The Provincial Border Guard (PBG) of Lai Chau is tasked with managing and protecting a 265 km-long border with China’s Yunnan province. Lai Chau’s border area includes many isolated, remote communes with tough terrain and sparse population; the majority of the population here are ethnic minorities who are facing a lot of difficulties in their life.

In recent years, the province’s political security and social order and safety have been basically stable. However, crimes of various types, especially drug trafficking, smuggling, illegal cross-border transport of goods, human trafficking, and illegal immigration, have been still complex. Against that backdrop, the PBG has proactively given advice to the Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial People’s Committee on promoting its core role and adopting synchronised measures of border management and protection and crime prevention and control for the sake of maintaining national border security.

Patrolling a national border marker

First of all, the PBG has stepped up propagation work to encourage the people to properly implement the Party’s lines, the State’s laws and policies, and border-related regulations and take active part in denunciation of illegal acts, thereby laying a solid foundation for the fight against crimes and for national border protection. Under higher echelons’ directives and guidance, the PBG has given advice to the Provincial People’s Committee on issuing Plan 1110/KH-UBND, dated 7 April 2022, on executing the Project to “organise specialised refresher courses relating to the Law on Vietnam Border Defence and detailed regulations in the period of 2021 - 2025”, directing its offices and units to closely collaborate with local party committees, authorities, and organisations in legal propagation and education via creative, effective forms and methods to contribute to raising the masses’ legal knowledge and sense of responsibility for observing the State’s laws on crime prevention and control and encouraging the people to avoid violating the law or aiding or abetting the crime. Emphasis has been placed on disseminating the fundamentals of the Politburo’s Resolution 33-NQ/TW, dated 28 September 2018, on the Strategy for National Border Protection, the Law on National Border, the Law on Vietnam Border Defence, the Law on Drug Crime Prevention and Control, the Laws on Immigration, Decree 96/2020/NĐ-CP, dated 24 August 2020, by the Government, on penalties for administrative violations against regulations on national border management and protection, as well as tactics of crimes of all types. In addition to propagation via mass media and social networks, great value has been attached to promoting the effectiveness of propagation teams and groups, organising specialised talk shows, and delivering leaflets, etc., thereby enabling the people to fully understand and seriously implement the Party’s lines and the State’s laws. Besides, border guard station cadres joining party committees of border districts and communes, together with border guard station party members attending village-level party cells’ meetings and providing support for border households have been encouraged to grasp situational developments, give advice on building political bases, and engage the people in crime prevention and control, hunger eradication, and poverty reduction. Thanks to those approaches, the people’s awareness in the border area has been considerably raised; 18,434 households within border communes have signed their commitment to participating in border line and border marker management, crime prevention and control, and security and order protection; the masses have become the “ears and eyes” of the PBG in the fight against crimes of all types.

In recent years, criminality has been increasing with more cunning, highly organised tactics. Against that backdrop, the PBG has directed its specialised forces to proactively monitor situational developments early and from afar and opportunely fight to destroy criminal rings and gangs. In this regard, importance has been attached to making correct, all-round, in-depth forecasts from afar about tactics of criminals to propose countermeasures for effective prevention right from border areas. For the sake of high effectiveness, the PBG has concentrated on developing grass-roots secret information networks and improving the quality of basic investigation in order to profile, closely manage, and monitor suspects. At the same time, it has strengthened cooperation with local party committees and authorities and competent forces, particularly the Public Security and the Military in exchanging information, carrying out investigations, verifying information about suspects, launching special operations to create synergy for crime prevention and control. Based on the signed regulations on coordination, offices and units of the PBG have collaborated with local party committees and authorities and other forces to take synchronised measures for crime prevention, improve the effectiveness of situational monitoring and area management, and closely supervise organisations and individuals with potential signs of legal violation. Besides, the PBG has cooperated with Chinese border defence forces (Mengzi Border Guard/China People’s Liberation Army, Yunnan Provincial General Station of Exit-Entry Frontier Inspection/China National Immigration Administration) in maintaining periodical specialised dialogues, joint law enforcement patrols, bilateral patrols, exchange of information on criminality, especially on cross-border criminal gangs. Since 2021, the PBG has maintained coordination to crack 12 special cases of drug trafficking, human trafficking, smuggling, and illegal immigration, arresting 32 individuals, seizing 20 cakes of heroin, 17,386 synthetic drug pills, more than 10 kg of opium, compiling dossiers and recommending prosecution of tens of other criminal cases.

A joint patrol between the PBG and China’s border management forces

Under the Party’s lines on streamlining the political system’s apparatus, eliminating district-level public security units, deploying police officers to commune level, and organising the people’s court and people’s procuracy systems into three levels, the PBG has focused on reviewing, supplementing, and perfecting coordination regulations and plans, maintaining regulations on information exchange, regularly conducting preliminary reviews to draw lessons, and clearly delegating responsibilities in coordination work to its affiliates. At the same time, it has cooperated with other forces in controlling immigration, patrolling the border line and border markers, establishing and sustaining a 24/24 hotline for effectively handling contingency situations, thus maintaining security and order in the frontier area.

Due to the complexity and danger of crime prevention and control, the PBG has always attached significance to building drug and crime prevention and control forces both qualitatively and quantitatively. Under Resolution 20-NQ/ĐU, dated 9 October 2018, by the PBG’s Party Committee, on leadership over the raised quality and effectiveness of drug and crime prevention and control, building comprehensively strong drug and crime prevention and control forces in the new situation, the PBG has concentrated on selecting and employing cadres and soldiers properly in order to bring into play their competence and strengths in this important task. It has seriously maintained specialised training courses and frequently practised combat readiness plans. It has closely combined training with the sharing of experiences in setting up special cases and plans as well as the imparting of skills in grasping, analysing, processing information, evaluating the characteristics, tactics, nature, and scale of each criminal group, making correct situational forecasts, and giving timely advice on preventive measures, countermeasures, and establishment of special cases and plans. Notably, the PBG has collaborated with the province’s Public Security, People’s Procuracy, and People’s Court in training its staff members to carry out legal procedures, improving its cadres’ professional expertise and professionalism in law enforcement tasks, avoiding miscarriages of justice or complaints, and ensuring “the rule of law”. It has stepped up political and ideological education, fostering its troops’ political steadfastness, courage, resolve against difficulties, challenges, dangers, even sacrifice, material temptations, bribery, and social negative impacts. As a result, cadres and soldiers of the PBG have always showcased their political steadfastness, strong sense of responsibility, great professional expertise, and readiness to undertake and excellently accomplish all assigned missions, being worthy of a reliable political force of local party committees, authorities, and people.

Promoting its strong track record, the PBG of Lai Chau will continue heightening vigilance, proactively staying close to the area and people, further raising the quality of crime prevention and control, maintaining political security and social order and safety, ensuring the people’s peaceful life in the Fatherland’s frontier area.

Sr. Col. TRAN NGUYEN KY

Deputy Commander of the PBG Command