인간은 이중성을 갖고 살아가는 생명체의 우두머리다. 어린 침팬치를 애완용으로 집에서 기르기위해, 불법으로 침팬치 새끼들을 어미 침팬치들로 부터 붙잡아다가, 세계각국의 수요자들에게 공급해주는, 즉 침팬치의 가족을 파탄에 이르게 하고, 사람들은 그런 고통은 뒤로하고, 두려움에 떨고 있는 어린 침팬치목에 쇄사슬을 걸어놓고, 가슴에 품고, 애무하고 난리법석을 피운다. 어린 침팬치는 자라서, 다시 짝을 만나 후손을 생산해야 하는데..... 잔인한 인간들이 자기들만의 만족을 위해 후손번식에는 아랑곳 하지 않아, 이제는 침팬치의 인구가 눈에 띄게 줄어들고 있다는 걱정스런 전문가들의 분석이다. 우리 인간들이, 침팬치가 당하고 있는것 처럼, 다른 생명체로 부터 부모와 자식간을 분리시켜 살게하는 취급을 당하고 있다면, 오늘날의 세계인구를 유지하고 있었을까?
http://bbc.in/2k3TtXy
새끼 침팬치들이 야생동물의 불법거래인들에 의해 비밀리에 거래되고 있는 조직망이 일년에 걸친 BBC의 추적조사에 포착되였다. 이렇게 어린 침팬치들을 그들의 둥지가 있는 야생에서 붙잡혀 애완용으로 팔리고 있는 것이다. BBC의 연구조사팀은 "Blue Room"으로 불리는, 야생동물 불법거래하는자들의 중심지역으로 유명한 West African를 발견한 것인데, 그중에서 태어난지 1년된 침팬치를 구출하는데 많은 도움을 주기도 했다. 아이보리 코스트의 가장 큰 도시 Abidjan의 더럽고 먼지투성이 길거리에서, 어린 침팬치가 두려움에 질려 울고 있는데, 이를 달래려고 노력하는 모습을 포착한 것이다.
머리털은 헝클러져있고, 어린 새끼침팬치는 그를 소유하고 있는 낯익은 남자들을 향해 기어갈때, 더러운 기저쥐는 콩크리트바닥을 휩쓸고 있었다. 야생에 살고 있는 가족들로 부터 강제로 떨어져 살고있는 어린 침팬치는, 무자비한 밀반인조직과 오직 돈만을 추구하는 사람들의 희생물인 것이다. 이러한 밀엽조직은 BBC가 6개국에 걸친 조사를 1년이상 진행한끝에 통해 세상에 알려지게 된것이다.
In demand as pets in wealthy homes or as performers in commercial zoos, baby chimpanzees command a price tag of $12,500, a little under £10,000, but sometimes more.
Each capture of a live infant like this one exacts a terrible cost on chimp populations.
The usual tactic used by poachers is to shoot as many of the adults in a family as possible. This prevents them from resisting the capture of the baby and their bodies can then be sold as bushmeat. To obtain one infant alive, up to 10 adults are typically slaughtered.
“One has to kill the mother, one has to kill the father,” explained Colonel Assoumou Assoumou, an expert in wildlife crime with Ivory Coast Police. “If our ancestors had killed them, nowadays we wouldn't even know about chimpanzees.”
Once captured, these baby chimps then enter a sophisticated chain that stretches from the poachers in the jungles to middlemen, who arrange false export permits and transport, and ultimately to the buyers.
The animals are in high demand in the Gulf states, south-east Asia and China, with buyers prepared to pay high prices and additional fees to help bypass international controls. And while they may be well looked-after while they are young, chimpanzees soon become too strong and potentially violent to be kept in a home.
Karl Ammann, a Swiss wildlife activist who campaigns against chimp trafficking, describes it as a “kind of slavery” and warns that when chimps cease being cute infants, they face a terrible fate.
“They still have 90% of their life ahead of them,” he said. “They get locked in some cage and maybe even killed in some cases because they have outlived their useful pet stage. That for me is just impossible to accept.”
The baby chimp discovered by the BBC had been bought from a poacher, according to one account, for 300 Euros (£257). But it was rescued en route as a result of our research - leading Interpol officials and Ivorian detectives to expose a major trafficking ring.
Blue room discovered
After months of work building relationships with dealers across a number of countries, our team tracked down the smuggling ringleaders to a house in Abidjan. Posing as prospective buyers, undercover reporters confirmed the infant chimp was at the property before alerting Interpol and local police who were waiting nearby.
During the police operation, a small room about the size of a shower cubicle was discovered, decorated with small blue tiles. Inside it, they found a tiny chimp cowering in a wooden crate.
The discovery was not only a moment of liberation for the little animal, but also a crucial turning point in a long search by wildlife campaigners to track down a notorious “blue room”, known to be used as a holding pen by traffickers and constantly restocked.
For years, when dealers had circulated videos showing captive baby chimpanzees ready for sale, the same distinctive blue tiles were visible. Understood to be in West Africa, no-one knew which country it might be in, let alone which city, until our research led police to it.
This revelation provides new insight into the potential scale of loss suffered by great apes, including chimpanzees.
An estimated 3,000 great apes, including orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees, are lost from the wild every year as a result of illegal trade, according to the UN Environment Programme. They are either sold, killed during the hunt or die in captivity. About two thirds of the apes lost are chimpanzees - an endangered species.
Western chimpanzees, like the one freed in Abidjan, are judged to be especially vulnerable, so are categorised as critically endangered. There are no more than 65,000 left and probably far fewer.
Some 1,800 apes were seized by authorities in 23 countries while being traffickedbetween 2005 and 2011, according to the Great Ape Survival Partnership, an alliance of more than 100 governments and other organisations. A quarter of those apes rescued were chimps. Although it is unknown how many smuggled apes reach their destinations undetected, the BBC’s investigation suggests the total is almost certain to be higher than previously thought.
Buying fake permits
The illegal trade in great apes is made possible by the determination of the smugglers and the ease with which international laws on buying and selling endangered species can be evaded.
Trading of endangered wild animals and plants is tightly controlled under the Cites agreement - the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora - which aims to protect all wildlife under threat.
Under the convention, chimpanzees, which are awarded the highest level of protection (a listing under what is known as Appendix 1), can only be exported under a very limited number of exemptions. For example, the animals need to have been bred in captivity (which is not known to happen in West Africa) and exporting and importing organisations need to be registered with Cites.
Despite this, the BBC’s investigation revealed that with the right money and the right connections the smuggling networks can evade these controls. In fact, our team was able to buy two permits to export chimps for $4,000 each.
Posing as buyers for a client in Thailand, the team obtained their first permit in the Egyptian capital Cairo, which has long been known as a centre for animal trafficking.
Our undercover reporter began negotiations over a secure messaging service with two pet traders, Mahmoud Khaled and Ramadan Abdelnaiem. The pair shared videos of infant chimps held inside the infamous blue-tiled room and offered to secure Cites permits allowing the animals to be exported.
Khaled even promised to provide video footage of the chimp’s progress en route to its destination.
“When [the] thing is shipped and put in boxes, you will receive a video,” he said. “When it goes to the airport, you receive a video, when it lands at the airport, you will receive a video. [When] it is shipped, you will receive a video. When it is put in the airplane, you receive a video...”
While Khaled offered to obtain a Cites Appendix 1 permit, enabling the export of chimps, Ramadan suggested an alternative technique: getting permits for less endangered animals and then hiding the chimps among them. Both these methods are recognised by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime as “wildlife laundering”, when smugglers use fraudulent paperwork or mix protected species with legal shipments of wildlife.
A video sent to the BBC’s undercover team by a dealer in West Africa shows how chimps and other endangered animals are smuggled in secret compartments in specially-designed crates.
Here, this baby chimpanzee was hidden below animals including parrots, civet cats and mongoose which have less protection in international law. The shipment was made from West Africa and destined for Nepal.
The chimp shown in this video, however, never made it. Messages found on the dealer’s mobile phone revealed that the chimpanzee had died, still hidden in the crate in transit at Istanbul airport.
The BBC undercover team accepted Khaled’s offer and picked up the Appendix 1 permit two weeks later. Clumsily filled-in, with spelling mistakes and other inaccuracies, it appeared to be signed and stamped by a Jordanian government official. It showed our fake address and a simple internet search would have revealed it was not a Cites-registered institution.
The next step was to see if we could arrange to buy the chimps, but at this point Khaled, called the deal off, afraid of being exposed. With the Egyptian deal fallen through, the team decided to deal directly with the source of the chimpanzees in West Africa.
This time pretending to be an Indonesian pet shop acting for wealthy clients, our team made contact with a young dealer in Guinea called Ibrahima Traore. Again communicating over a secure messaging service, the team built up a relationship with Traore, aged just 22, who began to send us videos of chimpanzees - once more in the setting of the blue room. It became clear that the room was being constantly re-stocked.
http://bbc.in/2k3TtXy
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