Six alleged Sumatran tiger poachers arrested
Haidir Anwar Tanjung, The Jakarta Post, Pekanbaru, Riau
Local police in Riau arrested six men and named another as a fugitive in relation to the alleged illegal trading of endangered Sumatran tigers.
However environmentalists said the arrests were merely made for show -- given that on Tuesday the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had called for the government to be serious in the prevention of tiger trading.
Following reports from the management of Bukit Tiga Puluh National Park and forest rangers, the Indragiri Hulu police reported that the six men had been arrested as suspected members of a syndicate.
The police seized two dead Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrensis) and two dead tree tigers (Neofelis nebulosa), head of the police crime and investigation unit, Comr. Jamanair Simbolon, said on Friday.
"We arrested three alleged buyers of dead tigers on Feb. 15 in Jambi city while two suspected hunters and a middleman were arrested three days later. That was our strategy," he told The Jakarta Post.
The buyers were identified as 31-year-old Kamal Mubarah, 39- year-old Rahmat alias Memet, and Ko Sugianto, 64. The police identified Sudirman, 36 and Mathakim, 29, as hunters and Herman, 25, as the middleman.
The three alleged buyers are residents of villages nearby the national park.
The police failed to arrest Jarmo, from the East Java city of Surabaya, who is also suspected of being a buyer.
After stripping the tigers' skins, Simbolon explained that the suspects waited until the flesh rotted so that they could obtain the bones, which are also valuable.
He said that the suspects would be charged under Law No. 5/1999 on natural resources and Government Regulation No. 7/199 on conservation, which carries a minimum prison term of five years.
Despite the convincing evidence and contrary to the statement that the suspects were members of a syndicate, Simbolon said that the police had declared the suspects newcomers to the illegal business.
"We believe that they participated in the criminal activity for the first time. We'll hand over the dossiers to the prosecutor's office soon," he said.
On Tuesday, WWF and IUCN urged the government to take immediate action to stop poaching and the rampant destruction of the tigers' natural habitat.
Only 40 tigers are estimated to remain in the Bukit Tiga Puluh national park, Neil Franklin, the park's Sumatran Tiger project technical advisor said.
Separately, national park management and several non-governmental organizations cited indications of why they doubted the police's commitment.
National park head M. Haryono said that the arrested suspects were "old players" in the illegal business who had always managed to escape prosecution in the past.
Herman, the suspected middleman, he said, was caught in the act while hunting tigers in 1999 in the national park. However, he had managed to escape arrest.
Haryono also doubted that Ko Sugianto was new to poaching as four dead tigers had been seized from the poachers.
Franklin predicted that only 400 to 500 Sumatran tigers remained in the wild in Sumatra.
He said that poaching was the most serious threat to the animals, although illegal logging also had an alarming impact on their environment.
Endangered tigers are highly prized by hunters due to the soaring price of their skins, teeth, bones, claws and even blood on the international black market.
Franklin predicted that the international syndicate, which was responsible for Sumatran tiger poaching, included mafia from Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong and China -- all countries where people still use products obtained from Sumatran tigers for traditional medicine.
About 50 Sumatran tigers were killed every year by poachers between 1998 and 2002, he said.