Yahoo – AFP, Thanaporn Promyamyai, June 1, 2016
Bangkok
(AFP) - Thai wildlife officials have discovered dozens of dead cubs inside a
freezer at a controversial "tiger temple" that has been locked in a
long-running dispute with authorities and animal rights groups, police said
Wednesday.
Wildlife
officials found the tiger cubs during a continuing operation to remove dozens
of adult cats from the Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua temple in the western province of
Kanchanaburi.
"We
found 40 tiger cubs today. They were aged about one or two days when they died
but we don't quite know yet how long they have been dead," police colonel
Bandith Meungsukhum, a local officer, told AFP.
A warden
hugs a tiger at the "tiger
temple" in Thailand's Kanchanaburi
province on April 24, 2015 (AFP Photo/
Nicolas Asfouri)
|
"A
keeper said he was told to place the carcasses when they died in cold
storage," he told AFP.
The temple
has long proved a hit among mainly foreign visitors who flock there to be
photographed -- for a fee -- next to the scores of exotic feline pets.
Wildlife
officials say the whole complex is illegal and have battled the monks for years
to try and close it down. The dispute has been complicated by the fact that
secular Thai authorities are often reluctant to intervene in the affairs of the
clergy.
This week
officials were granted a court order to seize the cats and have so far removed
around 45 adults.
Animals
rights groups and conservationists have accused the temple of complicity in the
hugely lucrative black-market wildlife trade, making tens of thousands of
dollars by selling off older cats and animal parts for use in Chinese medicine.
Last year
one of the temple vets turned whistleblower, handing authorities three
microchips he said were inside a trio of tigers who had disappeared. It has
never been fully established what happened to those tigers.
'Preserved and frozen'
Wildlife
officials have also discovered during previous raids dozens of hornbills,
jackals and Asian bears that were being kept at the sanctuary without permits.
The temple
has always denied trafficking allegations.
In a
statement posted on its Facebook page, the temple said it was common for cubs
to be stillborn or die shortly after birth.
The temple
said it used to cremate dead cubs but the policy was changed in 2010.
"Instead
of cremation, the deceased cubs were preserved in jars or kept frozen,"
the statement added, without elaborating on why the policy was changed.
The temple
also denied selling cubs, saying such rumours were from people who have
"jumped to conclusions".
Photographs
from the scene on Wednesday showed the cubs laid out on a blanket alongside the
body of a bearcat, some deer horns and nearly two dozen containers.
Thai
newspaper Khaosod, which had a reporter at the scene, said the containers had
animal parts and intestines inside them.
Edwin Wiek,
a Thailand-based conservationist who has campaigned for the temple's closure
and whose veterinary staff have accompanied wildlife officials this week in the
operation to remove the cats, said the cubs might have been kept to make
religious charms.
"The
key thing is these tigers are illegal under Thai law," he said.
Moves to
confront the monks and confiscate the tigers have been staggered over recent
months. There are now believed to be around 100 tigers remaining at the temple.
For years
the government has been seemingly powerless to resolve the issue, partly for
fear of being seen to confront the clergy and also because officials readily
admit they have nowhere else to put such a large number of tigers.
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