VietNamNet Bridge – A documentary to be screened on April 26, on HDNet television in the USA and Canada reveals the extent of the rhino horn trade to Vietnam and how it is fuelling a rhino poaching crisis in southern Africa.

In this clip, Tom Milliken, Director of TRAFFIC’s East and Southern Africa program explains how a widely circulating urban myth about a senior politician supposedly cured of cancer using rhino horn stands behind an escalating slaughter of the species in Africa.

“There is a story in Vietnam - it’s widely told that a former prime minister was dying of liver cancer, he took rhino horn and was cured,” says Milliken.

“Now, we are trying to put a face and a name to the story, but no matter where we query -government, individuals - we’re not able to get to the bottom of it.”

Despite the lack of substance to the story, untold numbers of Vietnamese have been misled into buying rhino horns, spending huge sums of money on the powdered horn in the mistaken belief it has the ability to cure cancer.

“In the traditional literature going back centuries in Asia, rhino horn was used to reduce fever. It’s not going to cure you of lung cancer,” Milliken says.

In one sequence, the film crew enters a traditional medicine shop in Vietnam where they ask about the availability of rhino horn, whereupon the attendant produces a horn from under the counter and explains “that the people who buy it will grind it and drink it.”

“Rhinoceros horn is a type of medicine that is valuable. Sometimes I offer it but only wealthy can use it,” the vendor adds.

“To willingly show banned wildlife goods to a camera crew indicates a serious disregard for the law and a total lack of law enforcement pressure on Vietnam’s retail markets,” says Milliken.

In another clip, Milliken explains how the abuse of rhino trophy hunting quotas in South Africa by Vietnamese visitors led to strict revisions in the country’s law.

Between 2000 and 2007, South Africa averaged about 12 rhino poached each year. In 2008, the figure reached 78, and by 2010 it was an unprecedented 333. Already this year, more than 80 rhino have been poached.

In October 2010, TRAFFIC facilitated a mission of South African law enforcement officers to Vietnam for high-level discussions on growing rhino crime issues.

“Collaborative law enforcement action is needed in both source and consumer countries,” says Milliken.

“The fact that rhino horn remains readily available in Ha Noi markets means that the Vietnamese authorities are not doing their part to stop the trafficking in endangered species products.”

TRAFFIC’s work on rhino poaching has been funded by the Mackenzie Foundation, the US Government and WWF.