Vietnam is the largest transit nation of the illegal transportation of wild animal samples such as rhino horns and elephant tusks, heard a meeting on managing samples of wild animals enlisted in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in HCMC on Thursday.
At the meeting with local media on Thursday, Do Quang Tung, director of CITES Vietnam, reported the grim news and insisted that the reason for this is due to a loose legal system lacking deterrence.
“Many illegal shipments of wild animal samples to Vietnam have been detected since 2004, with a total of nearly 150 kilos of rhino horns and more than 25 tons of elephant tusks detained. This must be the biggest detained volume in the world,” he said.
Besides, the number of Vietnamese citizens arrested for hunting and carrying rhino horns and elephant tusks in South Africa is also considered the largest number compared to other countries, Tung said. There have been around 30 Vietnamese arrested and sent to prison due to rhino horn and elephant tusk hunting and trading in South Africa at different times.
“Around 400-500 rhinos are hunted illegally in South Africa annually, with most of their horns transited in Vietnam. We suppose that Vietnam couldn’t consume all the volume based on investigations but we have still failed to find a convincing answer to the problem,” Tung said.
Khuong Thi Minh Hang of the Supreme People’s Procuracy said that Vietnamese law had yet to strictly apply administrative sanctions or criminal punishment to offenders carrying rhino horns and elephant tusks, which is seen as the country’s biggest legal shortcoming.
“The strictest punishment for such crimes is seven years in prison only while profits of the illegal actions are so huge which are equivalent to profits from drug trafficking, making it easy to understand why Vietnam is the biggest transit nation for the illegal transport of the two items globally,” she stressed.
The market price of rhino horns is as much as US$25,000 a kilo while that of elephant tusks is US$4,000 a kilo, Hanh noted. Tung, meanwhile, informed rhino horns sold for around VND130 million per 100 grams in HCMC at the moment. The costly prices result from the strong belief of locals that rhino horns can heal fatal diseases like cancer, he told the meeting.
Professor Nguyen Lan Dung, chairman of the Vietnam Biological Industries’ Association, at the meeting quoted scientific evidence saying that rhino horns don’t heal cancer or impotence and that taking overdoses of the items could cause liver poisoning.