About 200 armed villagers surrounded a forest ranger’s truck, poured gasoline around it and threatened to set it on fire Tuesday after he confiscated a chainsaw allegedly being used for illegal logging, officials said Sunday.
The ranger, who was working with NGO WildAid in Battambang province’s Samlot district, managed to escape unharmed.
So Sam An, deputy police chief of Battambang province, said the ranger entered O To Ting village in Samlot commune, took the chainsaw from a villager’s home and set the chainsaw on fire.
But when he tried to leave villagers surrounded him with axes and knives. He managed to escape after promising WildAid would pay for the chainsaw, So Sam An said. “The people did not cut the trees at the time. They just kept [the chainsaw] at home,” he said. “Why did they destroy the people’s property?”
But Auv Sophiak, WildAid’s project manager in Battambang, denied that the ranger promised WildAid would pay them back and said he caught the villagers with the chainsaw as they were going into the forest.
“The rangers that work for us have been trained well, and they will not violate the people…. They did not make a mistake,” he said Sunday, adding Battambang authorities had authorized the confiscation of all chainsaws in the area. Auv Sophiak said the villagers were invited to write a complaint to WildAid and the government, which they have not done.
