Gold rush hits Vietnam province

Gold rush hits Vietnam province

HANOI (DPA): As many as 30,000 illegal gold miners have
flooded into a central Vietnam province recently, causing
extensive environmental damage to a region inhabited by ethnic
minority groups, officials said on Saturday.

Quang Tri province's Vinh Linh district is being overwhelmed
by itinerant miners from mainly northern provinces in what local
police are describing as a "complicated and serious" situation.

"Mercury has been used in excess during mining, and all the
streams in the area have been seriously polluted," said a Vinh
Linh district policeman who asked that his name not be used.

"This will leave a long-term effect."

The influx began last month, when stories of a Quang Tri gold
find raced through mining communities like wildfire, the
policeman said.

"The whole area now looks like it's been bombarded, with
craters and wells everywhere."

The officer's ironic description reflects Vinh Linh notorious
distinction of having been the most bombed district during the
Vietnam War, which ended in communist victory in 1975.

Vast tracts along the border with Laos have been deforested,
and the indigenous ethnic minority group in the region, the Van
Kieu, have been severely marginalized by the mining activity, he
said.

"Given this influx of illegal miners and the accompanying
pollution, their lives have been made even worse," the officer
said.

The friction comes seven weeks after ethnic minority unrest
brought on by land disputes and stoked by religious tension
rocked the central highlands 300 kilometers to the south.

Several minority groups there have struggled to cope with
recent massive migrations of lowland Vietnamese and other
minorities into the highlands who were said to be encroaching on
ancestral lands.

Civilian and military authorities are combining forces in
Quang Tri "to drive the miners from the locality," the officer
said.

"If we don't make preemptive efforts, troubles will inevitably
arise, just as they did in Nghe An."

Over 100,000 people swarmed into neighboring Nghe An province
in the mid-1990s in a mad rush for gemstones discovered there.