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Subject: Piracy, brigandage on border with China
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 92 14:20:04 EST
Message-ID: <19.1992Nov2.142005@AmeriCast.com>

DATE(YYYY/MM/DD): 1992/10/28
TITLE: Piracy, brigandage on border with China
BY: Yelena Matveyeva
SUBJECTS: 20
SECTION: 13

***

SUMMARY: The latest developments on the Russian-Chinese border.
###
     
     Piracy and brigandage on Chinese border
     The Far  Eastern border  guards have  been  sounding  the  alarm:
something unimaginable is now being perpetrated on the Russian-Chinese
border which  in the  Far East passes mainly along the Amur River, its
tributaries and  channels. Rarely a day passes without an emergency of
some kind.  The hackneyed  expression "border  under lock and key" has
been irretrievably relegated to the past.
     Today the  inhabitants of the two neighbouring countries actively
engage in  illicit commodity  exchange  and  contraband  transactions.
People on  the Russian  bank seem  to be  prepared to  give their last
penny for  a bottle  of Chinese  vodka. And  give they do -- household
utensils and  state property alike. An inhabitant of the Zabaikalskoye
village exchanged  his Minsk motorcycle for 15 bottles of vodka. Other
booze lovers  delivered 20  cubic metres of timber to a Chinese island
in exchange  for 70  bottles of  vodka. A  fishing team from a Russian
riverside village,  catching fish  in one  of the  Amur channels,  has
"leased" this  channel to  Chinese fishermen  for booze.  The crews of
ships on  the Amur  River steamship  line concluded  deals of  various
kinds with the Chinese.
     These "commercial contacts" and "friendly ties" do not always end
peacefully. Now  our fellow-citizens  have attacked  Chinese fishermen
who cut  against their grain, taking away nets and liquor. The Chinese
in return have seized Russian boats and taken them to their bank. This
is how  three workers  of a  small fishing  enterprise from the Jewish
Autonomous Region,  who were  fishing late  at night  near the border,
recently happened to find themselves in Chinese captivity. It took the
Chinese border  guards two days to find them and turn them over to our
border guard service.
     Not infrequently the Chinese attack Russian cargo motor ships and
self-propelled barges.  Using ten  to fifteen junks with empty barrels
they surround a passing vessel and demand fuel to be poured into their
barrels. On  getting a refusal, they shower the vessel with stones and
bottles. And  in the  vicinity of the Zabelovskoye village, Khabarovsk
Territory, a  group of poachers attacked a border guard motor boat and
beat up  Major S. Shutofedov, chief of a border post, who was taken to
a local  hospital with severe injuries. Chinese poachers use barbarous
methods for  fishing in  our waters,  deafening  fish  with  dynamite,
crossing the  river with nets, and raking everything from them without
discrimination -- from huge fishes to fry. In summer, when local state
farms organized  cattle-breeding camps  near  the  Amur,  the  Chinese
contrived to steal even cows from our bank.
     What is the matter? The reasons are many and varied. The standard
of living is low -- there are no food products and manufactured goods.
The local  inhabitants have  been  patently  unprepared  for  the  new
procedure on  the border. (After all, for decades they used to see the
opposite bank  solely through  barbed wire). The local authorities are
helpless. The  border district  department  has  suggested  organizing
legitimate channels  for trade  and exchange  along  the  border,  and
setting trading  centres on  several islands  to end illegal activity.
But everything is being done at an extremely slow pace.
     At the  sessions of  the Soviets  of People's Deputies in several
border areas  people queried:  why are we so spineless and weak-willed
vis-a-vis the  Chinese poachers?  Why do  we make  their  position  so
ambiguous for  our border  guards who,  tied up  with numerous  strict
instructions, essentially  cannot use any measures against the Chinese
trespassers besides  verbal admonition?  It looks  as if  we pass  all
bounds, so  to speak,  in our  desire not  to spoil relations with the
Chinese side. And we finally lose face.
                                Yelena Matveyeva,
                                MN correspondent,
                                Far Eastern Border District
     
     
***
***
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