Hong Kong's Deadly Underground Animal Trade | Undercover Asia | CNA Documentary

[Applause] [Music] lovely little creatures thank you washed up on the beaches of hong kong i saw bodies like fur bodies how did our love of pets land them in a center of a crime network it was shocking it was gruesome right llama island is hong kong's hipster central two kinds of people live here old timers of the fishing village and newly arrived expats escaping the hectic pace of the city with kids and dogs in tow but in august trouble brooding hipster paradise [Music] the cause for the outrage small animals caged and drowned washed up on llamas shores this for a place like llama this is pretty disturbing stuff most people were concerned whether somebody out there was drowning these little animals just for fun because that would mean they have a psychopath living in a community my name is we do i'm a correspondent for cna based in hong kong i'm setting out to investigate the mysterious deaths of these little animals that's both gripping and unsettling it was just up here just in front of us like 10 meters and what similar day it was 6 30 in the morning no sunshine yet eva is the first eyewitness to post on facebook and the beach looks quite different there is a lot more rocks in this area so the sand now covers the rocks and it was a lot of yeah marine debris and that cage was in all of that trash i came closer to it i saw something poking out and it looked like an animal pole and there was some fur on it okay so i looked inside and there were furry bodies blown up but i saw there were different bodies different color could you tell what they were i guess it was cat or a small dog but i wasn't sure because it was unrecognizable it was shocking it was gruesome sight people were really angry the cage eva found was later confirmed to contain six dead cats and it wasn't a one-off incident [Music] the day before the llama discovery a similar cage washed up on the south side of hong kong island inside carcasses of three dogs a few weeks later another cage was found in lantau containing one dog and two cats people started to talk are we dealing with one psychopath or three for the local police it was one big unusual case i wanted to ask them about it but i haven't obtained permission to film inside the police station hi i'm a journalist from singapore's channel news asia i have a few questions about when people found dead cats and dogs on lava yeah is there anyone who i can talk to have you got a telephone number my telephone number yeah because i cannot answer you yes they told me to leave a phone number i don't think they're gonna call me back i was wrong someone did call me back and sent me to this nondescript building hi i'm way just want to make sure i'm at the right place [Music] okay this is the first time you realized they were smuggling pets hi on the water mocha how did some of them end up washing up ashore all over the why did it toss the animals were they the only cargo on the smuggler's boat don't see a financial major foreign [Music] okay is there a lot of smuggling going on in hong kong waters you see hong kong is surrounded by the sea on three sides it also has 263 islands many small and remote perfect for harboring pirates historically and smugglers now some islands also lie pretty close to hong kong's maritime boundary with mainland china so the boundaries with mainland china smugglers can close mocha police cannot so that leaves your very small room motor maneuver [Music] on to foreign a sense of just how hard it is to police hong kong waters carrie agreed to take me on her routine patrol are we gonna run into pirates hopefully hopefully seriously so we can have a bit of fun but nowadays it's very hard to find well what about smugglers that we're gonna run into smugglers maybe all right let's go departing from the small boat division space on stone cutters island in central hong kong it's a half hour's journey to reach hong kong's southwestern maritime frontier with mingling china the two boats over there are there in hong kong waters or they're already on the other side mojo so from here to the boundary traveling at top speed how long would it take so they're about the same speed if not faster than policemen then how do you intercept if that's the case i'm holding we didn't run into any smugglers we just got a bit seasick and very cold a high speed chase on the sea had happened could have been awfully dangerous in january 2020 a customs department's boat capsized while on anti-smuggling patrol all three officers on board were killed in 2020 hong kong authorities busted on average three smuggling cases between the city and the mainland every week confiscating goods worth almost 100 million us dollars in a year the smuggling is often done to evade taxes expensive wine seafood and electronic products go from hong kong to mainland china where legal imports are subject to high tariffs conversely smugglers bring things like cigarettes from china into hong kong because the city imposes high consumption taxes on the goods [Music] but neither applies to cats and dogs so why would smugglers be interested in them that's what i need to find out next laugh one zing line why would people want to smuggle pet cats and dogs they're not contraband i'm heading to animal welfare organization spca to find out [Music] i think it's more or less an open secret that there were people in china who were breeding and then some of the people involved in the pet trade in hong kong were actually taking these animals in and then selling them in hong kong this is cat and dog cats and dogs right and also you know i have been to markets in guangdong province and you talk to the the vendors in the the pet stores and they will say to you oh you live in hong kong i can arrange for this dog or cat to be delivered in hong kong why would the pet shops in hong kong sell smuggle to animals what's the incentive people are interested to make a profit it's profitable because in hong kong land is expensive and in 2017 the government implemented new animal welfare rules requiring all dog breeders to be properly trained and licensed raising their costs even further in mila and china's vast inland provinces neither is a problem so puppy and kitten mills are still prevalent at one point people were saying look if you bought five puppets in china smuggled five in and only one survived and was sold you would still make a healthy profit but why would anyone want to buy a puppy or kitten bread in milan china um again i think people aren't really thinking about the consequences they're just thinking that they have this want or a need to have a puppy or a kitten maybe a certain breed or age when i can't find one in hong kong or it's a bit pricey or i can see it advertised on a website in china and i can make that purchase is there a legal channel for people to bring cat and dogs from milan china into hong kong yes so you can import animals from china into hong kong you have to undergo a four month quarantine a month four months here it takes four months because mingling china still has rabies and hong kong doesn't but putting puppies and kittens into quarantine for that long doesn't really work for pet traders it's not just expensive people like young animals and by the end of the four months the cats and dogs are often too old to find buyers so what does this market for smuggle pets look like i'm headed to goldfish street and where licensed pet shops are located to get a clue how people are getting away with selling smuggled pets okay a quick search on a local forum for cat adoption has led me to someone who's offering cats though it's not easy to get to his place we've been driving for about an hour from downtown this is so close to mingling china already i'm going in to find out if it's truly putting up a cat for adoption but i can't bring my camera along in a tiny room i'm shown a dozen kittens or a couple months old that's when i realized this person really isn't offering a cat for adoption he's selling a cat although the price he's quoting is less than half of what the pet shop asks for and we know that is not true sellers of all kinds of animals need to be licensed in hong kong after 15 minutes of negotiating i left on a pretext of not finding an ideal kitten it's pretty dodgy about a dozen cats or supposedly bred in that tiny really dirty room we just really can't tell where they came from while i strongly suspect his cats come from china because he couldn't even produce a hong kong vaccination certificate i didn't manage to find out for sure [Music] [Applause] but as luck would have it a daughter of a friend desperate for a cat has been in touch with a breeder across the border on the mainland and he promises speedy delivery to hong kong it's clear he isn't legit because he's not going through a licensed seller and now i'm in touch with him so to deliver a cat in three days clearly you'll have to smuggle it in because remember to do this legally the cat will have to be in quarantine for four months so i can actually pay him to deliver the cat to me in hong kong because to do that i'd have to break the law but the fact that it's so confident probably means a lot of smugglers are still getting away with it and the incentives of for buying a smuggled pet has become abundantly clear in a licensed pet shop a kitten would cost more than 2 500 us dollars if you take a chance with the mainland seller who smuggles the kitten over you'd only have to fork out less than seven hundred dollars meanwhile a man looking for his cat has caught my attention on the internet strange thing is he lives in shanghai having recently completed his studies in australia but he claims his cat was lost in hong kong we agreed to call him jason [Music] and jason's nightmare started in july 2020 when he was trying to catch a flight and back home to shanghai [Laughter] immigration agency is a business that moves pets from country to country often when the owners relocate for work or studies it's a legitimate line of business though with plenty of areas of gray [Music] foreign jason says he's not alone through him i found dozens of people on chinese social media most were students who left their host countries in a rush when covert 19 hit and so were separated from their pets they all paid agents to return their fur babies to china via hong kong except the animals all vanished once reaching the city so these are not pets for sale these are pets that already belong to people but why did they have to come to hong kong in the first place there's still a border between hong kong and mainland china and taken apart across them without its legally registered owner especially during a pandemic it's still next to impossible there's still so many questions highway i'm alex hi alex i've got some questions for you i found on the internet a lot of people in milan china claim that their pet dogs and cats got lost in transit in hong kong yes that was actually the case the pets were going from hong kong to mainland china hi how did you guys find out about that community [Music] pets from rabies rabies-free countries and can enter hong kong quarantine free even without their owners milan china's import rules vary from city to city but for the most part during the pandemic a pet has to travel with its legally registered owner in order to enter once separated they're pretty much stuck [Music] is so how many animals do you guys have on hand now if somebody is still looking for his pet cat what should he do now could they hold thank you so much for your time alex i hope you get all the smugglers yeah have a nice day yeah you too bye-bye okay bye okay this is great i must tell jason to give them a call wait jason [Music] um [Music] the police still has no idea where jason's cat is that probably just means that the scale of this thing is much bigger than we've realized so it turns out smuggling goes both ways between hong kong and mainland china cheaper pan alternatives entering hong kong from china and pets been smuggled back home to china from hong kong but i'll soon realize the scope is not limited to just cats and dogs smuggling of animals between hong kong and milan china turns out to be big business cats and dogs are just tip of the iceberg there are some parts of it that are far darker than a pet trait conservation ngo adm capital foundation calls hong kong a black hole in the international trafficking network for endangered animals sam english supports data from a confusing web of sources to compile the wildlife and trafficking report for the foundation i'm meeting him to find out how extensive the wildlife trafficking trade is and why smugglers are getting away between 2015 and 2019 around 18 000 animals were seized by local authorities do you think we've caught them all absolutely not no i think that the the 18 000 are merely the tip of the iceberg the reason that hong kong is used it's quite obvious we have been for a very long time one of the world's leading ports we have a huge amount of container traffic that comes through the city a lot of air cargo a lot of foot traffic through air passengers through people coming in on trains and obviously cross-border vehicles all of that provides a huge opportunity for trade of all kinds and where there is legal trade there is going to be illegal trade as well if somebody is caught at hong kong airport with a luggage full of endangered tortoises and what happens next often most cases it does appear that the individual who is caught red-handed will face prosecution of some kind the difficulty there is that that is not the person who typically harvested the animals and they are usually affiliated with a much larger organization they are simply a mule and the mule isn't the mastermind behind the crime so we want to actually target the criminal syndicates that are involved in this trade to actually disincentivize what they're doing and that typically means going after their assets or their financial resources [Music] there's a long list of animals that cannot be brought into hong kong for commercial purposes these animals are usually endangered and protected by an international treaty sam says reptiles dominate the smuggling trade so basically snakes and tortoises and he says they're usually sold as pets i want to understand the appeal of these uncuddly creatures but i can't find anyone with an illegal reptile to talk to [Applause] so i have to settle for someone with something similar but aren't endangered does it legal to be bought and sold as pets in hong kong you'll see it just um i hope i have insurance for this foreign it's less about the snake foreign a big part of the reptile's appeal seems to be a desire on a part of the owners to feel special even when not endangered they're far less common than cats and dogs also ben says that they're easier pets to keep in hong kong because they don't take up that much space this is a pretty typical hong kong public housing estate and the density is very high and apartments are very tiny that's why dogs are not allowed because the barking that's going to be a problem for your neighbors but snakes they're very quiet [Music] to give me an idea what it's like living with them in hong kong's infamous shoebox apartments ben sent me to meet one of his customers [Music] hello hi i'm wayne nice to meet you penguin [Music] boa constrictors are allowed as pets in some places but hong kong bans them because the government considers them too dangerous adult boas can grow to 4 meters long and weigh up to 45 kilograms and as the name constrictor indicates they're fully capable of strangling animals and humans alike yes low profile in life may be but clearly not online [Music] [Music] [Music] the growing popularity of exotic pets filled by social media envy worries conservationist gary aids he says many owners aren't prepared to handle what they have and he's taking me to hong kong's wetland park to see an example this is poipou's home is a big big animal are crocodiles native to hong kong no they're not native to hong kong so she's definitely not from here she was definitely brought into hong kong but what for when the hatchlings they're they're very cute um they look like big lizards basically and i think that some people some hobbyists like to keep them as pets it's likely that she was brought in and the person who had her realized that she was going to grow too big to keep in a flat in hong kong and so released into the environment turns out was once a serious celebrity in hong kong in 2003 she was spotted chilling by a local river sending the government into a frenzy hong kong authorities tried everything they could think of last week from tranquilizer darts to ropes and nets and even tape her ability to evade capture fascinated the entire city and frustrated experts home and abroad an australian crocodile hunter has arrived in hong kong to help authorities nab a croc that's eluded capture until she finally tired herself out after six months on the loose [Music] that's just opening our mouth yeah so showing that showing the teeth can i go to the goldfish market today and buy a crocodile no you wouldn't be able to do that because it would be illegal to take it into hong kong so if i want one that definitely involves smuggling definitely you know that you were doing something illegal so in hong kong buying a banned animal could land you in jail but when it comes to getting a desirable pet plenty of people are willing to break the law and flaunt it too it was taped up to the legs and head couldn't move so that was a very unpleasant situation for it very sort of risky for his welfare and health between 2015 and 2019 the hong kong government confiscated 18 000 exotic animals have been smuggled into the city most intended as pets animals that are either protected or deemed too dangerous in a home environment [Music] when they are found many are then handed to kaduri farm and botanic garden which takes care of them while trying to repatriate them or find them new homes in zoos around the world around 500 exotic animals at the moment that will be looking for placement across the world wouldn't get too close that arm could suddenly be pulling your eye below how did she even get here she was actually um captured in a cargo handling center in hong kong she was being smuggled either into the territory or through the territory to supply somebody's desire to have an exotic pet monkey do we know where she came from in the wild they exist all the way from sort of malaysia down through indonesia philippines so she could have come from one of several different countries she's not a serious conservation concern but she has a welfare concerns because this animal was taken from its mother it's actually known that sometimes in order to capture small and get a hold of baby monkeys poachers will kill the parent poor thing so somebody thought she could be a good house pet could should be primates do not make good pets in the average household they're potentially very volatile and unstable they can be friendly one moment and then very aggressive the next and that could also be a disease risk where she's carrying diseases that could pass to you so really not a good idea to have a monkey there are people who keep these exotic pets what they would say was well what do they have to complain they're never starved that they're taken good care of they're given so much love but the bulk of of exotic pets particularly intelligent primates like this the bulk of them in captivity will not be experiencing life the way they should they will be missing out on aspects of their mental stimulation and social stimulation that they should be getting so most exotic primates like this in captivity are probably not in a good way if you hadn't taken her over what would have happened to her she may have had a very unpleasant end actually because she's not a rare species so she'd not be the focus of zoo breeding programs or conservation efforts her point of origin is unknown so she can't get returned to the wild sometimes in cases like this governments and rescue facilities are actually forced to euthanize or or humanely dispatch an animal because it does not have an option a positive option right well part of me is thinking if that had to be the case then why not just let people have her if you start to allow people to have things like primates as pets or exotic animals or pets well as soon as one person has one you fuel a demand their friend wants one another one wants one and then there'll be more and more demand there'll be more poaching more coming from the wild poaching has already driven several species to the brink of extinction paul says he has one example right here we're heading now into one of our higher security facilities because it houses animals that have a significant commercial value yeah i wonder where that is this is actually a clause here tortoise or an angonoka as it's known in madagascar where they come from madagascar madagascar africa yep it comes from nowhere else and this is actually the rarest tortoise on the planet it's under really severe threat what are we talking about how many we're talking about estimates between two and four hundred in the wild so they're rarer than pandas yeah significantly rarer than pandas and sadly being poached and taken into people's households around the planet as just personal pets could you imagine if somebody tried to do that with a panda how did this one get here this guy was part of a confiscation that was made it came to hong kong originating from a flight in comoros which is a small island north of madagascar it was taped up the legs and head couldn't move so that was a very unpleasant situation for it very sort of risky for its welfare and health but it was one of a total of 57 tortoises that were being carried in the luggage of an african gentleman there were two plowshares what happened to the other one unfortunately its friend didn't make it a lot of smuggled animals actually die in transit we've had confiscations where after a couple of months we've actually lost 100 of the confiscation they may arrive seeming healthy but the insults that their bodies have received during the whole poaching smuggling process sometimes they've already set sort of a deteriorating health pathway that we just can't reverse i mean no offense but it's really not that much fun to be around why does anyone even want him the desire to have them are really not about it being an exciting pet it's the status symbol that people get where they go i've got or i own the rarest tortoise in the world um at one point we had an estimated seven percent of the world living population of plowshare tortoises here in this rescue center in hong kong and the scary thing is these are the ones that were actually confiscated there may have been more that made it through the territory without actually being stopped and if this doesn't stop the plowshare becomes extinct it's got to shift or this tortoise will be gone in the wild forever so where have the owners been hiding their plow shares well turns out in plain sight okay let me do a search for hashtag plowshare oh you actually get a warning message animal abuse and the sale of endangering animals and their parts is not allowed on instagram thank you very much i know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna try chinese here we go 160 posts page after page after page [Music] this looks like someone in taiwan she's got one this guy's has one in macau and this woman right here she has one two if not three cloud shares and she's right here in hong kong tech firms including facebook and china's tencent and alibaba have a coalition to tackle wildlife crimes on their platforms but david olsen of wwf hong kong says the focus is on taking down for sale listings not people who solicit social media envy but all of this starts with the demand right isn't it more important to take away the demand a right thing to do for these social media platforms to remove these listings and not to encourage people to have a selfies or have have other kinds of interactions with wild animals and we need to get away from the concept of wild animals as pets or anywhere outside of the wild as entertainment is there a discrepancy in terms of how these rules are enforced in english and chinese and other languages that's a real challenge there has to be dedicated teams that are evaluating listings and doing investigations for different languages if you don't have a dedicated team really going through those listings and taking action against those listings it won't happen the consequences of animals smuggling in and out of hong kong are many fold someone could lose a pet and madagascar could lose an entire species what has allowed this to happen is a complex web of enforcement blind spots and a social media frenzy driven by human envy you

Channel: CNA Insider

Views: 124,203

Keywords: CNA, CNA Insider, Channel NewsAsia, People stories, Asian perspective, Undercover Asia 8, Undercover Asia, Hong Kong, Asia, smuggling, animals, pets, animal smuggling, smuggler, smuggled animals, smuggled pets, wildlife trade, endangered, wildlife, trafficking, animal welfare, breeding, pet immigration, COVID-19, exotic pet

Id: GAclpNSQgh8

Length: 48min 2sec (2882 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021