Balozi Journal : Vol.6 No.1 – 2013

It is now four years since Jahwar Amber Fund initiated its endeavours, and it is exactly five years since the origin of ‘Balozi Journal’, the mouth-piece that brought this wonderful communicative project into play.

Kenya has just elected its new President, and the county progress has been approved, bringing into play a different political arrangement as based on the rule of law. The anarchy bestowed from dictatorial democracy as opposed to democratic democracy has meant that the citizenry can enjoy residency to any part of the nation.

Balozi Journal is an indipendent alternative Unitarian magazine. Praised for integrating commentary and investigative reporting with in-depth arts coverage, it has been instrumental in trumpeting the new works of young Kenyan writers and artists. Balozi Journal has introduced the early work of some of Kenya’s most notable writers, critics and artists. Today, we focus on human rights; either in arts or religion. Predominantly, the issues of a “free conscious”.

Balozi Journal receives valued financial support from the individual donors. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of Secular Students Alliance in its oversight for JAF Festival 2011 that has made all these processes worthy to rekindle and resilient of  donor influences.

Visit our resource page for back editions of the magazine.

You Ask an Atheist Answers!

By Marcel Thee

Discussions between atheists and theists, or those who believe in the existence of God, are fragile events that rarely, though not impossibly, manage to do anything more than reinforce just how disparate the two factions’ stances are. This profound divergence is evidently true in Indonesia, where the concept of atheism is still seen as remarkably foreign, to put it mildly.

Stigmas and assumptions about Indonesian atheists often paint them as smart-aleck contrarians with a penchant for hedonistic nihilism who leave the burden of proof to believers.

To disprove this widespread view, two Indonesian atheists have taken up the call, Karl Karnadi and Virgi Albiant, the latter of which is a pseudonym used by the founder of “Anda Bertanya, Ateis Menjawab” (“You Ask, an Atheist Answers”), an Internet-based forum and community that aims to build a friendly bridge between believers and non-believers.

The forum, also known as ABAM, is a website set up for people interested in hearing an atheist’s stance on religion, deities and everything related to it. But it mostly lives within its Facebook page, where atheists and believers interact in an almost-revolutionary (in the local context) civil discourse.

The assumptive and sometimes downright antagonistic nature that typically characterizes these sorts of discussions is nowhere to be found, save for a few left turns. The result is a thought-provoking forum where both sides learn from each other through direct interactions and often actually come to some sort of conclusion.

The Facebook page currently has more than 7,000 active members, though non-members can also view the discussion without “Like”-ing the page.

The usual posts on scientific advancements and spiritual debunking make up a healthy part of the page, but the focus stays on the question-and-answer format found on the page’s wall. There, curious visitors post their questions regarding a variety of topics, from social issues such as how an atheist raises a child, to science-related questions like “who created the world if it wasn’t a deity?”

Some of the questions would sound resoundingly familiar to atheists, but the focused and genial answers on ABAM’s page are refreshing and inviting to believers.

The friendly atmosphere of the page has resulted in a forum that goes beyond atheist-based topics, with threads about video games and sports matches.

Karl, who founded the Indonesian Atheists community, is one of ABAM’s biggest supporters, and his presence on the community’s page adds to its sense of credibility.

When Virgi, also a member of the Indonesian Atheists, asked Karl to participate in ABAM, Karl said he found himself at first skeptical of how the open interaction would work.

“From my experience, any interaction between atheists and theists can get ugly very quickly, to the point of provoking and insulting each other; nothing positive can come from that. But amazingly, ABAM works. The page is very successful, people get along, and we owe it all to the ingenuity of the user interaction that Virgi has thought of,” Karl said, adding that Virgi made a conscious decision to present a welcoming forum.

“Everything from the name, the smiley logo, the question and answer format, the page moderation, was designed to prevent ugly conflicts, and also to convey a clear message to all Indonesians that we have good intentions. We don’t want to preach, we only want to answer questions and correct false stereotypes and misunderstandings about atheists.”

ABAM was founded in May 2011 after Virgi encountered an article written by an Indonesian atheist on Kompas’s Kompasiana website, which runs on user submissions and interactions. The article, unsurprisingly, gathered plenty of mockery and insults from readers who were eager to trash the writer and his beliefs.

What came as a surprise for Virgi was the elegance of the writer’s response to his detractors.

“[The responses] were all very direct, polite and well researched,” Virgi said.

Virgi explained that “the approach really inspired me to think further and consider the demand out there from curious people eager to know what atheism is really about. The current Indonesian atheism page and group at the time, while still endorsing free speech, is not really suitable for the layman who wishes to learn more about atheism. It’s full of hate speech, mockery and patronizing comments from both sides.”

Facebook’s “Page” format was chosen because it would make it easier for the founders to moderate if and when conversations went too far off topic or ended up becoming too lengthy for other readers to follow.

The cordial and easier-to-digest nature of the format has been a surprise, not only to Karl and Virgi, but to their fellow atheist activists. Karl also credited this to an approach that has more to do with image control for local atheists than what Karl dubs “de-converting.”

“Our purpose is simply to show that atheists are normal people; good, moral, law-abiding citizens who pay taxes just like everybody else. Atheists like to watch football, play games and are as curious about the world as religious people are,” Karl explained.

Virgi concurred, adding that “despite the common belief that atheists are immoral Satan worshipers, or even baby-eaters,” he can now picture an Indonesia where an atheist can proclaim his stance “without fear of discrimination and threats.”

Karl added that “we atheists do have distinct opinions regarding religion, which sometimes offend religious people, but we want to show that difference of opinion does not have to lead to hatred and discrimination.”

Karl calls ABAM’s social media effort a “staggering success,” with more than 7,000 Facebook fans, only about 10 percent to 20 percent of whom are atheists.

According to Virgi, the page receives about 60 to 100 new “Likes” and on average 50 questions and new posts each day. The number of posts has kept the 15 moderators (including Karl and Virgi) exhausted but satisfied.

“Many of the visitors who were initially full of hatred toward atheists have softened their stance or even had a complete change of heart in just a few days. I should repeat, not a change of belief, but a change of view about atheists,” Karl said. “Many visitors, while remaining religious, have expressed how surprised they are that atheists aren’t as evil as what they thought before.”

The format has made the interaction less about finding out who’s right, and more about finding out what’s right.

“No more who’s winning and who’s losing. The question is only which one is the correct answer and why? What are the arguments from each side?” Virgi said. “We are not forcing people to always agree with our opinions. It’s enough that each side understands the arguments made by the opposing side.”

Zambian Government Calls on Church to Fight Against Homosexuality!

By Jo Stephanie

In April 2013, the Zambian government asked the church to help fight what it called ‘vices’, the most notable of these being homosexuality. It has been reported that over Easter some rather brave gay couples tried to get married and have their unions officially recognised. This was enough to scare the government into action and following their request for help, a Zambia Police spokesperson promised to crack down on “homosexual activities”. A gay rights activist, Paul Kasonkomona, was arrested days later.

The reasons given for the need to rid society of homosexuality are nothing new: it’s not a part of Zambian culture, it’s unAfrican, it’s unChristian and it goes against Biblical law. On the one hand, opponents of gay rights are arguing that because homosexuality is alien to Zambia (it isn’t), it should not be allowed and they use Christianity to back up their views. What these hypocrites don’t acknowledge is that Christianity is unAfrican. It is a religion that was introduced to Africa by European colonialists and wholeheartedly embraced. Those who oppose gay rights in Zambia and throughout Africa falsely claim homosexuality as foreign to the continent, yet they use a foreign religion to back up their claims.

In dealing with homosexuality, the Zambian government has shown a complete disregard for separation of church and state. Government officials not only use their Christian faith to guide their work but actively involve the church in it. This is unfair for the non-Christians and people with no religious affiliation living in Zambia as they are forced to live under rules based on a religion they do not subscribe to. Laws developed through logical thinking, taking into consideration issues facing the modern world and human rights do better to serve the people than laws based on ancient texts whose true authors are unknown. These texts, in form of the so-called Holy Bible, contain a multitude of passages that are not at all acceptable in the modern world and yet they are held in such high esteem by a large proportion of the population, including those who make decisions that affect everyone living in Zambia.

While lawmakers and government officials may not openly admit that the Bible is unfit to guide law and policy making, it is clear that at least to some extent they do believe it is flawed. Homosexuality is illegal and one can go to jail if believed to gay. Harsh as this is, it stops short of what the Bible demands as punishment: the death penalty. The Bible states that when a virgin is raped she must marry her rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) and yet rapists are given jail time, not sent to wedding planners. The Bible is against sex outside of marriage and it is against divorce, but people can engage in sex out of wedlock and people can get divorced without the fear of any legal ramifications.

A major problem with using the Bible, or any other religious text, to determine how to govern a country is that people often use it to get what they want rather than for the greater good. The government’s targeting of gay people is not about promoting good morals as they would have us believe. It is state-sanctioned homophobia with so-called Christian values as prescribed by the Bible being used as an excuse.

There are also other instances in which people use the Bible to get what they want.  For example,  a new constitution is being developed in Zambia and one hot area of debate is the death penalty. Those who want it left out of the new constitution use the sixth of the Ten Commandments, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13) as justification for their stance. Many of those who support the retention of the death penalty use Genesis 9:6, which states that “Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind”. This disagreement over the death penalty points to another problem: the Bible is full of contradictions and this makes it unsuitable for use as a guide when developing laws and policies and more generally, as a guide for living our lives.

Secularism is on the rise in much of the Western world, but in Zambia and other African countries it seems the opposite is true. Those in positions of power and whose decisions can impact millions of people cling even harder to their religions and ‘holy’ books. Despite the twisted morality and the internal inconsistencies of these books, politicians and law makers continue to believe that Bible-centred Christianity is good for creating a just and peaceful society. There is more to this situation than just the persecution of gay people. A minority group is being marginalised in the name of religion and in the future other groups can be targeted in the same way, leading to an even more unequal society.

The ICC Gimicks: The Hague Thirst for a Lost Kenya

By: Mahmood Mamdani for Aljazeera News

The conventional wisdom in the Kenyan media is that the 2013 election has been an ethnic census, not an issue-based contest. This is a half-truth which fails to recognise the issues that drive the ethnicisation of politics. The half-truth has two sides to it. It is true that the easiest way to predict how an individual voted would be to know his or her ethnicity. What is not so obvious is the flip side: to make sense of how ethnic blocs have voted, for whom, we actually need to look at the issues.

What are the issues? The overriding issues in this election were two: land and the International Criminal Court (ICC). In highlighting the land question, the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) hoped to win in two places where this question is the most volatile: the Coast and the Rift Valley. It is said that the largest landowners in Kenya are its three big political families: Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki. The land issue on the Coast is defined as that between the Kenyatta family and the people. As expected, CORD has won most of the Coast handsomely.

In the Rift Valley, there are two clashing notions of land rights – a colonial era notion that land belongs to those native to the land versus a market-based notion that land belongs to whoever holds the title. This pit two ethnic groups – Kalenjin and Kikuyu – against one another and was at the heart of the 2007 election violence. CORD expected to rally the Kalenjin against the Kikuyu and win in the Rift Valley in 2013.

Domestic impact of the ICC

But the unexpected happened. CORD lost in the Rift Valley, and spectacularly too. Instead of a repeat of the 2007 ethnic conflict, there was an ethnic reconciliation. This is the main story in this election. The explanation for this lies in the domestic impact of the ICC.

The Jubilee coalition mobilised support around the question of peace and against the ICC’s intervention in Kenya. Raila Odinga and CORD failed to trounce Kenyatta and Jubilee in Kalenjin areas. The Kalenjin followed William Ruto who told them they had been sacrificed as lambs at the altar called ICC. In the process, Jubilee put together a peace coalition. The National Alliance (TNA) evoked Kenyatta’s legacy in that Uhuru Kenyatta claimed to build a grand national reconciliation.

Two contradictory political processes have unfolded in Kenya since the 2007 election.  One was typified by the constitutional referendum of April 2010, which passed with a thumping 66.9 percent “yes” in all major provinces except Rift Valley. Opposition to it was led by Ruto. The counter-movement began when the ICC declared, a year later, in April 2011, that it would charge “the Ocampo 6″ with “crimes against humanity”.

I suggest we think of two kinds of ethnic groups when it comes to politics. The first are ethnicities that are so highly politicised that they tend to polarise politics ethnically. We can call these fighting ethnicities centrally organised for political action. The two prime examples historically are the Kikuyu and Luo. On the other side, you have ethnicities without extreme ethnic politicisation, without a centralised political organisation or direction. They do not vote one way, but many ways – for example, Maasai. In Kenya, their orientation is known as AGIP (any government in power).

Whereas the 2010 referendum had a de-ethnicising effect on Kenyan politics, the involvement of the ICC had the opposite effect, re-ethnicising Kenyan politics, with more and more ethnicities organising politically and centrally. The result is that the country has re-divided into two large ethnic coalitions.

The ICC is the single factor with the most influence on this election. The ICC process has polarised politics in Kenya because the electoral process did not unfold on a level playing field. Led by individuals who stand charged before the ICC, one side in the electoral contest could not contemplate defeat; if defeated, they would lose all.

Everyone knows that the worst thing to do in a contest is to leave your opponent without an escape route. To do so is to turn the contest into a life-and-death struggle. You transform adversaries into enemies. Not surprisingly, the Jubilee coalition presents itself as the coalition of victimised sacrificial lambs. Yet, it is an open secret that among its supporters are those armed for a fight to the finish.

The political cost of judicial process

The other side is beginning to sense that its embrace of the ICC in particular – and the judicial option in general – may have been a political blunder, but the realisation has come a little late. The political leadership of CORD now says it was actually in favour of a national jurisdiction; it did not favour going to the ICC. But it does not deny that it championed the judicial option. Neither did it oppose the Hague option when the ICC stepped in.

One part of the CORD coalition, the human rights lobby, embraced the ICC option openly and enthusiastically. Its slogan said so: “Don’t be vague, let us go to Hague”. It did not matter that the slogan had originally been coined by Ruto. The political cost has been high.

The result is that CORD has lost the middle ground in this election. This is most obvious in the Rift Valley. On its part, Jubilee has been able to tap into the overwhelming sentiment for peace. Jubilee presented itself as a party of a grand national reconciliation, and it managed to portray CORD as the party of vengeance. This was not an election for Jubilee to win. It was an election for CORD to lose. The credit for the loss goes to human rights fundamentalists in its ranks.

The larger lesson is that a judicial process needs to be subordinated to the political process. We need to distinguish between criminal and political (mass) violence, for political violence has a constituency. In a situation of mass violence like 2007 in Kenya, the political cost of a judicial process – whether the courts are foreign (ICC) or local – is unacceptably high.

The judicial process tends to be a winner-take-all process. In the court of law, you are right or wrong, innocent or guilty; both parties cannot be guilty in a court of law. In a civil war, however, both parties often bear some share of the guilt.

The judicial process criminalises one side, which is then politically disenfranchised. Everyone knows that there was a clear attempt to disenfranchise the leadership of the Jubilee coalition before the election on grounds that it was the subject of a judicial process. This single fact, if none other, made it clear to the Jubilee leadership that this was likely to be their last chance to have a political voice.

My main point is this: those committed to political reform need to ensure that all adversaries are represented in the political process, and none ruled out as enemies. Targeting leaders of political parties in a civil war-type situation in courts of law, and thereby excluding them from the political process, is a recipe for rekindling the civil war.

Mahmood Mamdani is Professor and Director of Makerere Institute of Social Research in Kampala and Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University, New York City.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Kenya: A Country Redeemed after a Peaceful Election

The aftermath of the 2007 post-election violence in Kenya – which resulted in 1,300 deaths and thousands more displaced from their homes— left an ugly scar on the country’s image. Since attaining independence from British rule in 1963, Kenya had been one of few African exceptions to military coups and civil conflicts. The post-election violence in 2007 greatly undermined Kenya’s position as country where the people were united. It revealed serious grievances and divisions in the society and many ridiculed Kenya as yet another story of a state doomed to fail.

However, over the five years, Kenyans have made significant reforms in their institutions that in part contributed to the violence in 2007. Kenyans now have a new constitution, which not only creates lower level county governments but also reduces the powers of the presidency and establishes many independent institutions that are not subject to manipulation by the executive. The most important of these include a reformed judiciary and the Independent Election and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).

On March 4, 2013, Kenyans participated in a complex election that included voting for the president and deputy president, county governors, senators, members of parliament and women representatives. Kenyans turned out in large numbers with over 80 percent of registered voters coming out to vote. There were no serious incidences of violence and the electoral process was deemed by many international observes as free, fair and credible. Although the IEBC faced challenges in the tallying process as a result of the technological failure of the data transmission system, the reversion to manual tallying did not compromise the integrity of the process.

After days of tallying and counter-checking the election results, the IEBC declared Uhuru Kenyatta and his running mate William Ruto as having been duly elected as president and deputy president, having received over 50 percent of the votes cast. Their closest rival, Raila Odinga and his running mate, Kalonzo Musyoka, managed about 43 percent of the votes cast. However, Mr. Odinga refused to accept the results on the grounds that the IEBC had failed to conduct a credible election. But on March 31, 2013, the Supreme Court of Kenya declared that the March 4 election was free, fair and credible.

To a large extent, the prevailing peace in Kenya is a result of the many reforms that the country has undertaken to create credible institutions like the IEBC. Kenyans also trust the reformed judiciary, which has demonstrated its professionalism, independence, and capacity to adjudicate on complex matters, including the presidential election. One major lesson for the international community is that peace is more likely to be durable when it’s the people of Kenya and their own institutions that are left to handle their problems.

Now that credible and peaceful elections have taken place, Kenya has redeemed itself. This is the big story that the local media has been covering. However, the international media coverage of the elections has been extremely poor and demonstrated a mundane understanding of the electoral dynamics in Kenya. Apparently, international media outlets sent their best war correspondents and not election experts. It seems like they expected to cover stories of violence rather than elections. Frustrated with peaceful elections, these correspondents failed to note the great progress that Kenya has made and the monumental significance of the 2013 elections.

Kenya and the International Community

Leaders from all over the world— including from the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Russia, China, U.N. Secretary General Moon, and many others— have congratulated Kenya’s new president-elect and his deputy. They have all praised the major progress that Kenya has made in conducing credible and peaceful elections. The statement released by the White House noted that “the electoral process and the peaceful adjudication of disputes in the Kenyan legal system are testaments to the progress Kenya has made in strengthening its democratic institutions, and the desire of the Kenyan people to move their country forward.” These statements underscore the progress that Kenyans have made to resolve their own problems.

The statements by the United States and United Kingdom also noted that Kenya must continue to uphold “its international obligations, including those with respect to international justice.” This is specifically in reference to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has indicted both Mr. Kenyatta and Mr. Ruto. The two have committed to clearing the allegations by the ICC and will abide with the ICC process.

However, if the international community is truly committed to the fair adjudication of justice by the ICC, it must also ensure that the court is not used to play politics. It is quite obvious that the Kenyan cases currently before the ICC were poorly investigated and the selection of the accused was purely a political move to remove the most popular candidates from the presidential contest. Evidence recently revealed shows that witnesses were manipulated to lie in order to get convictions. Witnesses have actually recanted and some of the cases dropped. In fact, one factor that boosted the support of the Kenyatta and Ruto is precisely that Kenyans realized that the ICC had been sucked into the Kenyan politics. Now that this scheme has failed and the two have been elected, the international community needs to place more scrutiny on the ICC so that it does not continue to divide Kenyans and other Africans.

As noted previously, the prevailing peace in Kenya is the outcome of the interplay of the Kenya’s own institutions. With the reformed judiciary that Kenyans trust, the ICC intervention in the country needs to be reconsidered. So, as global leaders call upon Kenyans to uphold their commitment to international justice, they must also recognize that the ICC is itself far from perfect and prone to political manipulation.

Elephant and Rhino poaching ‘is driven by China’s Economic Boom’

Elephant poaching in Africa and Asia is being fuelled by China’s economic boom, according to a study of the ivory trade.

Authors of the new report found that the number of ivory items on sale in key centres in southern China has more than doubled since 2004, with most traded illegally. The survey comes amid reports of a dramatic rise in rhino poaching across Africa, and a spate of thefts of rhino horns from European museums and auction houses.

Based on the results of their survey, the ivory researchers are calling for China to tighten its enforcement of ivory trading regulations, saying that such a move is vital to reduce the number of elephants that are killed illegally. The report is published on the eve of a meeting in Geneva of the Cites organisation, which is responsible for controlling trade in endangered wildlife species.

Esmond Martin, a Kenya-based expert on the ivory and rhino-horn trade, and his colleague Lucy Vigne surveyed ivory carving factories and shops in Guangzhou and Fuzhou in January. In Guangzhou, they found that the volume of ivory goods on sale had doubled since 2004. But while some of the ivory they found being carved or sold was being traded legally – including an increasing number of prehistoric mammoth tusks imported from Russia – most lacked legally required documentation, and many traders were unregistered.

In Guangzhou, of 6,437 items on sale, 61% were being traded illegally. Martin said that some traders admitted having illegal ivory, or pretended that newly carved items were old. “This suggests official inspections and confiscations have not taken place in most shops,” says the survey, which was commissioned by two British wildlife charities, Elephant Family and the Aspinall Foundation, as well as the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in the US state of Ohio.

The international trade in elephant ivory was banned in 1990, but in recent years some auctions of tusks from elephants that have died naturally, or which had been confiscated from poachers, have been permitted in a small number of African countries. Chinese traders bought 62 tonnes of ivory in 2008 from Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.

Supporters of the sales say that the proceeds can fund conservation, but opponents say that any legal trade risks encouraging poaching. Martin said : “It is shocking that the retail ivory trade is not better controlled in southern China. China continues to be the largest importer of illegal ivory in the world, mostly from Africa, but also from endangered Asian elephants. Inspections of shops would not take much money nor manpower and would cut down this illegal trade significantly if carried out effectively. Such law enforcement is urgent to reduce elephant poaching.”

There has also been a dramatic surge in rhino poaching across Africa. The price of rhino horn has soared in the far east where it is used in alternative medicine as a cure for everything from nightmares to dysentery. In South Africa alone, where horn is worth more per gram than cocaine, the monitoring network “Traffic” reported that 333 rhinos were killed last year, and 193 in the first six months of this year. In 2007, only 13 rhinos were poached.

There have also been more than 20 thefts from museums and auction houses in Europe, including three in Britain, with others in Germany, Belgium, Italy and Sweden. The Natural History Museum in London has now replaced its rhino horns with fakes, while the Horniman Museum in south-east London has removed its collection entirely. One British theft was from Sworders auction house in Essex in February, when the mounted head of a black rhino was taken the day before it was to be sold. Guy Schooling, the managing director of Sworders, said that there was a break-in two weeks before the auction, but thieves went away empty handed. When they returned a second time, “they yanked the head off the wall and bolted, leaving a considerable amount of damage in their wake”.

In May, a head was stolen from the Haslemere Educational Museum in Surrey. The museum has now removed all rhino exhibits from display. The most recent theft occurred last week at Ipswich Museum, when a popular exhibit “Rosie the Rhino” had its horn stolen overnight.

The sharp increase in European thefts was described by Detective Constable Ian Lawson of the Metropolitan Police’s Arts and Antiques Unit as “an extraordinary series of events”. There had been an “unheard of” number of robberies from museums this year, he said, involving more than one gang. “But we do believe a significant amount of thefts across Europe are being committed by a group of Irish travellers,” he said.

Most stolen horn is sent abroad, police believe. In October last year, a Lancashire man, Donald Allison, was jailed for twelve months as he tried to smuggle two horns into Asia. They turned out to have been taken from the body of a rhino at Colchester Zoo. Ten horns were also seized at Shannon Airport in Ireland in 2009.Antique horns are particularly prized, Lawson said, because they “tend to be larger than wild rhino horns”.

Schooling said that the rise in price has been driven by changes in European law, making rhino horn much harder to sell legitimately. It is now illegal to sell rhino horn trophies and mounted horns in the UK. Stuffed rhino heads can still be sold, but each sale must be approved by Defra. One such head was the subject of a bidding war between Chinese herbalists when it was auctioned off in March. It eventually fetched £35,000.

Schooling described the new law as a “poorly thought-out” and “politically expedient” piece of legislation. “If you reduce the supply [of horn] and the demand is the same, then the price will go up,” he said.

China – Africa Relations? The Increased Magnitude of Poaching!

In their terror, the elephants must have sought safety in numbers – in vain: a thick trail of blackened blood traced their final moments.

In December, nine elephants were killed outside the Tsavo National Park, in south-eastern Kenya. This month, a family of 12 was gunned down in the same area.

In both cases, the elephants’ faces had been hacked off to remove the tusks. The rest was left to the maggots and the flies.

“That is a big number for one single incident,” said Samuel Takore of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). “We have not had such an incident in recent years, I think dating back to before I joined the service.”

Mr Takore joined in the 1980s, and his observations corroborate a wider pattern: across Africa, elephant poaching is now at its highest for 20 years.

During the 1980s, more than half of Africa’s elephants are estimated to have been wiped out, mostly by poachers hunting for ivory.

But in January 1990, countries around the world signed up to an international ban on the trade in ivory. Global demand dwindled in the face of a worldwide public awareness campaign.

Elephant populations began to swell again.

But in recent years, those advances have been reversed.

China to blame?
An estimated 25,000 elephants were killed in 2011. The figures for 2012 are still being collated, but they will almost certainly be higher still. Campaigners are pointing the finger of blame at China.

The Northern Rangelands Trust acts like an anti-poaching paramilitary force
“China is the main buyer of ivory in the world,” said Dr Esmond Martin, a conservationist and researcher who has spent decades tracking the movement of illegal ivory around the world.

He has recently returned from Nigeria, where he conducted a visual survey of ivory on sale in the city of Lagos. His findings are startling.

Dr Martin and his colleagues counted more than 14,000 items of worked and raw ivory in one location, the Lekki Market in Lagos.

The last survey, conducted at the same market in 2002, counted about 4,000 items, representing a three-fold increase in a decade.

According to the findings of the investigation, which has been shared exclusively with the BBC, Nigeria is at the centre of a booming trade in illegal African ivory.

An Asian appetite for ivory, seen here in Hong Kong, has fuelled poaching in Africa
In 2011, the Nigerian government introduced strict legislation to clamp down on the ivory trade, making it illegal to display, advertise, buy or sell ivory.

And yet, says Dr Martin, Lagos has now become the largest retail market for illegal ivory in Africa.

“There’s ivory moving all the way from East Africa, from Kenya into Nigera,” he said. “Nigerians are exporting tusks to China. Neighbouring countries are exporting a lot of worked ivory items (to Nigeria).

“So it’s a major entrepot for everything from tusks coming in, tusks going out, worked ivory going in, worked ivory going out, worked ivory being made.”

Paramilitary poacher hunters
The BBC visited the Lekki Market in Lagos. Wearing a hidden camera, a reporter from the BBC’s Chinese Service was immediately approached.

Speaking Mandarin Chinese, a Nigerian trader offered “xiang ya” – “ivory”. There were piles of carved items for sale, ivory bangles, combs, chopsticks, and strings of beads.

Mr Loldikir says arresting poachers is a waste of time – his men shoot to kill
Another trader proffered two whole tusks, on sale at just over $400 per kilo. When asked how much raw ivory he could provide, he offered to supply 100kg or more.

Increasing prosperity in China, coupled with a large influx of Chinese workers and investors across Africa, has sent demand for ivory soaring.

Kenya runs one of the most effective anti-poaching efforts in Africa.

As well as the KWS (the government-run wildlife protection service) local communities and private conservancies are providing their own armed rangers.

The Northern Rangelands Trust is such an organisation. It runs a “Rapid Response Unit” of about a dozen armed men, who camp out in the thorny scrubland of northern Kenya following herds of elephants and tracking poachers.

The unit is essentially a state-sanctioned paramilitary force. The commander, Jackson Loldikir, and his men wear camouflage fatigues and are armed with Kalashnikov rifles.

Campaigners say Lagos is now the largest ivory retail market in Africa
Theirs is a dangerous job. While out on patrol with the BBC, the group was charged by a herd of nervous elephants.

A ranger had to fire a warning shot in the air to avoid being trampled.

Mr Loldikir says arresting poachers is a waste of time. Prosecutions are rare and the perpetrator is likely to get off with a small fine.

And so Mr Loldikir and his men say they are forced to take more drastic measures.

“When we meet a poacher, we just kill,” he said. “It’s the only way to protect the animals, just to kill the poacher.”

Injuries, even deaths, are not uncommon, on both sides.

“In May, we heard a shot. We met five poachers. They had killed an elephant. So we shot them. We killed one and we recovered two guns. And one of our scouts was also injured.”

But the poachers seem undeterred. Conservationists in Kenya are warning that at the current rate, elephants could soon disappear from the wild altogether.

“If the price continues to rise as it is and the killing of elephants continues, within 15 years there will be no free-ranging elephant in northern Kenya, I’m quite sure,” said Ian Craig, who runs the Northern Rangeland Trust.

“Wherever there are unprotected elephant and there are firearms, people are going to kill them. They’re just worth too much money.”

And what applies to Kenya applies also to the rest of Africa.

In a continent where guns are plentiful and poverty is widespread, the rewards of poaching simply outweigh the risks