Vietnam police detain man over damage to ancient throne
Representative Image (AI-generated)
Vietnamese police have detained a man who broke into a history exhibit and damaged an antique throne considered to be one of the nation's most precious artefacts, conservation officials said on Sunday.
The ornate red-and-gold Nguyen dynasty throne was the royal seat of the last feudal family to rule Vietnam between 1802 and 1945 and has been preserved for posterity in Hue city's Thai Hoa Palace.
A 42-year-old man "snuck into the Nguyen dynasty display area, screamed and then broke the front left armrest" around midday on Saturday, a statement from the Hue Monuments Conservation Centre (HMCC) said.
In footage circulating on social media and Vietnam news sites purporting to show the incident, the man can be seen sitting cross-legged on the two-century-old throne that is adorned with dragon motifs.
He was quickly arrested but showed "signs of psychosis, screaming, talking nonsense and could not answer the investigator's questions", the HMCC said.
Police detained him to conduct a psychiatric assessment, it said, while the throne will be removed for repair and preservation efforts.
"This is an extremely rare incident," the HMCC statement said.
Vietnam's ministry of culture, sports and tourism has asked for an urgent report on the incident.
The central city of Hue was established as the capital of unified Vietnam under the Nguyen dynasty.
It was recognised as a world heritage site by
Unesco
in 1993 and hosts several ancient palaces, tombs and artefacts.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- Hindustan Times
Villagers step up to halt Sierra Leone deforestation
Deep inside a Sierra Leone national park, a mother of seven was about to set dozens of tree trunks ablaze to make charcoal. Producing the cheap fuel in this way is illegal in the protected rainforest near the capital of a country highly vulnerable to the ravages of climate change. But Aminata Sankoh, a widow who said she had no other choice for making a living, defiantly shrugged off a stern warning from a group of villagers who monitor the forests as part of a groundbreaking grassroots initiative. "You are saying you are not affected by this deforestation, that there will be tree planting but it will affect your own great grandchildren!" chided group leader Caesar Senesie. The extent of the deforestation in the humid tropical forest and what remains of the primary forest is clear as far as the eye can see. Some has been taken over for marijuana plantations Sierra Leone is battling drug problems and land grabbing is also rife to satisfy demographic pressures. Nearly a third, or 5,600 hectares of the forest within the Western Area Peninsula National Park has been lost or severely degraded since 2012. Last year alone "intensive deforestation" led to the loss of 715 hectares, or the equivalent of 1,330 football pitches, according to the World Food Programme. UNESCO says the area is home to between 80 and 90 percent of Sierra Leone's biodiversity. But charcoal is the only way for many Sierra Leoneans to cook in the face of power cuts and soaring energy prices. Finding the illicit charcoal producing sites requires venturing deep into the forest by road and on foot, but an AFP team managed to visit the area. Groups of men fended off exhaustion as they carried out backbreaking work in stifling 35-degree Celsius heat, stacking up tree trunks covered with stones. Near Sankoh, the widowed mother, a mound several metres wide began to smoke. The worn-out 45-year-old said her husband died four years ago and to feed her children and pay for their schooling, she took a job breaking stones on construction sites. But two years ago, she made a decision. "I used to break stone... but I am not doing it any longer because I was struggling a lot. So I decided to come to the forest and do charcoal burning," she told AFP. Faced with the failures in protecting the forest as well as land seizures, units comprising 40 villagers have been set up. "Even at night, when we have a fire break out, I call my guys, we move straight away," Senesie, the group leader, said. "We, the community, are the solution to protect the forest," he added. Funded by the Global Environment Facility, the initiative was launched by the Environmental Foundation for Africa NGO, with support from the government and the United Nations Development Programme. People carry out illegal activities in the national park "because they can and believe that they will get away with it every time", Tommy Garnett, EFA founder and executive director, said. He blamed poverty, ignorance and greed for driving the deforestation. "This situation is destroying our natural heritage at an alarming rate," warned Garnett, who for 30 years has been involved in conservation projects in Sierra Leone and other west African countries. Sierra Leone is the 11th most vulnerable nation to the impact of climate change out of 191 countries ranked by the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative. Faced with the inefficiency and the alleged corruption of some forest rangers who, under-equipped and underpaid, sometimes turn a blind eye campaigners are banking on involving the worst hit local communities. Garnett said that paying villagers an incentive of $60 a month to make daily patrols and collect evidence had shed more light on what was happening in the forest than a decade of official patrols. EFA has replanted 103,000 trees in the past year, with the goal of an additional 500,000 by 2028. A few kilometres away, another unit of villagers from the "Mile 13" settlement were doing their bit under Sulaiman Barrie, who angrily complained of recent forest fires in the vicinity. "This was never the Sierra Leone we knew... This was never the Mile 13 I knew when I was just a boy," an emotional and exhausted Barrie said, smoke from the fires still rising above the mountains behind him. "We are standing now in a protected area... where we have all sorts of animals," he said. The community must "step up and protect the forest", he insisted. The government has also taken steps, Tamba Dauda, director of surveys and land within the lands, housing and country planning ministry, said. "We are quite aware of the massive deforestation that is ongoing," he said, highlighting the establishment of a land and environmental crime unit within the police to pursue perpetrators. Despite such efforts, Joseph Rahall, founder of the NGO Green Scenery, warned that the forest's very survival was at stake. "We are beyond the emergency level," he said. "If we don't manage the Western Area Peninsula very well, in 10 to 15 years there will be no forest." lp/sjd/cw/kjm
Time of India
3 days ago
- Time of India
Vietnam police arrest admin of popular YouTube channel
AI- Generated Image HANOI: Vietnamese police said Wednesday they had arrested administrators of a YouTube channel with two million subscribers for allegedly spreading false information about state officials. Rights campaigners say the government in one-party Vietnam has in recent years stepped up a crackdown on civil society and weaponised the law to silence critics, especially people posting on social media. Human Rights Watch said in April that members of the public were being targeted through an expansion of the scope of article 331 of the penal code, which centres on the "infringement of state interests". On Wednesday police in Ho Chi Minh City said they arrested Le Van Can, the lead administrator of Nguoi Dua Tin (The Messenger) YouTube channel, for "abusing democratic freedoms" under article 331. His two assistants were also taken into custody, accused of the same crime. Since March last year, the channel had published more than 6,700 video clips "with negative and distorted information targeting individuals and organisations in the political system, as well as policies and guidelines of the party and the state", police said in an online statement. It was not clear whether the three men had created the videos, which police say had been collectively viewed a billion times. Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like ¿Cómo obtener un segundo ingreso invirtiendo $100 con IA? [CFD] Digital Group Prueba ahora Undo Their behaviour "badly impacted public opinions and caused social disorder", police said, adding the accused had illegally earned more than $380,000 (10 billion dong) for running the channel, which was deactivated prior to the arrests. According to HRW, between 2018 and February 2025, Vietnamese courts convicted and sentenced at least 124 people to harsh prison terms under article 331. In the six years to 2017, only 28 were sentenced under equivalent laws, the group said.
Deccan Herald
3 days ago
- Deccan Herald
Illegal mining near Kaziranga intensified despite SC ban: CEC report
Kaziranga, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is home to around 65 per cent of the endangered one-horned rhino population in the world. It forms part of an important wildlife corridor between the Brahmaputra floodplains and the Karbi Anglong hills.
