The last time rival political forces fought one another street by street
\n for control of the Nicaraguan capital was three decades ago, in July 1979,
\n at the culmination of the Sandinista insurrection that overthrew the
\n Somoza dictatorship. The streets of Managua were once again aflame amid
\n the boom of mortar rounds, as the Sandinistas and their rivals battled for
\n control \u2014 but it was the erstwhile revolutionary movement that now stands
\n accused of being a dictatorship.<\/p>\n
An undercover investigation of the illegal wildlife trade in five African
\n nations led to the seizure of about a ton of ivory along with hippo teeth
\n and cheetah, leopard and python skins, the Kenya Wildlife Service said.<\/p>\n
In Vanuatu, a Chief pleads for forgiveness on behalf of his errant
\n jail-breaking son in an unprecedented custom ceremony, in the tropical
\n islands of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific.<\/p>\n
The prize, this time, is not control of the Nicaraguan state, but simply
\n the mayorships in 146 municipalities, which were up for election on
\n November 9. But allegations of massive vote fraud and conflicting claims
\n of victory have set off several days of violence between rival political
\n bands, leaving Nicaragua’s fledgling institutional democracy struggling
\n for its life.<\/p>\n
A four-month investigation coordinated by Interpol, an international
\n police association based in Lyon, France, led to the arrest of 57 suspects
\n in the Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia, the Kenyan
\n conservation agency said in a statement. Undercover agents tracked
\n suspects and illegal products to local ivory markets, airports, border
\n crossings and smuggling points.<\/p>\n
Vanuatu, a peaceful tropical island nation in the South Pacific, witnessed
\n an never-before-seen kustom ceremony when, Chief Joshua Batakoro Vanua,
\n father of Lee Tamata, a high risk escapee, from the local jail,
\n ceremonially offered ten pigs to the community heads, in a plea for
\n forgiveness for the misdemeanors of his son.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) has announced a partial recount of
\n votes from last Sunday’s mayoral polls, in which it has yet to declare
\n winners in several hotly contested cities, including the capital. But the
\n mobs of activists of the ruling Sandinista party and the opposition
\n Liberal Constitutional Party (PLC) aren’t waiting idly to hear the
\n outcome.<\/p>\n
The operation, which ended Saturday, was a blessing for countries whose
\n elephant populations “have declined tremendously over the years,” Wildlife
\n Service Director Julius Kipng’etich said.<\/p>\n
Ten pigs were handed over to the community leaders during a custom
\n ceremony held at the Chief\u2019s Nakamal. The leaders included the newly
\n elected Prime Minister of Vanuatu, Edward Natapei. This was the highest
\n price ever paid for peace, in the traditional custom system of the island
\n of Pentecost.<\/p>\n
Downtown banks and businesses have been forced to close early for several
\n days and both the British and U.S. Embassies have warned their citizens to
\n remain vigilant and avoid any large crowds as political gangs clash on the
\n streets, destroying public and private property and turning parts of the
\n capital into a virtual war zone.<\/p>\n
“Co-operation among countries in East, West and Southern Africa against
\n wildlife crime has set an inspired example,” said Giuliano Zaccardelli, an
\n Interpol program director. “Similar operations could also be conducted in
\n Asia, the Americas and in any other region where criminal interests,
\n including trafficking in illegal wildlife products, are common.”<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, before the general elections, a Pentecost chief
\n demanded that Jenny Ligo,a woman candidate, pay 10 pigs in a kustom
\n ceremony for her right to continue to contest the elections. Jenny had
\n already performed a 10 pig-killing kustom ceremony, just to enter the male
\n dominated arena of politics.<\/p>\n
The violence broke out after opposition leaders accused the Sandinistas of
\n turning the election into a fraudulent sham in order to take control of
\n the country’s most important cities, including Managua. The poll, in which
\n the government refused to allow monitoring by any credible outside
\n electoral observers, was riddled with alleged irregularities that began
\n months before election day when several opposition parties were banned
\n from participating, and continued after the vote, with stacks of ballots
\n found mysteriously dumped in the woods.<\/p>\n
In one case, when Kenya Wildlife Service officers tried to arrest a Kenyan
\n and a Tanzanian man found with two pieces of ivory weighing 13 kilograms
\n (29 pounds), the men resisted and a wildlife officer fired in
\n self-defense, grazing one of the suspects in the head.<\/p>\n
When Chief Joshua discovered how much fear and damage his son had caused
\n to members of the local community in Port Vila, he felt duty-bound to
\n offer the pigs on behalf of his son, asking for the leader\u2019s forgiveness.<\/p>\n
The U.S. State Department this week noted reports of “widespread
\n irregularities taking place at voting stations throughout the country,”
\n and said the Supreme Electoral Council’s decision to “not accredit
\n credible domestic and international election observers has made it
\n difficult to properly assess the conduct of the elections.”<\/p>\n
In another case, a suspect who had been arrested escaped in the darkness.
\n In two separate instances, officials caught suspected smugglers
\n transporting several pieces of elephant tusks on motorbikes.<\/p>\n
While Chief Joshua spend three months in the capital Port Vila, away from
\n his island home and family, he counseled his son. Chief Joshua had to sell
\n kava and taro to raise the funds to buy the pigs for the peace ceremony.<\/p>\n
Business groups, church leaders and opposition parties have called for an
\n internationally audited nationwide recount, and the PLC has threatened to
\n paralyze the national legislature by walking out and denying it a quorum.<\/p>\n
The elephant populations of many African countries were being decimated
\n until the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
\n banned the ivory trade in 1989. Since then the elephant population of
\n Kenya, for example, has grown from 16,000 to 27,000. But that is far fewer
\n than the estimated 167,000 elephants that lived in Kenya in 1973.<\/p>\n
Ten mature pigs are not only highly prized, but a very expensive exercise
\n for the father as pigs are the wealth of a village. Curled pig tusks are
\n used as currency in some areas of the Vanuatu islands, with the Tari Bunia
\n Bank having 14 branches. The bank issues cheque books, has reserves and
\n gives loans, all on the currency of pig tusks. While there is a vault to
\n the bank there are no need for locks. \u201cThe bank is protected by spirits
\n and snakes,\u201d says the bank manager.<\/p>\n
The day after the vote, despite trailing by five percentage points in the
\n official count to Sandinista candidate and former boxing champ Alexis
\n Arguello, the PLC’s Managua mayoral hopeful Eduardo Montealegre declared
\n himself the winner based on his party’s own tabulation of the vote tallies
\n released to the parties at each balloting station. Montealegre, a former
\n finance minister who has adopted the cartoon image of Mighty Mouse after
\n opponents dubbed him “the rat,” called on his supporters to take to the
\n streets to “celebrate” the victory and “defend the vote at whatever
\n consequence.”<\/p>\n
A plane equipped with body-heat sensors will be used by the Brazilian
\n government to locate and protect isolated Indian tribes in the Amazon. The
\n heat sensors will be mounted on a government plane normally used to
\n monitor deforestation. It is not clear when the effort will start.<\/p>\n
Chief Joshua said \u201cMy son has erred and I ask for your forgiveness,\u201d said
\n Chief Joshua, who spent time counseling his errant son while in Vila. The
\n Chief will now return home with assurances from his son that he will serve
\n the full term of his sentence and act with respect towards the law. Lee\u2019s
\n name means peace in the language of his home island, Pentecost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The last time rival political forces fought one another street by street for control of the Nicaraguan capital was three decades ago, in July 1979, at the culmination of the Sandinista insurrection that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship. The streets of Managua were once again aflame amid the boom of mortar rounds, as the Sandinistas and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","spay_email":""},"categories":[52,57,10,12,19,26,32,43,47],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}