DAR ES SALAAM, (Reuters) – Tanzania yesterday denied allegations by a campaign group that Chinese officials smuggled out large amounts of illegal ivory during a state visit by President Xi Jinping last year.
Foreign Minister Bernard Membe rejected as “lies” a report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which said members of Xi’s large delegation of businessmen and officials had sent the ivory home in diplomatic bags on the presidential plane. China has called the allegations “baseless”.
“Claims that the Tanzanian government neither cares nor takes any action against ivory smugglers are false,” Membe told parliament. “The EIA report is fabricated… to tarnish the image of our country and our friend, the Chinese nation.”
Poaching has risen in recent years across sub-Saharan Africa, where well-armed criminal gangs have killed elephants for tusks and rhinos for horns that are often shipped to Asia for use in ornaments and medicines.
The situation has been most dramatic in Tanzania, where the EIA said elephants “are again being slaughtered en masse to feed a resurgent ivory trade”, with 10,000 killed last year alone. International trade in ivory has been banned since 1989.