On January 10, 1953, alongside the birth of the Lai Châu Police Department - the predecessor of today’s Điện Biên provincial Police - the political protection force was also established. Operating with a personnel count of just over 20 cadres and facing a severe shortage of means, the Security Force quickly stabilized newly liberated zones, mobilized the People to prevent espionage and maintain secrecy, and protected headquarter agencies, warehouses, and logistics transport routes. They successfully fought to dismantle spy and reactionary organizations, contributing to keeping the rear firm and serving the victory of the Điện Biên Phủ Campaign.

Across the resistance periods against the US, the protection of the northern border, and the renovation era, the Điện Biên Security Force continued to face many new types of crimes and sabotage plots. From fighting against spy and commando organizations, “king-proclamation” cases, and riots, to defeating plots to establish a “separate state” and maintaining stability in ethnic minority and border zones, the Security Force has always stood at the frontline of national security protection.

Điện Biên shares a borderline with two nations, Laos and China, featuring a vast terrain where many ethnic groups coexist and public livelihoods remain difficult. This reality places high demands on the police force, especially grassroots security elements, regarding national security assurance. Since the rearrangement of administrative units, the workload of the commune police force has grown even heavier.

In Mường Nhé commune, from 19 villages and 3 residential groups, the managed area has expanded to 32 villages and residential groups with over 24,000 residents, sharing a borderline of more than 42.158 km with neighboring Laos across 15 landmarks. Some villages are situated 40 km away from the center, making transit highly difficult during the rainy season, which requires police cadres to walk into villages to propagate and mobilize residents.

Senior Lieutenant Colonel Vừ A Bình, Chief of the Mường Nhé commune Police, shared: “The most important thing for security workers is to understand the locality, stay close to the people, and build public trust. This is because the most valuable information often comes from directly visiting the grassroots, meeting village heads and reputable figures, and listening to the people’s sentiments. When the people trust and proactively share information, the efficiency of security assurance is elevated distinctly.”

The distinct trait of security work is not waiting for an incident to occur to handle it, but proactively forecasting and preventing it early on and from afar. There are many completed tasks that no one knows about, but as long as the locality remains peaceful and the people feel secure to engage in production labor, that itself shapes the ultimate reward for security soldiers. This silence has contributed to forging multiple prominent results in the province’s national security protection.

From the post-renovation era to date, the Security Force of the Provincial Police has synchronously deployed protection plans for the two borderlines, detecting and dismantling 18 individuals who confessed to spying for foreign countries. They successfully established and fought five major cases, smashing plots to set up a “separate state,” dismantling and neutralizing over 500 related individuals, prosecuting 13 cases with 81 defendants for crimes violating national security, and seizing more than 350 guns of various types alongside many related pieces of evidence and documents.

Concurrently, religious activity management has been effectively executed, guiding 416 out of a total of 475 religious group points to register for centralized activities in line with legal regulations, while fighting and eliminating new religious phenomena, beliefs, and heresies carrying political and reactionary undertones such as Giê Sùa and Bà Cô Dợ, ensuring absolute safety for hundreds of important central and local political events.

At the grassroots level, the commune police force increasingly affirms its role as the “first line of defense.” During the 2022-2025 period, commune-level police received and processed 960 incidents, advised on stably resolving 39 land and water source disputes, and mobilized 419 religious group points to strictly follow legal regulations, while effectively executing digital transformation with hundreds of thousands of residency dossiers, vehicle registrations, and online public services resolved.

Senior Colonel Giàng Páo Sính, Deputy Director of the Điện Biên provincial Police, stated that promoting the glorious tradition, the Provincial Police’s Security Force will continue to proactively master the situation and advise party committees and authorities to effectively resolve national security-related matters right from the grassroots, early on, and from afar. Concurrently, they will absolutely protect the safety of key targets, works, and crucial political events, while proactively fighting to defeat all sabotage plots of hostile forces, especially activities to set up a “separate state,” transnational crimes, drugs, human trafficking, and high-tech crimes, continuing to build a clean, robust, regular, elite, and modern force that satisfies task requirements in the new situation.