A traditional Chinese medicine businessman has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for attempting to smuggler rhino horn from Vietnam to China, according to Saving Rhinos which has been following the case on ChinaCourt.org.
Last December, the Chinese suspect was arrested in Vietnam with two rhino horns worth over 100,000 US dollars. The suspect confessed to authorities to repeatedly smuggling rhino horns from Vietnam to China.
In court the suspect’s defense argued that the rhino horn was for personal ailments and not for sale. However, the prosecution pointed out that the suspect had been a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner for over 10 years and had admitted previously to police to repeated smuggling.
In England an antiques dealer was recently sentenced to a year in jail for attempting to smuggle rhino horn out of the UK and into China. The horn had come from a rhino at the Essex Zoo whose head was stolen after dying from natural causes.
Although research has shown that rhino horn has no curative benefits, traditional Chinese medicine has been using ground-up rhino horn for centuries and is currently worth more than gold in weight. Combined with habitat loss, the illegal medicinal trade has pushed several species of rhinos to the very edge of extinction.
Rhino horn consumption recently made wider news after supermodel and host of Britain’s Next Top Model, Elle Macpherson, said in an interview that she consumed powdered rhino horn, because “it works for me”. She has since claimed that despite the statement, she had never knowingly taken a substance from an endangered species and her comments were merely “banter with an interviewer”.
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