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Bloody ivory for temples; Lanka violates international conventions
View(s):By Kumudini Hettiarachchi
Sri Lanka will suffer a major loss of face in the eyes of the international community if the “blood ivory” from Kenya confiscated by the Customs last year is released to Buddhist temples including the Dalada Maligawa through the Presidential Secretariat, conservationists warned this week.
Condemning reported instructions by the Presidential Secretariat in a letter to the Customs that the 359 elephant tusks be handed over to it to be donated to temples, conservationists questioned whether the authorities were ignorant or chose to blatantly ignore the fact that Sri Lanka is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) of Wild Fauna and Flora.
The tusks were being smuggled from Kenya to Dubai hidden in soil in a container when the Customs swooped on the contraband shipment and confiscated them in May last year.
The tusks weighing more than 1,500 kilos have been valued at around Rs. 350 million, the Sunday Times understands. These tusks are dubbed “blood ivory” as more than 150 African elephants, including mothers and young elephants had been massacred to poach the tusks. Many baby elephants would also have been left orphaned to die of starvation as their mothers would have been slaughtered to extract the tusks.
According to CITES listing status and IUCN Red List status “all populations of African elephants have been listed on CITES Appendix I since 1989, except for four national populations that were transferred to Appendix II (Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe in 1997, and South Africa in 2000)”. The African elephant is currently listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.
Sri Lanka has been a signatory to CITES from 1979, a conservationist pointed out, stressing that “we are bound by it”.
Under CITES, confiscated and accumulated dead specimens of Appendix-I species, including parts and derivates, should be repatriated to the country of origin. They can be disposed of only for bona fide scientific, educational, enforcement or identification purposes or else have to be saved in storage or destroyed.
This tusk-haul is basically contraband and “offering” it to a Buddhist temple is an insult to Buddhism, a furious source said, pointing out that the tusks were literally “dripping with blood”.
How can the donation of such unclean things signifying death and slaughter of innocents, be justified, for Buddhism espouses ahimsa, he asked.
Another source pointed out that elephant tusks only signify wealth, accumulation and desire, which are against the basic precepts of Buddhism.
If these tusks are given to temples for common use it would send a clear message to the world that Sri Lanka is ready to launder and legalize contraband, an elephant-lover said covering another angle. “This would pose a huge threat to Sri Lanka’s own tuskers, as there would be a wave of killing to get their tusks thereafter. For, no one would be able to differentiate whether they are tusks from Sri Lankan elephants or those from the Kenyan haul.”
From the “ethical point”, environmental lawyer, Jagath Gunawardena, questioned how ethical it would be for the tusk-haul to be kept in venerated places like the Dalada Maligawa where the most sacred relic of the Buddha is enshrined.
“This will also send a wrong message to the international community,” he said, adding that there is nothing in Buddhism which requires the use of tusks. There is also the question of accountability, for who can be held responsible for them.
Officials of both the Customs and the Department of Wildlife Conservation which are the CITES authority in Sri Lanka were unavailable for comment.
In October 2012, the ‘National Geographic’ in a cover-page Special Report on ‘Blood Ivory’ stated that 25,000 elephants had been killed the previous year for their tusks.
Focusing on the illegal African ivory trade, the report portrayed not only heart-rending but also bloody photographs of elephants. It questioned ‘Ivory Worship’, asking whether the slaughter of thousands of elephants each year so that their tusks can be carved into religious objects, cannot be stopped.
“Elephant poaching levels are currently at their worst in a decade, and seizures of illegal ivory are at their highest level in years,” the National Geographic added.
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