In Summary
- The report implicates military and diplomatic officials in President Xi Jinping’s delegation in the purchase of illegal ivory during a March 2013 Africa visit.
- Hundreds of kilos of poached tusks “were later sent to China in diplomatic bags on the presidential plane,” reads the report, released on Thursday.
- Members of the delegation procured so much illegal ivory, the report says, that local prices doubled to $700 (KShs56,000) per kilogramme.
A plane carrying China’s president was used to smuggle ivory out of Tanzania after his visit to Africa last year, a London-based non-profit body claims.
Their latest report implicates military and diplomatic officials in President Xi Jinping’s delegation in the purchase of illegal ivory during a March 2013 Africa visit. Members of the delegation procured so much illegal ivory, the report says, that local prices doubled to $700 (Shs 1,890,000) per kilogramme.
Hundreds of kilos of poached tusks “were later sent to China in diplomatic bags on the presidential plane,” reads the report, released on Thursday.
According to the Environmental Investigation Agency, Chinese and Tanzanian officials, working with Chinese-led crime syndicates, are responsible for a wave of poaching that has killed off half of Tanzania’s elephants.
More than 10,000 elephants were killed in 2013 alone.
East Africa has emerged as the largest source of poached ivory, with Kenya and Tanzania leading the way, the report says. “Between 2009 and 2011, these two countries were the exporters of 16 out of 34 large scale ivory seizures (weighing 500kg or more) recorded worldwide, amounting to 35 tonnes.”
The report cites the case of Yu Bo, a Chinese national who was detained in December 2013 while attempting to deliver 81 elephant tusks to two officers from a Chinese naval task force on an official visit to the Dar es Salaam port in the Kurasini region. Yu was caught at a checkpoint after paying bribes totalling $20,000 (£12,500) at an earlier checkpoint, and subsequently sentenced to 20 years in jail after being unable to pay a $5.6m fine.
In November 2013, three Chinese nationals were arrested at a house in a Dar es Salaam suburb, where 706 tusks were found.
The group’s executive director, Mary Rice, said: “This report shows clearly that without a zero tolerance approach, the future of Tanzania’s elephants and its tourism industry are extremely precarious.
“The ivory trade must be disrupted at all levels of criminality, the entire prosecution chain needs to be systemically restructured, corruption rooted out and all stakeholders, including communities exploited by the criminal syndicates and those on the front lines of enforcement, given unequivocal support.”
The report lays the blame for the country’s ivory trade problem on “collusion between corrupt officials and criminal enterprises”, accusing rangers, police officers and revenue and customs officers of corruption.
The Chinese foreign ministry said it was “strongly dissatisfied” with the report.
“We attach importance to the protection of wild animals like elephants,” he said. “We have been cooperating with other countries in this area.”
The report also highlights underfunding for the Wildlife Division, which is tasked with protecting the Selous reserve, and says the agency saw funding drop $2.8m annually in 2005 to $0.8m in 2009 after funding raised from safari photography trips was scrapped. The agency has one ranger per 168 square kilometres rather than the recommended one per 25 sq km.
