paid him for the privilege. One source of income
was logging.
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When the World Bank woke up to what was happening in Virachey, the government
cast about for a way to deflect attention from the system as a whole. “They had to save
face. They found scapegoats,” said Graeme Brown, an Australian forestry specialist who
