Bird smuggling: Trader fined $6,000

Straits Times 24 Mar 12;

A MALAYSIAN man was yesterday fined $6,000 for trying to smuggle three birds through the Woodlands Checkpoint on Wednesday.

Yee Shen Yaw, 38, had packed the birds into narrow PVC pipes hidden under a piece of cloth in his car.

He was charged with importing the animals into Singapore without a licence, and unreasonably causing unnecessary suffering to the animals.

Yee, who is a trader dealing in bird cages and bird food, tried to enter the country at about 6.45am.

He had placed the pipes in a basket covered with a face towel on the front passenger seat of the car.

Investigations by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority revealed that the three feathered stowaways were Oriental White-eye songbirds, also known as mata puteh in Malay.

He had purchased them for RM400 (S$164) in total from a friend in Malaysia.

The birds had been packed in the pipes, which measured just 3cm in diameter and 9.5cm in length, for more than six hours - the time he took to travel from Kuala Lumpur to the checkpoint.

Yee was fined $3,000 on each of the two charges.

He could have been jailed for up to 12 months and fined up to $10,000 on each charge.

In mitigation, he pleaded for leniency and said this was his first offence. He added that the birds were meant as a gift, and he had not been planning to sell them here.

In January, a man who tried to smuggle 302 birds into the country was fined $18,000 for the same offences and an additional charge of not providing the birds with food and water.

Site engineer Winston Boo Kiang Cheng, 38, had smuggled the birds in such dismal conditions - stuffed into small trays and cages, a narrow plastic pipe and two cardboard toilet-paper rolls - that two-thirds of them died.

FIONA LOW