Translated from French by an automated online translation service, so please excuse the roughness. See link for original. Thank you to Anne Dillon for volunteering time to finding these French articles and doing the online translating.
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In its issue of Tuesday, September 3, 2015, Radio Okapi informs us of the sixteen people who are at the helm for poaching. These people, who have formed a criminal conspiracy and illegal possession of war weapons, appear from October 31 to Niania.
To this end, the garrison military court in Ituri that loads the trial moved to organize hearings in this locality. The Garrison Military Auditor explained that the offenses charged to those arrested were committed between 2014 and 2015 in Mambasa territory.
Nine Congolese soldiers including two captains and seven civilians including a woman were among the sixteen persons found prosecuted for illegal possession of weapons of war. The military prosecutor garrison has also reported that hearings cover five businesses with poaching weapon in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve in Epulu.
In addition, the trial will also determine three cases involving rape and two on the illegal detention of Business weapons of war and criminal conspiracy. During the first hearing, the court had identified the accused. One of them, an escapee from the Bunia prison, will be tried in absentia. These public hearings are scheduled for a period of ten days. Organized with UNDP funding, they aim to strengthen public confidence in military justice. In April this year, a group of poachers were caught by the army in Komanda, a center located 75 kilometers south of Bunia in the said province.
According to local civil society, these including a FARDC Lieutenant poachers were arrested with arms and ammunition. Very happy with this arrest, the citizen asked the FARDC structure to intensify the hunt against the networks of poachers in the area.
The army had arrested seven people, including a woman and a lieutenant of the FARDC. According to civil society, these people were carrying two weapons AK47 with 75 cartridges. They were also equipped with arrows and machetes. Their bags also contained hemp, the source said. These poachers were arrested by soldiers on patrol south of Komanda to 13 pm local time, when they were about to go operate in the forest. Komanda is renowned for traffic of smoked meat, including the elephant, a protected species.
The president of the local civil society, Erabo Sezabo Daniel, welcomes the arrests and asked the loyalist forces to intensify the hunt for poachers of these operations to dismantle all their networks still in the forest of Basumu, Kilimamungu, and on the road to Mambasa. This is a busy area by elephants.
It calls for justice to be done to discourage this practice. A military officer Komanda indicates that this is a lieutenant stopped FARDC deserter from the 13th brigade. The same source states that those arrested should be transferred Saturday to the Military Prosecutor in Bunia. The second commander of the operational sector FARDC in Ituri ensures that operations against these poachers are continuing in the area, to put them out of harm’s way.
Animal species, prey to poachers
Note that the presence of these poachers is a permanent source of insecurity in the region, since they hold weapons of war.
Environmental experts had once called on the DRC government to take appropriate measures to protect elephants, peacocks, gorillas, okapi and zebra of Maiko National Park, located 400 km from Kisangani in the ex-Orientale province.
Officials indicated that this park protected species therein are prey for poachers and militiamen. Covering an area of ??10,830 km², the Maiko Park located in Eastern Province extends into the former province of North Kivu.
Experts accuse the residents of wrongfully burning forests for farming and to capture the game in this national park. They are also attracted to the gold mines, cassiterite, and coltan that this park abounds ranked on the list of World Heritage in Danger.
Created in 1970, the Maiko National Park belongs to one of the most remote forest regions of the country. According to experts of the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature, the creation of this park was to preserve this part of the forest, which is in fact one of the most beautiful in the country by its very nature.
Jocelyne Wandje Bote
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