China arms deal - ZNA, rhino trade suspected

Written by Staff Reporter

Wednesday, 03 March 2010 10:27

HARARE – Another poaching scandal has rocked Zimbabwe’s military amid allegations that the army is using rhino horns to partly finance arms purchases from China. (Pictured: The rhino) The new allegation follows a revelation last month by the secretary general of the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), Willem Wijnstekers, that Zimbabwe’s security forces had poached some 200 rhino in the past two years. Last month, in a new twist to the army poaching saga, conservationist Rhishja Larson said there was a “suspicious coincidence” between illegal killings of rhino and the rise of bilateral trade between Harare and Beijing. She said there was a strong possibility that President Robert Mugabe and his army generals were using rhinos as currency to conduct weapons business with the Chinese and called for Zimbabwe to be put on the growing list of countries where rhinos are declared “regionally extinct”.
“Deeper scrutiny of the links between Chinese weapons acquisition and Zimbabwe security forces’ involvement in rhino poaching is desperately needed. We must examine the true nature of such a suspicious relationship on the international stage, and not allow the culprits to continue conducting this nefarious business behind closed doors,” Larson said this week. Rhino horn, which has medicinal value, fetches about US$50 000a kilogramme in Asia. An average horn weighs 7kg. Previous reports have also said Mugabe was mortgaging Zimbabwe’s minerals in exchange for Chinese weapons. The Zimbabwe Defence Forces this week dismissed the poaching and Chinese arms claims, with a senior Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) official accusing the “enemy press” of leading a campaign to vilify the forces.
“Where is the proof that the ZNA is involved in the poaching? All these reports are in fact the creation of hostile nations that seek to tarnish the image of Zimbabwe and its institutions at any given moment,” said the officer, who spoke on condition he was not named. The cash-strapped Zimbabwean government, struggling to raise money to rebuild an economy battered by a decade-long political crisis, has been on the market to buy weapons to bolster its security forces. Rights groups have criticised the arms acquisitions, accusing the Harare authorities of trying to crush the activities of its critics. According to a TRAFFIC report prepared for CITES in December 2009, illegal killing of rhinos in Zimbabwe has resulted in a loss of just over a quarter of its rhino population over the last three years.
Losses since 2006 represent 26 percent of the living rhino population and 89 percent of all black rhinos illegally killed in Africa during the same period. Suspicions have been raised over the low conviction rate of just three percent in trials involving alleged rhino poachers. An April 2009 assessment of 123 separate poaching incidents in Zimbabwe –involving the recorded killing or wounding of 156 rhinos since 2007 – indicated that only 18 cases had resulted in arrests. Of the 41 people who were arrested, only six were actually convicted, three of whom were foreign nationals from Zambia and Angola who received 18-year prison terms.
One Zimbabwean was sentenced to five years in prison while two other locals were each given 12 months in jail. All other individuals were either acquitted, released on bail, subsequently absconded or otherwise evaded prosecution, including cases involving signed confessions, repeat offenders and individuals in possession of illegal firearms and rhino horns. The activists said this pointed to involvement in the carnage by “people at the top”.

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