NEWS: Sudan Army Accused of Ivory Trade, page 1

Sudan's military have been accused of being a main role in the illegal ivory trade. Sudan has slaughtered thousands of elephants and had the ivory exported to China to make into chopsticks. Dealers in Khartoum and Cairo receive ivory from southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. A twenty year civil war in Southern Sudan has made it difficult to actually determine the exact number of elephants slaughtered. The figures available indicate that the numbers have fallen from 133,000 in 1976 to 40,000 in 1992.

english.aljazeera.net
"Every trader we talked to said the Sudanese national army has been doing the killing, they possess the necessary firearms and ammunition. They also have access to government transport to move tusks to Khartoum and Omdurman," Martin told a news conference in Nairobi.

China has been the largest importer of illegal tusks since the mid 1990's, despite a ban on ivory trade by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 1990.

"The driving force behind these elephant killings especially in the recent past is directly linked to the activities of the Chinese. Not restricted to Chinese expatriates in Sudan they extend to traders in China who buy these tusks and encourage the trade," he said.

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To me this is just as bad as using fur from animals for clothing. There is no reasonable argument to suggest this is a positive thing to do. The slaughtering of any group of animals is awful, especially if it is purely for profit. The trouble is that things such as walking sticks and daggers are in demand in South Korea, when there is demand there will be profits, where there is profits there will always be a market in things such as this.
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[edit on 14-3-2005 by phixion]

[edit on 14-3-2005 by phixion]