RANGERS ‘CAN SHOOT-TO-KILL’

SAPA / AFP

6 July 2011

SOURCE

Swazis question rangers' special powers in poaching battle

A teenage rhino calf died of stress and hunger last week in Swaziland after poachers slaughtered its mother, the first rhino killed in the tiny kingdom in two decades.

At the same time, a 16-year-old boy lay in hospital, a tube draining the fluid from his lung, lacerated by a bullet from a ranger's gun.

An elite team of rangers have protected Swaziland's game for decades, under a law that allows them to shoot poachers in life-threatening situations and grants immunity from prosecution if acting in the line of duty.

The tough measures have saved Swaziland's rhinos from the brink of extinction and largely kept at bay the surge in poaching that has sit neighbouring South Africa.

But the shooting of the teenager and an elderly man who allegedly bled to death near a game park has raised fresh concerns.

The teenager, who as a minor cannot be named, said he and two friends were walking outside the perimeter of the southern Mkhaya Reserve when rangers gave chase.

He said they shot him in the back.

"I am angry. If only they could have warned us first maybe I would have understood," he told AFP.

Big Game Parks, which either owns or operates Swaziland's major reserves, said the shooting occurred after dark inside the park. Rangers couldn't be certain if the boys were armed, spokesman Mike Richardson told AFP.

"The game rangers were obviously on high alert assuming everybody is there to poach rhino," he said.

Environmental lawyer Thuli Makama said both the boys suspected of poaching as well as the shooter should have been arrested.

"This shooting happened too close to the rhino story. The rangers could be on a rampage out of rage and despair," she said.

However, in the five years that she has followed cases like this one, no game ranger has ever been prosecuted.

"They have their own law," she said.

Big Game Parks says that despite their rangers' special legal status, they are not above the law.

"No ranger who abuses his powers is above the law and it does not require the police to arrest him, because the rangers of Big Game Parks do so themselves and hand the wrong-doer to the police," declares the company website.

Richardson said the company applied a "strict code of conduct" and had dealt with heavy-handed behaviour severely in the past.

The power to use deadly force against poachers rests with one family in Swaziland: the O'Reillys.

They own Big Game Parks, and have close a relationship to royalty that goes back to the 1960s. The parks provide the royal clan with a steady supply of animal pelts for the many traditional ceremonies that mark the Swazi calendar.

King Mswati III has entrusted the company to enforce Swaziland's anti-poaching law to protect "royal game".

An amended Game Act came into force in 1991 following a long and bloody war against rhino poachers in the 1980s, and is one of the "strictest anti-poaching laws in the world", according to Richardson.

The law frequently leads to conflict with local communities.

Only eight people, the O'Reilly family and five employees, have the legal right to use deadly force.

But Makama said "Big Game Parks also delegates these special enforcement powers to their friends -- farmers in the Lowveld."

A day before the teenager was shot, an elderly man allegedly bled to death after being shot by employees of a private game farm near the Mkhaya reserve.

The man's family told the Swazi Observer newspaper he left home to fetch some stray cattle and never returned.

"The whole community is being held to ransom and they are living in fear," said Makama.

Richardson said Big Game Parks is in no way linked to the incident which he said was more likely to have been a trespassing issue.

Last year Swaziland's parliament set up a committee to hold hearings into alleged human rights abuses resulting from the Game Act.

The committee has yet to release its findings.

See also

MORE SWAZI COLD-BLOODED KILLING

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-swazi-cold-blooded-killing.html

SWAZI COPS LET MAN BE EXECUTED

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2008/09/cops-let-swazi-man-be-executed.html

MORE SWAZI COLD-BLOODED KILLING

First it was trigger happy soldiers who killed civilians in cold blood and then it was the police force, now it’s the turn of security guards.

News comes that an alleged poacher Sicelo Mamba was shot 12 times by security guards after he was found hunting impala outside of a farm.

Now relatives want to know what happened. They are asking why the guards had to release 12 rounds of ammunition and are alleging that the guards where aiming to kill Sicelo.

According to a report in the Times of Swaziland, the only independent daily in the kingdom, Mamba’s sister Boshiwe Mamba said she later saw his body with bullet wounds in his head, back and one through the buttocks which seemed to have burst his bladder.

‘There is a lot of mystery surrounding his death and it looks like these people knew exactly who Sicelo was,’ she told the Times.

She added that the bandages all over his body made it difficult to see the other wounds.

According to Sanele Vilakati who had accompanied Sicelo Mamba on 3 January 2010, the two had gone hunting and that they killed two impalas.

‘He left when we had just killed the animals and we were to meet at home,’ Vilakati told the Times.

He said a few minutes later just after 7pm he heard guns shots and Sicelo was screaming like someone in pain.

Vilakati said that five more shots were fired at the crying Sicelo and then there was silence.

He said although the family believe that Sicelo was shot by farm guards, he believes he was shot by guards who look after cattle but carry R5 rifles.

The Times did not give the name of the farm where the killing took place because police are still investigating, although the newspaper failed to explain how revealing this information would hamper the police.

I don’t know where the incident took place, but I do know there has been a history of attacks by security guards in rural Swaziland.

As I wrote in 2008, a young Swazi man, Musa Gamedze, was hunted down and executed in broad daylight at his home, in full view of his children. According to eyewitness reports the man who fired the fatal shot was the General Manager of a local private game reserve, Mkhaya, accompanied by three police officers.

Friends of the Earth (FoE) reported at the time that Big Game Parks (BGP) owns and manages Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary and Mkhaya Nature Reserve. It also manages Hlane National Park, the country’s largest protected area, held in trust for the Nation by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

In 2005 Friends of the Earth Swaziland published a research report into the conflicts arising from the management of protected areas. It exposed numerous cases of human rights abuses which were alleged to have been committed in the name of conservation by game rangers and put forward various recommendations. These include the urgent repeal of section 23 of the Game Act, used by perpetrators of these human rights abuses to avoid prosecution.

SWAZI COPS LET MAN BE EXECUTED

On 8 August 2008 a young Swazi man, Musa Gamedze, was hunted down and executed in broad daylight at his home, in full view of his children. According to eyewitness reports the man who fired the fatal shot was the General Manager of a local private game reserve, Mkhaya, accompanied by three police officers.

Friends of the Earth (FoE) reports that Big Game Parks (BGP) owns and manages Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary and Mkhaya Nature Reserve. It also manages Hlane National Park, the country’s largest protected area, held in trust for the Nation by the King.

Musa Gamedze was part of a community that was forcibly evicted, without compensation, by BGP from land they had lived on for more than four decades. The community is still resettling and struggling to rebuild their livelihoods. Their new home is over 10km away from Mkhaya Game Reserve and the time of the shooting Musa had just returned to visit his three young children.

Musa is not the only one to suffer at the hands of BGP. Many others have been killed or left crippled in suspicious circumstances. The police and the parks rangers, when not denying responsibility, cite poaching as the reason for the attacks.

Whilst there have been reports of game poaching by the residents of the neighbouring communities, these are understood to be mainly subsistence in nature with some resulting from farmers defending their crops against marauding game from the nature reserves.

In 2005 Friends of the Earth Swaziland published a research report into the conflicts arising from the management of protected areas. It exposed numerous cases of human rights abuses which were alleged to have been committed in the name of conservation by game rangers and put forward various recommendations. These include the urgent repeal of section 23 of the Game Act, used by perpetrators of these human rights abuses to avoid prosecution.

Three years after this report the situation is critical.

For more information click here.

See also

DEFEND SWAZILAND’S RURAL PEOPLE