Children driving buffaloes to pull illegal timber on Highway 48C

(Baonghean) -Boys as young as 3 to 7 years old have been “trained” and assigned to control huge male buffaloes to pull illegal timber on the national highway. That is the image we recorded on National Highway 48C through Quy Hop District, Nghe An.

During the past few days while working on the incident of a timber truck overturning on National Highway 48C, through Binh Chuan Commune, Con Cuong District, Nghe An Province on December 7, we heard stories and witnessed the scene of ethnic minority boys directly controlling large male buffaloes to pull illegal timber logs on the national highway to the gathering place of households.

A boy is driving a buffalo pulling a large log on Highway 48C in the early afternoon.

Through monitoring, we noticed that the time when the tiny boys appeared to control the buffaloes pulling logs on this national highway was in the late afternoon when the sun was about to set. What is puzzling is that the male buffaloes pulling the huge logs were controlled by many boys without the shadow of adults. Is it possible that people want children to control the buffaloes to make it easier to deal with the authorities? Using children to control buffaloes pulling logs like this on the national highway is very dangerous to life if something happens.

Through our research, we were told by local people that National Highway 48C has been dubbed the “Illegal Timber Route”; most households have a reserve of timber, which is considered illegal timber. In particular, Highway 48C from Quy Hop town through Chau Ly, Chau Thai, Nam Son, Binh Chuan communes… with a length of about 50 km, always has scenes of children driving buffaloes to pull illegal timber.

Phuong Nguyen