Dark dealings in blood ivory

Dark dealings in blood ivory

Does the name Joseph Kony ring any bells? For many Facebook users, his name came up early last year when a video clip became famous as part of a campaign to raise awareness about the crimes of Kony and his Ugandan guerrilla group Lord's Resistance Army.

Thanks to the Kony 2012 campaign, we were informed that Kony is a horrible person. His Lord's Resistance Army (read: gang) have killed as many as 100,000 parents in order to abduct their children and turn them into soldiers _ and for girls, into sex slaves.

Despite portraying himself as Bible-quoting messiah, Kony has relied on criminal activity to obtain financial resources. In 2005, the International Criminal Court indicted him for crimes against humanity. Kony fled Uganda and has since been hiding somewhere in the Central African Republic, or South Sudan, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

But our country might be involved with this man's illegal activity in a manner beyond our imagination.

According to a report in The New York Times last year, the African continent has attracted a new breed of ivory poachers. Among them is Kony's Lord's Resistance Army. Other groups are no less scary. They include Darfur's Janjaweed gunmen and Somalia's al-Shabaab, a militant Islamist group with close ties to al-Qaeda, as well as the Congolese, Ugandan and South Sudanese armies.

The era of local village poachers or hunters with rifles on horseback is gone. Militant poachers now gun down wild elephants from helicopters.

The illegally harvested tusks are sent to countries which trade in ivory, such as Thailand and China, through loopholes in law enforcement. Since 1989, many countries around the world including Thailand have ratified the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) on the ban against ivory trade. Yet, the ban gives exemptions for countries to trade ivory obtained legally.

For example, Thai law permits ivory trade from domestic elephants that die of natural causes. Since 2007, four countries in Africa have won exemptions to sell ivory obtained legally to countries in Asia such as China and Japan.

The effect has been the creation of a black market for so-called "blood ivory" illegally poached by those guerrillas _ such as Kony's army or terrorist cells with links to al-Qaeda.

Thailand is known as an ivory trade hub because of our prestigious elephants and the quality of local craftsmen.

At the same time, China has become known as the emerging consumer market, surpassing Japan. Ivory has become a new type of investment _ known as white gold for those who seek it but as blood ivory for conservationists.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an elephant's tusk can fetch between 2 and 4 million baht. Refined forms of ivory are sold at 40,000 to 50,000 baht per kilogramme. In China, you can buy it online. Investors see it as a commodity and are watching the price steadily rise.

It is not as though Thailand and China are doing nothing. Recently, Chinese authorities have started enforcing bans on online ivory trade. There have been arrests and seizures of illegal ivory shipments at ports in Bangkok, along with other cities in Asia.

But with loopholes and exemptions, the ivory trade will thrive under this new breed of poachers. Kony's thugs and other guerrillas will make a lot of easy money killing these elephants.

This month, there will be a meeting about the CITES in Thailand and one of the topics up for discussion will be the ivory trade. In tandem, conservation groups spearheaded by the WWF are lobbying the Thai government to ban all ivory trade once and for all.

There are allegations that most elephant ivory comes from poaching in Africa and there has been a revival of poaching in Myanmar.

Personally, I agreed with the total ban. Only after the buying stops will the killing stop too. But at the same time, the government needs to provide a solution for local craftsmen.

Apart from Jumbo, we also need to protect Jaws.

It is about time the Thai government banned shark fin trading. The pricey dish provides no nutritional value, and yet is laden with mercury.

The anti-shark fin soup campaign has been running in Thailand for more than a decade with moderate success. Shark fin soup is still listed on the menu in restaurants preferred by politicians and businessmen. I once believed that only people with mediaeval mindsets would consume this dish. Yet, news reports last year showed that the Democrat Party _ some of whose elite members have degrees from world renowned universities _ included shark fin soup at the party's official banquet at the Four Seasons.

With those role models, it's hard to see anti-shark fin campaigns having much more success. We have conservationists and celebrities like former NBA star Yao Ming, actor Leonardo DiCaprio and even veteran local model Cindy Bishop to help protest against these senseless and inhumane trades. But we need the strong arms of government and law enforcement to spell an end to trade and the black market.

Last year, the Chinese government banned shark fin soup at state-sponsored banquets.

Cities such as Toronto in Canada have banned the dish outright, while the European Union banned the harvesting of shark fins in its territorial seas.

It is time for governments to impose bans on certain uncivilised consumption. By trying to phase out shark fin soup and the ivory trade, we may find that dinosaur-era mindsets lingering in the psyches of many Thais will be made extinct. And that would certainly be preferable than the end of elephants.


Anchalee Kongrut is a feature writer for Life, currently based in Beijing on the FK journalist exchange programme.

Anchalee Kongrut

Editorial pages editor

Anchalee Kongrut is Bangkok Post's editorial pages editor.

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