On 20th September 2021, ASEANAPOL Secretariat presented its Executive Director, DAC Jim Wee together with the Director for Police Service, Snr. Supt. Joni Getamala, and Director for Plans and Programmes, Supt. Tang Yik Tung, has attended the briefing session by Steve Galster from Freeland.
During the meeting, Freeland interested to demonstrate advantage of a multi-agency and multinational approach in encountering marine wildlife trafficking and to seek support for these critical networks at a higher operational level, and for this to further into needed legislative and policy changes which prioritizes counter marine wildlife trafficking law, through the initiative called the Targeting Regional Investigations for Policing and Development (TRIPOD).
This program will focus on the sub-region between Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines (within the shared territory around the Sulu and Celebes Sea) and provide technical assistance to increase interdiction of trafficking wildlife; build investigative and enforcement functions; develop cross-border regional cooperation and improve procedures for handling seized wildlife within and from the targeted region.
As the NGO, Freeland Wildlife have restrictions and they learnt to utilize funds in effective method to support operation, training, mentoring, tools, fund to bring people together but they’re not allowed to participate in the operation. The combination of training, specialized case based training to combine information and look at the supply chain. The professional trained agencies will form an enforcement chain to disrupt and dismantle criminal supply network, for example, turtles being exported from Malaysia to Vietnam and Freeland will attempt to cripple this illegal activities. Other than that, the collaboration between law agencies among the countries involved are much needed to ensure this project will achieve the goal.
During the meeting, both parties discussed on the possibility to implementation of the said initiatives and Secretariat will further pursue on the necessaries before reverting any decision to Freeland.