Journos arrested in Moz

MAVODZE – Two environmental journalists investigating rhino poaching in Mozambique, were arrested and accused of espionage in Mavodze Village in the south of the country, adjacent to Mozambique’s Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park and the Kruger National Park (KNP).

The village is close to Massingir, which is known as the rhino-poaching capital of the world. German journalist Mr Bartholomaeus Grill, Africa correspondent for the magazine Der Spiegel, and a photographer of Sweden, Mr Torbjörn Selander, had been investigating rhino poaching in southern Mozambique when an angry crowd took them to the police station in the village.
“We were looking for an alleged rhino-poaching kingpin when the villagers suddenly shouted ‘put them in the cell’,” Grill said in an Agence France-Presse (AFP) article. He added that the kingpin was apparently like a godfather in the town and the local hero, according to some of the villagers.
“He has 10 teams of poachers working for him at any given time,” Grill said. Although they did not enter the kingpin’s house, he filed trespassing charges against them. Grill explained that the German and Sweden embassies and senior police officers intervened to negotiate their release on Tuesday.

A former anti-poaching official who worked at a private nature reserve in the Limpopo Transfrontier Park, who wanted to remain anonymous, claimed that he could prove that the police in the smaller villages next to the South African border, and the poaching syndicates worked together.

He told Lowvelder that he used to confiscate heavy-duty hunting guns, axes, silencers, shovels, huge nail-like pins and sticks, as well as rounds of ammunition, when they apprehended poachers.
He would hand the weapons over to the Mozambican police, but the very next day, they would confiscate the same gun. He recalled that a particular gun was confiscated four times, after which he then started to make it unusable by jamming the bullet chamber.
There had been numerous reports that most people in the communities in Mozambique’s border areas seemed reluctant to let go of this lavish source of money. These regions had been smugglers’ territory for a long time already.
In the years of apartheid the South African military worked with smugglers to transfer weapons to Mozambique’s contra-movement, Renamo.
After that it was car smuggling that brought in the big bucks. Poaching increased with the predominantly Asian market’s hunger for aphrodisiacs and equally “magic” medicines made from rhino horn, which started booming in 2008. Lowvelder’s source added that the poaching militias were headed by officials of the Mozambique police force and by retired military veterans of the Mozambican army. He also confirmed that the two journalists were at the German Embassy in Maputo at the moment.