PHNOM PENH: Ten people, including a soldier, have been arrested over the murders of a forest ranger and a policeman who were investigating illegal logging in Cambodia, officials said on Friday.
Probes into the lucrative trade are steeped with risk and several high-profile killings of activists trying to expose the rampant spread of logging have blighted the kingdom in recent years.
Forest ranger Sieng Darong, 47, and police officer Sab Yoh, 29, were shot dead on Saturday during a patrol of the protected northwestern Preah Vihear forest in an attack which also wounded another ranger.
The pair were “gunned down by cold-blooded killers with high powered weapons as they slept during an overnight patrol,” Ross Sinclair, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Cambodia said in a statement.
The men were killed hours after they confiscated chainsaws from an illegal logging site, according to the WCS, which has patrolled the area since 2000.
On Friday Col. Khat Hun, deputy chief of Preah Vihear provincial police, told AFP that 10 suspects, including a soldier, who were believed to be involved in unsanctioned logging in the forest, had been arrested and sent to court over the murders.
He declined to give further details.
Lor Chann, a local coordinator for Cambodian rights group Adhoc, said loggers conducted the attack “in retaliation against the pair” for cracking down on the illicit timber trade.
In the last few decades a surge in illegal logging has contributed to a sharp drop in Cambodia’s forest cover, which fell from 73 percent in 1990 to 57 percent in 2010, according to the United Nations.
Questioning the profitable trade has left a string of fatalities in recent years.
Last year Cambodian journalist Taing Try was killed while investigating illegal logging in northeastern Kratie.
A former soldier, a policeman and a military police officer — all suspected log traders — were arrested and charged over the murder.
In April 2012 prominent environmentalist Chhut Vuthy was shot dead in a remote forest by a military policeman after he refused to hand over pictures showing logging in the southwestern province of Koh Kong.
Less than six months later a reporter at a local-language newspaper who also exposed illegal logging was found dead in the boot of his car in the northern province of Ratanakiri.
10 Cambodians arrested over illegal logging patrol murders
10 Cambodians arrested over illegal logging patrol murders
Venezuela’s acting president calls for oil industry reforms to attract more foreign investment
- In her speech, Rodríguez said money earned from foreign oil sales would go into two funds: one dedicated to social services for workers and the public health care system, and another to economic development and infrastructure projects
CARACAS, Venezuela: Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez used her first state of the union address on Thursday to promote oil industry reforms that would attract foreign investment, an objective aggressively pushed by the Trump administration since it toppled the country’s longtime leader less than two weeks ago.
Rodríguez, who has been under pressure from the US to fall in line with its vision for the oil-rich nation, said sales of Venezuelan oil would go to bolster crisis-stricken health services, economic development and other infrastructure projects.
While she sharply criticized the Trump administration and said there was a “stain on our relations,” the former vice president also outlined a distinct vision for the future between the two historic adversaries, straying from her predecessors, who have long railed against American intervention in Venezuela.
“Let us not be afraid of diplomacy” with the US, said Rodriguez, who must now navigate competing pressures from the Trump administration and a government loyal to former President Nicolás Maduro.
The speech, which was broadcast on a delay in Venezuela, came one day after Rodríguez said her government would continue releasing prisoners detained under Maduro in what she described as “a new political moment” since his ouster.
Trump on Thursday met at the White House with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, whose political party is widely considered to have won 2024 elections rejected by Maduro. But in endorsing Rodríguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president since 2018, Trump has sidelined Machado.
In her speech, Rodríguez said money earned from foreign oil sales would go into two funds: one dedicated to social services for workers and the public health care system, and another to economic development and infrastructure projects.
Hospitals and other health care facilities across the country have long suffered. Patients are asked to provide practically all supplies needed for their care, from syringes to surgical screws. Economic turmoil, among other factors, has pushed millions of Venezuelans to migrate from the South American nation in recent years.
In moving forward, the acting president must walk a tightrope, balancing pressures from both Washington and top Venezuelan officials who hold sway over Venezuela’s security forces and strongly oppose the US Her recent public speeches reflect those tensions — vacillating from conciliatory calls for cooperation with the US, to defiant rants echoing the anti-imperialist rhetoric of her toppled predecessor.
American authorities have long railed against a government they describe as a “dictatorship,” while Venezuela’s government has built a powerful populist ethos sharply opposed to US meddling in its affairs.
For the foreseeable future, Rodríguez’s government has been effectively relieved of having to hold elections. That’s because when Venezuela’s high court granted Rodríguez presidential powers on an acting basis, it cited a provision of the constitution that allows the vice president to take over for a renewable period of 90 days.
Trump enlisted Rodríguez to help secure US control over Venezuela’s oil sales despite sanctioning her for human rights violations during his first term. To ensure she does his bidding, Trump threatened Rodríguez earlier this month with a “situation probably worse than Maduro.”
Maduro, who is being held in a Brooklyn jail, has pleaded not guilty to drug-trafficking charges.
Before Rodríguez’s speech on Thursday, a group of government supporters was allowed into the presidential palace, where they chanted for Maduro, who the government insists remains the country’s president. “Maduro, resist, the people are rising,” they shouted.
