Dhondup Gyalpo
In what was supposedly a searing expose, a national Hindi news channel on Tuesday beamed “exclusive footage” of flourishing illegal trading in tiger skin across the Tibetan plateau.
The “revelation” comprised few seconds of two footages. One was of a public festival, perhaps, somewhere in eastern Tibet, with a mass of people, spruced up in their traditional fineries, including dresses trimmed with Tiger skins, performing folk dances.
The other was more of an open shop, with animal skins on the wall, and a dealer, sifting through a pile of Tiger or leopard skin.
Unfortunate as the footage undoubtedly was, the comments thereafter by Maneka Ghandhi, one of the guest panel, were equally heart twitching.
The commentaries went:
So, who is the culprit?
Tibetans. They are smuggling Tiger and Leopard’s skin from India to Tibet.
How come?
Illegal trading has surged in the last five years…Tibetans in Tibet are getting rich by selling ‘a fungi’ [yartsa gunbu]… the excess cash is squandered on animal products…
How can we stop it?
All Tibetans are poachers…get them out…
The long and short of it: blame the Tibetans. If only could things be that simple?
A Delhi police raid in Majnu Ka Tilla in April this year nabbed three people with 45 leopard skins and 14 otter skins.
The aberration however was that only one of them was Tibetan. The other two were Indian and Nepalese. [The then Tibetan Welfare Officer of Delhi however denied involvement of any Tibetan.]
Ample proof that Tibetans are not alone in this shoddy business.
“The high level of sophistication involved in the planning, organisation, along with hefty lucre, to execute such smuggling is simply beyond Tibetans,” says Tenzin Tsultrim, of the Environment and Development Desk of the Department of Information and International Relations.
One simple question therefore is that even if we assume most tiger skins are meant for trimming Tibetan dresses, where do Tiger bones end up?
Tiger bones are used for more than a hundred prescriptions of Chinese traditional medicines as well as wine.
Since China has already depleted her stock of wild life, it is increasingly predating on its neighbor countries, says Tsultrim.
“Tibet (like Nepal) is only a transit between the supply and demand markets, in other words India and China.”
A follow-up story yesterday in the same news programme carried more footage of the same open shop selling Tiger or Leopard skin.
However, for a change this time, the owner clearly was a Chinese Muslim.
Endangered “Zoological Garden”
Once dubbed “a zoological garden”, Tibet today has a long list of over 81 endangered animal species.
Along with snow leopard and musk deer, Tibetan antelope, or chiru, is the worst threatened.
Antelopes are poached for their wool, which is smuggled to India’s Kashmir to make shatoosh shawl, most for international consumption.
Every year some 2,000 antelopes are reportedly poached—at this rate antelope could become extinct in five years.
Documentary films have been made on Tibetan wildlife activists, who have perished fighting for the protection of antelopes from Chinese poachers.
The Tibetan Link
One new trend that has today come to become a feature of Tibet’s mass celebration is the regalia of attire, especially those trimmed with Tiger, snow leopard or otter.
“This pomp and pageantry is a totally new phenomenon,” says Tsering Yangkee, the executive secretary of the TESI Environment Awareness Movement, a Dharamshala-based Tibetan NGO.
As a mark of prestige, groups representing various counties make a point of turning up donned in ostentatious attires in all such public gatherings, and in some cases, even if this leads them into debt.
To take the videos of such gatherings as emblematic of daily living will however be a gross exaggeration.
Besides, such videos beamed across the globe from inside Tibet also carries political overtones.
“Look at them. How primitive and backward we Tibetans are made to look in those animal skins,” says Tsering Yangkee.
The Solution
His Holiness the Dalai Lama has always championed the cause of protecting wild life and urged not only Tibetans, but the entire Buddhist communities of the Himalayan regions, to refrain from trading animal products.
“Today, more than ever before, life must be characterised by a sense of universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life,” His Holiness said during the launch of a joint campaign by Wild Life Trust of India and Care for Wild International on 6 April in New Delhi.
Again on the occasion of the 45th founding anniversary of the Tibetan Children’s Village here on 23 October, His Holiness spoke strongly against the usage of and trading animal products.
“I have seen photographs of Tibetans inside Tibet wearing expensive jewellery that is unnecessary, as one should aim for internal development and not outward show of wealth,” His Holiness said.
A fact that India TV was professional enough to acknowledge in its “Breaking News” programme yesterday. [Besides, India TV also thanked His Holiness for participating in this movement.]
Many exile Tibetan NGOs are also beefing up their efforts to plant environmental consciousness among the Tibetan people, like publication and distribution of wildlife materials.
However, above all, a million yuan question is:
In a place like Tibet, where such innocuous acts as possession of a photo of His Holiness the Dalai Lama could fetch a sojourn in prison, how come such gross illegal practises are being carried out right under the nose of the authorities?
