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Wellington (AFP) – The New Zealand authorities have been accused of "vandalism" after stripping the ivory keys of an antique piano shipped into the country by its British owner.
The 123-year-old upright piano was exempted from strict rules to quell the ivory trade, because it was built before 1914.
But the owner Julian Paton, a English researcher on heart disease who emigrated to New Zealand with his wife and two children, was unaware According to New Zealand media, we needed a special verification certificate for the family inheritance.
"We are disappointed and horrified as a family of bureaucracy," Paton told stuff.co.nz. According to the report, the Department of Conservation said the instrument was "deemed by the UK authorities to have been illegally exported from the UK and illegally imported into New Zealand".
The Herald on Sunday newspaper criticized the department's decision as a "Kafkaesque bureaucracy" that did little to boost New Zealand's reputation.
Paton local MP David Seymour called the saga "outrageous". "
" I am embarrassed as a New Zealander and as a local MP that is how we welcome people, confiscating their family legacies so that their children can not play the piano ". who will have to tailor expensive synthetic summits to keys, intends to fight the government order that he also pays for the removal and dumping of ivory. [19659008NewZealandisasignatorytotheUnitedNationsConventiononInternationalTradeinEndangeredSpecies(CITES)whichaimstoprotectmanyendangeredanimalsandplants
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