Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui

Despite a ban on timber exports and the government’s repeated declaration that “large-scale” logging has been stopped, Vietnamese customs data compiled by watchdog Forest Trends show a significant increase in the import of Cambodian logs and sawn wood in 2017.

Bilateral trade between Cambodia and Vietnam last year increased nearly 30 percent to about $3.8 billion according to Vietnamese state-run media, while Cambodia has yet to report trade statistics for most of 2017.

Ratanakkiri Military Police officials yesterday denied multiple local media reports that thousands of logs of luxury timber were being transported on the Sesan River to be sent to Vietnam illegally.

A Montagnard family returned to Vietnam on Wednesday after requesting that authorities help them return to the country they fled two years before, an official said, refuting a local media report that they had been arrested and deported.

Despite claiming to have fled widespread persecution, 25 Montagnard asylum-seekers will voluntarily be sent back to Vietnam on Monday, assuming Interior Minister Sar Kheng approves the move, a ministry official said on Wednesday.

The Phnom Penh Social Rugby Club returned to the kingdom Monday evening after stepping out among 48 senior teams competing in the 12th edition of the Bangkok International Rugby Tens last weekend.

Authorities in Mondolkiri province seized eight trucks about to cross into Vietnam with illegally logged timber from the Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary and arrested seven of the drivers, six of them Vietnamese nationals, a provincial military police commander said on Thursday.

Prime Minister Hun Sen and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc agreed yesterday to write to the French government to request expert assistance in copying colonial border maps mandated by the Constitution into higher resolution for use in demarcation.

The pipeline for foreign direct investment (FDI) from Vietnam to Cambodia has almost run dry, with the country seeing almost zero inflow of Vietnamese funds into projects in the first half of the year, according to an official in the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC).

The Vietnamese military has begun training Cambodia police in cryptography and encryption techniques as part of a national plan to protect “state secrets”.

Cambodia is refusing protection for almost 100 Montagnard asylum seekers fleeing persecution in Vietnam as four refugees travel from Nauru to the impoverished nation under a controversial $55.5 million agreement with Australia.

Nine more Montagnard asylum seekers crossed into Ratanakkiri on Tuesday, bringing the total number hiding in the province’s O’Yadaw district to 32, a police official said Wednesday.

Thousands of Vietnamese people are crossing the border to gamble at Cambodian casinos every month and many indebted gamblers have been held hostage or even killed, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

A Vietnamese construction crew last month halted the extension of one of the country’s roads into a remote part of Mondolkiri province after complaints were lodged by Cambodian authorities, officials said on Thursday.

On 30 April 1975, the last American helicopters beat an ignominious retreat from Saigon as the tanks of the North Vietnamese Army rumbled into the capital of defeated South Vietnam.