"Mar 11, 2015 Panteres

A man with the nom de guerre Navara is one of the most notorious rhino poaching in Mozambique. As the Africa correspondent of DER SPIEGEL met him, it was tough. Bartholomew grill over his dangerous research.

Poachers in Mozambique: The violence of Navara

name it as an SUV Navara. Because he is the model Nissan Navara have preferred years ago when he was still dedicated to the theft of cars. This man, Simon Ernesto Valoi is wanted in South Africa for two counts of murder. He now lives unmolested in a village in Limpopo National Park, not far from the border in neighboring Mozambique. He is considered one of the most notorious poacher bosses in the region.

1 215 rhinos were killed and mutilated in the past year in South Africa. The poachers strike the animals from the horns and sell them through intermediaries in Mozambique to Vietnam. There Rhino flour is regarded as a panacea, be paid for the large sums of money.

Together with the Swedish photographer Toby Selander I wanted to talk about the poaching and illegal trade in the horns. The research led us in Navarre native village Mavodze. They meant that we were caught in the violence of the poacher and his bodyguards. And it meant that we had to fear for our lives:

THE MIRROR The bandits and incited the villagers threatened to repeatedly raping us and kill. When we were released after hours of interrogation, the danger was not over. Because corrupt police and judicial officials are working with the warlords. The prosecutor of Massingir initiated an investigation for trespassing against us and explained that we were not allowed to leave the country in the next five days.

Mozambique since 1994, a parliamentary democracy, but in Massingir the modern constitutional state did not arrive until today. The dusty town is the capital of the Kingpins, as the poachers bosses are called. A land of men like Navara.

We had contingency plans concocted to get out of Massingir. Was a reflexion to flee by boat over the dam and the Olifants River in South Africa. Another was the evacuation by helicopter, we had already picked out a suitable landing site in our bush lodge.

This adventurous escape was luckily not necessary. With a heavily armed police escort we left Massingir and were taken to a safe area by a member of the Swedish Embassy in reception. It took another week before we were allowed to fly back to Cape Town.

I have written a book about my encounters with the death last year (‘ To us the dead’). But he is so close as in Massingir never occurred to me in my nearly thirty years correspondent in Africa.

The detailed report from the poachers area check out the latest edition of Der Spiegel

poaching Photo: Marco Longari / AFP "

http://panteres.com/2015/03/11/poachers-in-mozambique-the-violence-of-navara/