ECONOMYNEXT - Sri Lanka's president and prime minister were both slated as honoured guests at the public crushing of 1.5 tonnes of blood ivory seized by local customs, but neither turned up possibly fgearing an astrological backlash.
The red-carpet podium was all set with President Maithripala Sirisena's flag and other guests had been told to be there a few hours ahead of the ceremony to clear security, but the head of state was a no show.
So was Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe despite local television anchors announcing the imminent arrival of the two most powerful politicians to grace the landmark event and receive international publicity from dozens of international media crew.
The official reason for keeping away was never announced, but unofficial sources speculated that astrology was at the bottom of it. While Sri Lankans consider tusks to be a sign of prosperity and an object that could bring good luck, any destruction is feared to bring enormous bad fortune.
With mounting political tensions between the two men, perhaps neither wanted to add supernatural fuel to their tenuous relations.
However, the Secretary General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), John E. Scanlon, hailed Sri Lanka and said the public destruction of ivory was the first of its kind in South Asia.
He said forensic tests showed that the 359 pieces of ivory destroyed in Colombo today came from northern Mozambique and Tanzania and transited through Kenya to Sri Lanka on the way to the United Arab Emirates.
Scanlon, who was present for the destruction, said Sri Lanka's action demonstrated it will not tolerate the illegal trade.
"This shows the effectiveness of Sri Lankan customs in detecting this contraband in transit," he said.
Sri Lanka very nearly earned the wrath of CITES when under the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime, the customs had been asked to donate the contraband to Buddhist temples.
Only international criticism of the regime prevented Rajapaksa from generously distributing to temples that was seized by customs in May 2012. Local officials estimated the black market value of the haul at over 300 million rupees.
But on Tuesday, CITES was full of praise for Sri Lanka for destroying the tusks without actually putting them to use.
CITES chief noted that the number of African elephants killed for their tusks peaked in 2011, the year before the discovery in Colombo, with about 30,000 animals slaughtered.
However, he said many African nations were cracking down on the illegal trade and that as a result, blood ivory was becoming a low-profit, high-risk venture for smugglers.
The international trade in ivory has been banned in most of the world since 1989, but illegal smuggling persists in many parts of Asia where ivory is highly prized for medicinal and decorative uses.
Some of the tusks destroyed on Tuesday had come from baby elephants. "There are some very small tusks which would have come from baby elephants," Colombo Customs Director Udayantha Liyanage told reporters.
"We are trying to demonstrate that there is no value for blood ivory... It is horribly cruel and the elephants suffer for about a week before they die," he said. Blood ivory is a term used by activists to describe tusks that are obtained illegally by slaughtering elephants.
The organisers of Tuesday's event at Galle Face observed a two-minute silence for the slain elephants before Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Muslim leaders performed funeral rites for the animals.
Sri Lanka's Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said the government had resisted pressure to hand over at least part of the contraband to Buddhist temples, which display tusks as a symbol of prosperity.
"I congratulate the wildlife minister (Gamini Jayawickrama Perera) for resisting this pressure and going ahead with the ivory crushing," Karunanayake said. (COLOMBO, Jan 27, 2016)
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