|
Last year a team from WSPI went to Tibet undercover to investigate the extent of the trade there. What they found shocked them. Tiger and leopard skins were openly on display in Lhasa's Barkhor shopping area. The shopkeepers openly told the investigators that the skins had come from India.
One tourist who contacted the wildlife organisation spoke of seeing an entire crate of leopard skins stacked on top of each other.
Trading in the skins of tigers and other endangered species is illegal under Chinese law, but there is no enforcement in Tibet. There is a local tradition of wearing tiger skin-trimmed robes, but only in rural communities in one area of Tibet.
Environmentalists say the recent craze for the robes has been driven by a different, urban section of Tibetan society. While most Tibetans are still poor, in the cities there is growing wealth, and that has fuelled a fashion for the robes.
"This newfound trend has less to do with old customs than with new money," said Dawa Tsering, head of WWF China's Tibet programme. Environmental investigators found that it was not only Tibetans who bought the tiger skins. They were told that Chinese people were travelling to Tibet specially to buy tiger skins to decorate their homes.
Lhasa has become known as the place to get a tiger or leopard skin on the black market, and the environmentalists were even told that Europeans had come to the city to buy the skins - even though being caught returning with one to a European country could get you in serious trouble.
For the Dalai Lama, who has been committed to environmental causes for many years, and who has lived in India since he fled the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the photographs which emerged of Tibetans wearing tiger skins proved too much. He has spoken out against the wearing of furs before, but at this year's festival he was direct in his condemnation.
Although it appears that it is the Dalai Lama alone who has the moral authority to turn Tibetans so dramatically against the animal skins, his involvement is causing trouble with the Chinese authorities, who continue to regard the the exiled spiritual leader as a threat despite his calls in recent years for rapprochement.
Most of the burning incidents so far have been spontaneous, but Tibetan environmentalists were planning a large organised gathering today to burn more. But by last night it was not clear if the event would go ahead, after the Chinese local authorities called an urgent meeting on what they described as an action by the "Dalai clique."
Tseten Gyal, a Tibetan involved in organising the gathering, has been questioned by state security agents, despite saying that he is only trying to protect the environment, and is not involved in political activities.
"The Chinese have spoken of the importance of environmental protection and that is what the Dalai Lama's message addresses," says Ms Saunders of the International Campaign for Tibet. "Although this may be of concern to local authorities, I'm sure the main Chinese authorities understand that he is expressing the same environmental concerns they have addressed."
|
|
