“Hongmu” is a style of intricately carved Chinese wooden furniture and artworks. It’s found on sale in glitzy shopping malls across mainland China. But behind the timber used to create this art form is a violent crime wave.
A new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency documents how Siamese rosewood from the Mekong region is nearing extinction as the demand in China for luxury reproduction wooden furniture soars. As the timber becomes scarcer, the price is increasing. Investors are pouring money into the business, making the problem even worse.
The report, which is based on EIA’s investigations in the Mekong region and China in recent years, starts with this description of the problem:
“This is a tragic true story of high culture, peerless art forms, and a rich historical identity being warped by greed and obsession, which consumes its very foundations to extinction and sparks a violent crime wave across Asian forests.”
The report, “Routes of Extinction: The corruption and violence destroying Siamese rosewood in the Mekong”, is available here. It is also available in Chinese, here.
EIA investigators went undercover posing as timber buyers along the main trade routes in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and China, exposing timber traders and corrupt government officials.
In a five-star hotel in Singapore, a timber trader laughs as he explains to undercover EIA investigators how he bribes Lao government officials to sell timber stocks seized from illegal loggers.
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In Dong Ky, near Hanoi, Vietnam, EIA investigators speak to a reported triad leader who describes timber smuggling routes across the land border to China. Border officials are on his pay roll. While he talks he stacks cash into a bag.
In Shenzhen, China, a logistics broker provides official Lao government export permits for wood stolen from Laos. The permits (which he has gained illegally) legitimise the import of wood to mainland China from Hong Kong, in breach of a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species decision aimed at preventing the extinction of Siamese rosewood.
In Thailand, another Cambodian logger is shot and killed by forest rangers. A week later, a Thai forest ranger patrolling a national park is killed by armed loggers. Meanwhile, a commodities trader wants US$50 million for hundreds of containers of seized timber held in Bangkok ports.
EIA Forest Campaign Team Leader Faith Doherty says,
“The soaring value of Siamese rosewood has spurred a dramatic rise in illegal logging in an international criminal trade increasingly characterised by obscene profits, violence, fatal shootings and widespread corruption at every level.
“As outlined in the report, the consequences for Thailand – both environmental and social – are very serious. Unless swift and decisive action is taken to stem this bloody trade, we could well be looking at the extinction of Siamese rosewood in a matter of a very few years.”