Malaysia – python skins script
00:29
Cousin: Why haven’t you put the net up properly?
Pandian: I’ve only attached it.
Cousin: Right, then I’ll tie it up like it should be.
00:39
This morning, Pandian and his cousin are inspecting their python traps.
00:43
Pandian: I need to change this post because if a python comes, it’s not going to hold it for long.
00:53
Pandian: The net has 7-centimetre holes, so when the pythons are big enough only their heads can fit through. And that’s how we catch them. If the snake is very strong, it can totally wreck the net. You know, some snakes are incredibly powerful and will just tear it apart.
01:13
Every day, Pandian and Ganesan roam the jungles of Perak, just north of the capital Kuala Lumpur. They have been professional python hunters for 15 years – tasked with catching the most valuable reptiles for the luxury goods market.
Cousin: Eh!
01:28
A few metres away, a biawak has been caught in a trap.
Cousin: There’s at least 2 kilos there! Watch out for its claws.
Pandian: If there aren’t any snakes, we’ll take these as well.
01:42
But it is little consolation for Pandian. These giant lizards fetch just a quarter of a python’s value – their skins less desirable, and less lucrative.
01:56
With its diamond patterning and iridescent tincture, the reticulated python is highly coveted in the world of leather goods. For more than forty years, the rainforests of South-East Asia have supplied several major European fashion houses including Gucci, Hermes, Prada, and Louis Vuitton.
02:12
Worth more than 1 billion dollars annually, it is an immensely profitable industry.
02:17
Until 2004, up to 350,000 Malaysian pythons were killed every year for bags, belts, and shoes.
02:25
Then, fearing the extinction of this protected species and condemning the permissiveness of the local authorities, the European Union banned the import of Malaysian snake skins. A severe blow to the world’s largest exporter. 10 years on, has Malaysia recovered from the impact of this ban? And where do the big brands get their stock today?
02:55
Cousin: Pandian, here, take this coconut. It’s full of water. Let’s have a break for a minute.
03:04
After 5 hours of hunting in the scorching heat, Pandian and his cousin still have nothing. Pythons are becoming increasingly rare.
03:14
Pandian: Before, we could catch ten snakes a day with a bit of luck. Now, we get just one or two, and sometimes nothing at all. It’s difficult – dry season or not. It’s always very unpredictable. Even in the rainy season, you can’t count on anything.
03:35
A sign of impending extinction? Or just a twist of fate? With no political will behind the protection of this endangered species, no official record of the population has been kept.
03:47
After going a whole month without a single python, and any source of income, Pandian decided to expand his hunting area. Now, it covers nearly 800 square kilometres of oil palm plantations.
04:00
Pandian: If I don’t find any snakes, if I don’t catch anything, what do you want me to do? That’s how I get money. I need it to support myself, to support my family. It’s all I have.
04:19
Like Pandian, several thousand Malaysians depend on python hunting for their livelihoods.
04:26
At long last, Pandian’s luck appears to be changing.
Pandian: He’s there, he’s stuck.
Cousin: Yes, I see him. We’ll have to cut the net.
04:39
A python has been caught in a trap. It is not venomous, but more than capable of suffocating a human. They can grow up to ten metres in length, and weigh in excess of 140 kilos. It is to avoid potentially fatal accidents that Pandian hunts with his cousin.
04:56
The catch of the day: a female, barely three metres long.
Cousin: Where’s the tape?
05:02
It poses no risk to the two men.
05:08
Pandian: I’m happy, but we won’t know what it’s worth until we get back. The buyer has to be happy with the skin – it can’t be damaged or have any imperfections. Ah, you see, there are scars. Three of them. I’m worried that the snake won’t be worth that much.
Cousin: Come on, it’s fine. Put it over your shoulders.
05:40
Their clients demand perfect skins. Even the slightest blemish can lower the price by half.
After a long day of hunting, Pandian and his cousin return home with a meagre haul.
06:04
The two hunters are Malaysian-Indian – the country’s third largest minority. Their Tamil ancestors arrived at the end of the nineteenth century to work as slaves in the rubber plantations – at the time, the nation’s primary resource.
06:20
Two generations ago, Pandian’s family reinvented themselves as python hunters.
Pandian: We Indians love to hunt snakes. It’s not very well paid, but if you catch a good python you can make up for it. We feel free, too, as it is a job that you can do when you want.
06:46
In the evening, a local buyer pays a visit to the hunters’ community. Mr. Lau travels the region in search of fresh pythons for his exotic skins business.
Mr Lau: Where is the snake? Bring it here.
07:04
With his expert eye, Mr. Lau quickly notices the scars.
Mr Lau: Look, there. It’s hurt. I’ll put it in category three. OK, you can put it back in the bag.
07:24
Since the ban on exports to the EU, the price of python has fallen dramatically. For his day’s labour, Pandian gets just 5 euros.
Mr Lau: (In English) I know it’s not good cash, but this is what I can do for them. I can give this much only. Unless the quality is good, we can’t pay more for him.
Pandian: It’s not easy because I have to share the money with my cousin, and then there’s the cost of the fuel as well. So it won’t leave me much to feed my family.
08:03
Pandian has earnt only 100 Euros in the last few weeks. In a good month, he can make up to 500.
08:11
Pandian: Where is the rice?
Woman: Go and sit down, I’ll bring it to you.
08:17
Pandian and his wife, Saraswati, have three children. His unstable salary is the sole income for the household.
Girl: I want that.
08:32
Pandian: When I run out of money, I borrow from my friends. I use it to buy milk and food for my children. The money I borrow enables us to live for two or three days, and then I have to find some snakes.
Pandian: Come on, time for bed.
08:51
Since an accident caused Pandian to lose sight in one eye, Saraswati has feared for her husband’s life.
09:00
Saraswati: Python hunting scares me. We often argue. But my husband says he can’t stop working. He tells me that whatever happens, he wants to carry on, which annoys me. Just look at his hand. He’s already had 14 stitches.
09:24
At 29, and without any formal qualifications, Pandian does not have a choice.
Pandian: I never went to school. I want my girls to study, and get married. I don’t ask to be rich, only to be able to eat well and lead a normal life. That’s all I ask.
09:54
There are 10 companies nationwide involved in the buying and selling of pelts.
10:03
But of these, only Mr Lau's family-run business agreed to open its doors.
10:12
Once a specimen is bought, Mr Lau's 10 employees then cut and sun-dry the skin.
Mr Lau: (In English) This one, the quality is ok. Sometimes, we can do 40 – it’s a good catch - 40 or 50 snakes per day. And sometimes even 15, 20.
10:38
With over a hundred hunters supplying him with stock, Mr Lau is able to export between 8 and 10,000 python skins every year – as many as before the ban. But today, the Malaysian authorities require all vendors to hold hunting licences.
10:56
Mr Lau: (In English) We pay for three months. That is how they control the quotas. If you have a permit for 100 pythons, you have three months to catch them – no longer. And if you catch them before the end of those three months, you have to buy a new licence.
11:17
At 50 Euros for 100 snakes, the hunters themselves cannot afford the licence fee. So Mr Lau covers the cost, until business picks up again.
Mr Lau: (In English) I help my hunters by paying 11,000 Euros annually in licence fees. It’s all I can really do for them at the moment, because we are not making very much. If we could export to Europe, we would see higher profits.
11:55
Forbidden from selling directly to European clients…
(11:59)
Mr Lau: Pull hard.
12:01
…Mr Lau looks to the Asian market: Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea.
Mr Lau: (In English) Some people, they want the big size – something like this. So as you can see, I’m stretching it to gain more width. It’s 30 centimetres up, so I can expand more to 40 centimetres up. So we can see the size. See now, it’s 37, 38. Ok, so now I’m trying to get 40 centimetres. 3 to 4 handbags, depending on what size they want to make. If they want small, maybe you can get more.
12:38
Mr Lau grapples for every centimetre he can get. Because with new Eastern customers, the price per metre has dropped. Now, he is forced to sell his skins at 2 thirds their original price.
12:49
Khanita Krishnasamy works for ‘Traffic’ – an international NGO campaigning to safeguard this endangered species. She says the export ban has helped to prevent the reptiles dying out.
13:01
Khanita: (In English) The trade suspension came into place because there was a huge volume of wild-card export skins being declared from Malaysia, and there wasn’t sufficient verification to show that this volume of skins was from legal and sustainable sources. So they took a precautionary approach to essentially… It sends a message back to the Malaysian government that, perhaps, the current procedures need to be re-looked at in terms of ensuring that the current systems in place provide for legal and sustainable trade in Malaysia.
13:44
Under scrutiny from the European Union, Malaysia has lost its place as the global market leader, making way for Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam.
14:01
Descended from a Chinese/Malaysian-Indian marriage, the Lau family made a promising start in business.
Mr Lau: Hello!
14:10
When the demand for snakeskin first arose in Europe towards the end of the 1970s, it was Mr Lau’s father – the first reptile-hunter in the region – who made a name for himself in the export market.
14:25
Mr Lau: (In English) Whenever my father went hunting, I would follow him. That’s how I learned the skills.
Mr Lau Senior: That was when I was young!
14:38
Back then, his exploits would make the headlines.
Mr Lau Sr: This is one of the newspapers in which they talk about me.
14:45
Within just a few years, he had made his fortune. At the time, trade was totally unregulated.
Mr Lau Sr: Now, the state imposes all sorts of taxes and additional fees. The authorities are constantly checking the merchandise, and it’s harder to pass their quality controls than in my day. You used to be able to sell skins from this region all over the world.
15:14
Mr Lau Senior is furious about the ban on exports to Europe. According to him, talk of extinction is preposterous. Oil palms, which now occupy 25% of non-urban land in Malaysia, are the best possible habitat for pythons.
15:31
Mr Lau Sr: Oil palm plantations are perfect for snakes. They hide under the leaves and in rainwater channels, and there are plenty of rats for food. As far as I’m concerned, there are still loads of snakes. If anything, they’ve multiplied.
15:52
In 40 years, the Lau family business has killed more than 400,000 pythons for the luxury goods market.
16:01
Slaughtering methods frequently come in for criticism. Often suffocated or skinned alive, animal rights activists have called the treatment of the reptiles ‘unacceptable’.
16:15
In the Lau slaughterhouse, decapitation is the method of choice. He does not understand the accusations of abuse.
16:26
Mr Lau: (In English) If you think killing pythons is cruel… If you eat chicken, it’s just as cruel. It’s the same thing, they’re both animals. The only difference is that they are wild, and that it’s for fashion.
16:41
Before they are decapitated, the animals are stunned – a practice studies have shown to be the least traumatic method of slaughter. A small advance, considering that other countries – like Vietnam – still practise suffocation.
17:00
Having been filled with water, the carcasses are hung out for several hours to make the skins expand.
17:12
Gilberto is in charge of skinning – a proscribed practice in his native Indonesia. He arrived in Malaysia three years ago to work in the slaughterhouse.
Gilberto: In Indonesia, if you catch a big snake, you risk being cursed. You mustn’t hunt them, or kill them. If you do, you will go mad. But the curse doesn’t work here; it’s only if I do it back home.
17:43
Like 2 million other Indonesian workers, Gilberto left home in search of a better life in Malaysia. For his labours, he earns 320 Euros per month – five times less than the cost of a cheap python-skin bag.
17:58
Gilberto: That’s for bags and shoes. Me, if I had 1500 Euros, I would send it home to Indonesia so that my children could go to school, and buy food and clothes for themselves. But, you know, without the demand from foreigners who actually buy these products, there would be no more work.
18:28
In the boutiques of the West, python-skin bags sell for up to 7,000 Euros a piece. The European market enjoys more than 95% of the industry’s profits. What’s left is shared around the manual labourers of South-East Asia.
18:44
With a view to increasing their revenue, the Lau family have expanded into other ‘python products’. The bladders are collected and dried. Highly sought after for traditional Chinese medicine, they are reputed to cure flu and certain infections.
18:59
Mr Lau Sr: White people are very clever, but we know how to make medicines too. Do you think there is only one strong ethnic group? Just wait. You’ll see China make lots of money.
19:15
As Mr Lau Senior sees it, no part of the snake should go to waste. In these freezers is a plentiful supply of meat. Sold at 50 cents a kilo, it is destined for the market stalls of Hong Kong and Vietnam.
Mr Lau Sr: It’s for sick people – people with aching bones and other maladies. It gives them an energy boost. There are even white people who want it for their wedding feasts.
19:44
But in spite of his best efforts, meat and organ sales represent just 5% of the company’s profits, and skins remain the primary source of income. Today, his son is preparing a shipment of 500 pieces.
20:02
Mr Lau: I’m just getting the goods ready for export to Singapore. We still haven’t got all of the stock in – normally we have to wait two or three months. As soon as we’ve got enough, we will ship it.
20:26
With this shipment, Mr Lau expects to make 7,500 Euros from his buyer in Singapore. But he is under no illusions. Despite the trading ban, these skins will eventually make their way to Europe.
20:39
Mr Lau: (In English) The Asian companies who buy these skins – I believe they export to Europe. Because I do not think Asian people use python skins. It’s the Europeans who prefer this kind of leather.
20:52
Kanitha: (In English) People involved in the trade have found different avenues to ensure that the trade continues. So what’s happened is they’ve re-routed the trade. So, for example, what we’ve seen is that Singapore is receiving a lot more skins, and at an international level Singapore really is the most important player in terms of re-exports of skins into the EU, for example. And the EU is happy to receive skins from Singapore.
21:27
Figures published by CITES – the international regulator for trade in endangered species – allow us to trace these export routes. They divulge, for example, that in the year 2009, France imported nearly 5,800 skins from Singapore. What’s more, their shipping licences even listed Malaysia as the origin of the goods. They should never have been allowed to enter Europe. Outside the law, Italy, Germany and Spain all did the same.
21:58
Since then, the number of customs inspections has increased. But buyers have found new ways of sourcing their stock.
22:07
This exotic skin tannery – the only one in Malaysia – is one of the country’s largest exporters. ‘Sunny International’ is owned by a Chinese capital group. Every year, it exports 40,000 pre-tanned python skins. After three weeks of treatment in these blanching drums, whitened skins will sell at twice the rate of the raw hides of Mr Lau.
22:28
Mr Weng: Come on, we have to neaten up every piece before sending them on to the client.
22:34
Mr Weng, the manager, has found a more direct way to reach his European buyers.
Mr Weng: These are for Turkey. We’re going to send these to Turkey. Yes, Turkey. At the moment, Turkey is our best customer in terms of volume. They take around 20,000 units a year.
22:54
Once in Turkey, Mr Weng’s stock can easily make its way into Europe. There are a number of exotic skin companies based in Istanbul. Posing as French designers, we got an interview with an intermediary.
23:09
(Interview in English)
Interviewer: How many skins do you have in stock now?
Intermediary: Python? Between 3 and 4 thousand skins. Every month I sell between 3 and 4 thousand skins, and I constantly replace my stock.
Interviewer: And do you have skins from Malaysia also?
Intermediary: Uh, yes, but the licence from CITES says that Malaysia is no good for Europe. You can’t get the skin into Europe if it says Malaysia on the CITES licence. So we would need to deliver it with an Indonesian CITES licence.
Interviewer: I can pass the customs without any control?
Intermediary: Yes. I know which one is Indonesian and which one is Malaysian, but it doesn’t matter for you because nobody can say, ‘This is Indonesian, this is Malaysian’ by looking at the skins.
24:00
From this exchange, it appears that laundering contraband Malaysian python skins is all too easy. All that is required – a fake CITES licence listing a false country of origin.
Interviewer: OK, and do you have other clients from France?
Intermediary: Of course.
24:21
When questioned, not a single French luxury goods outlet would comment on the practice.
24:29
Kanitha: (In English) There isn’t a traceability system right now – whether national level, or regional level, or international level. Such a system simply does not exist. And it’s not to say that we cannot implement a system – in fact, that is essentially what Traffic and a number of other parties are also pushing for, in that a traceability system is put into place, to ensure that the snake being caught by one individual – say, from a location in Bera – is the same skin being sold in one shop in the EU, for example.
25:08
To ensure better traceability – as well as sustainable trade – a solution was proposed by the traders themselves: livestock farming.
25:20
Mr Lau: Just take whichever one is closest. Gently – don’t pull too much, it will come on its own.
25:28
Mr Lau is the first to trial the scheme in Malaysia.
Mr Lau: (In English) The purpose is to get a good quality, and breeding the snakes for the future snake skin market. So then, maybe in the future, we don’t have to depend on the wild snakes. We can depend on the farm. So, it’s really good. This can also, for the future, avoid the extinction of the python.
26:00
He has already gathered 500 pythons for his farm. Beneath the shelter of the palm trees, he keeps his most prized possessions: newborns.
26:10
Mr Lau: (In English) These are baby pythons. I just want to check, make sure they have already shed their skin. The shed skin means it is ready to feed – I mean we can feed them. I give them rats and birds.
26:24
Mr Lau will have to feed his snakes for 4 years before they reach adult size. An additional cost for his business.
Mr Lau: (In English) I don’t know how much it will end up costing me, because I have only just started and they have not yet reached adult size. But we really want a real good price for this.
26:44
With his farm, Mr Lau is hopeful that one day the European Union will reopen its doors to Malaysian snakeskins. But will the luxury goods industry be prepared to pay a higher price for a legal and sustainable trade?