Official response from Heilongjiang Province on "Wuchang's black earth digging and selling"
2021/4/19 15:09:00 本站

On April 9, the Policy and Law Department of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) received an official letter of reply from Heilongjiang Province to the document CBCGDF had sent "On Request of Carefully Dealing with the Severe Environmental Violations Caused by Peat Extraction and Reselling in Wuchang".

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The reply mentioned that Heilongjiang provincial government attached great importance to the case. The vice governor immediately issued orders, demanding that illicit activities be prosecuted in accordance with the law, that criminal liability and regulatory authority be investigated, that the illegal mining and selling of black earth be firmly prohibited, and that every attempt be made to restore the black earth involved to ensure that the standard of re-cultivation is met.

In the letter, the basic facts of the case were clarified. The Wuchang Municipal Public Security Bureau detained four people involved in the case on March 26 and put them in criminal custody. The case is currently being investigated further.

Wuchang has been restoring the cultivated layer on the illegally harvested site and backfilling the illegally harvested peat resources and topsoil since March 27 under the guidance of related departments and agricultural expert-level professional institutions of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The original appearance of the peat storage site has been restored.

Heilongjiang Province will resolutely enforce President Xi Jinping's important instructions on the protection of black earth, take tough measures, stamp put the root causes, guard against matters of the same sort, and resolutely prevent the spread of illegal mining of black peat soil, as a result of this case's alert.

A 100-day special action was initiated throughout the province on April 1 to investigate and prosecute illegal activities such as the mining, manufacturing, transportation, and reselling of black peat soil as part of the illegal occupation of cultivated land, forest, wetland, and various nature reserves. We will resolutely investigate, keep all of them accountable, improve oversight, and move forward with the case investigation and farmland restoration work. We can prosecute and punish public officials for incompetence and dereliction of duty, and other breaches of laws and regulations, using the law and discipline as a framework.

The Policy and Law Department of CBCGDF will continue to pay close attention to the case's progress and announce the progress in due course.


Translator/ Syying


Chinese orginal article

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/n3lgAKK5TSUmx44fK055sQ


Contribution

https://www.paypal.me/CBCGDFChina

http://www.cbcgdf.org/English/ConfirmDonaTion/0.html