Chinese diplomatic and military staff went on buying sprees for illegal ivory while on official visits to Tanzania, sending prices soaring, an environmental activist group said yesterday.
Tens of thousands of elephants are estimated to be slaughtered in Africa each year to feed rising Asian demand for ivory products, mostly from China, the continent’s biggest trading partner.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) visited Tanzania last year, members of his government and business delegation bought so much ivory that local prices doubled to US$700 per kilogram, the UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) said in a report, citing ivory traders in Dar es Salaam.
Photo: AFP
“When the guests come, the whole delegation, that’s then time when the business goes up,” the EIA quoted a vendor named Suleiman as saying.
They alleged that the buyers took advantage of a lack of security checks for diplomatic visitors to smuggle their purchases back to China on Xi’s plane.
Similar sales were made on a previous trip by former Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), the report said, and Chinese embassy staff were also described as “major buyers.”
A Chinese navy visit to Tanzania last year by vessels returning from anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden “prompted a surge in business for Dar es Salaam-based ivory traders,” it said.
A Chinese national named Yu Bo was arrested during the naval visit as he attempted to enter Dar es Salaam port in a truck containing 81 elephant tusks — hidden under wooden carvings — which he planned to deliver to two mid-ranking Chinese naval officers, the EIA said.
Yu was convicted by a local court in March and sentenced to 20 years in jail, it added.
Tanzania is a key ally of China in East Africa and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete reportedly signed deals worth US$1.7 billion on a visit to Beijing last month.
Tanzania had about 142,000 elephants when Kikwete took office in 2005, the EIA said, adding that by next year, the population is likely to have plummeted to about 55,000 as a result of poaching.
Almost all ivory sales were banned in 1989 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), to which both China and Tanzania are signatories.
China often says that it pays “great attention” to the protection of endangered wildlife, and in recent years has carried out several high-profile arrests of smugglers caught in its territory, along with a televised incineration of seized ivory.
The environmental group WWF estimated that about 25,000 African elephants were hunted for ivory in 2011, predicting that the toll would rise.
There could be as few as 470,000 left, it said.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS