- 3 months ago
People & Power explores the role of Lebanese citizens in the absence of the state.
Lebanon is struggling with yet another humanitarian crisis following Israel’s two-month-long war, which has displaced more than a million people. With no functional government during the conflict, the Lebanese people had to rely on community solidarity and decades of nongovernmental efforts to survive.
People & Power looks at how various sectors of Lebanese society stepped up to support a traumatised population seeking refuge on the streets of Beirut and in the mountain villages.
We captured the tireless efforts of common citizens offering shelter to displaced people during the war. As a ceasefire came into effect, many remained unable to return to their homes, which have been reduced to rubble, leaving them dependent on the solidarity shown in this broken nation. Frontline of Care looks at how Lebanon’s civilians are doing what their government cannot.
Lebanon is struggling with yet another humanitarian crisis following Israel’s two-month-long war, which has displaced more than a million people. With no functional government during the conflict, the Lebanese people had to rely on community solidarity and decades of nongovernmental efforts to survive.
People & Power looks at how various sectors of Lebanese society stepped up to support a traumatised population seeking refuge on the streets of Beirut and in the mountain villages.
We captured the tireless efforts of common citizens offering shelter to displaced people during the war. As a ceasefire came into effect, many remained unable to return to their homes, which have been reduced to rubble, leaving them dependent on the solidarity shown in this broken nation. Frontline of Care looks at how Lebanon’s civilians are doing what their government cannot.
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TVTranscript
00:00Uganda is one of Africa's major wildlife tourism destinations.
00:05It attracts more than a million visitors a year,
00:08but poaching poses a constant threat to Uganda's national parks.
00:13We have just cited a poacher.
00:16In response, the parks have militarized their conservation efforts.
00:20Today, poachers are not the tradition.
00:22Some poachers are ex-combatants,
00:25so they need at times a skill which can level with them.
00:29The people who live around the parks say the authorities are going too far.
00:34Ranger find them in the park, they kill them.
00:38In my village only, there are more than 20 people.
00:42Villagers say the poaching clampdown is breeding anger
00:45and doesn't address the root cause, poverty.
00:49It must be a carrot and a stick.
01:02But unfortunately, there will always be the people who do not listen.
01:07So you need to bring out the stick as well.
01:10People in power went to Uganda to investigate allegations
01:14that people are being killed in the name of conservation.
01:18This is Uganda's wildlife court in the capital Kampala,
01:20the first of its kind in Africa.
01:23Once a week, handcuffed together,
01:24alleged poachers and traffickers are brought here
01:28to face war.
01:29The first of its kind in Africa.
01:30Once a week, handcuffed together,
01:31alleged poachers and traffickers are brought here
01:32This is Uganda's wildlife court in the capital Kampala, the first of its kind in Africa.
01:43Once a week, handcuffed together, alleged poachers and traffickers are brought here
01:47to face trial.
01:55They face the court's chief magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu.
01:58I find myself having a huge duty to ensure that justice is done to the animals, to the
02:06environment, to make sure I pass over a safer environment to my children, my grandchildren.
02:13Now there are seven photos here showing carcass of a baby elephant whose head was crushed.
02:26On trial today is Ongwen Solomon, accused of killing and trafficking wildlife.
02:32Why is the ivory which was on this elephant?
02:36Why then the head was crushed?
02:39Why was the head crushed?
02:42Uganda is suffering a poaching epidemic which authorities and conservationists are struggling to contain.
02:48Since the Wildlife Court was formed in 2017, Gladys Kamasanyu has presided over more than a thousand cases.
02:56The skull of a Uganda court, which has stones.
03:00And the one who has hog heads, what is the mark on it?
03:04The two chiefs of a hippo.
03:07But this case is one of the few that even make it to court.
03:11The percentage of illegal wildlife cases that we are dealing with, the ones that are prosecuted in courts, those ones form a very small percentage of the illegal wildlife trade that goes on out there.
03:25The baby elephant was poached 300 kilometers away in Murchison Falls National Park, the country's oldest and largest game reserve.
03:38Many animals here face the threat of extinction, a threat only being made worse by the climate crisis.
03:45Uganda's economy depends on wildlife tourism to inject much needed cash.
03:51Poachers put all of this at risk.
03:54It's the job of the park rangers to track them.
04:00We have just sighted a poacher.
04:03We are suspecting to have seen a poacher at a distance.
04:06So we are trying to clearly check with the binals if it is really a poacher and then we try to plan to maybe effect arrest.
04:14But people living around the park say some rangers are taking the law into their own hands.
04:21Ranger find them in the park, they kill them.
04:25In my village only, there are more than 20 people.
04:29More than 20 people who have been killed?
04:32Yes.
04:33That's in the last decade.
04:352025, we lost one person last month, which they gone fishing.
04:43They meet a ranger with a boat.
04:45Then others, they escaped.
04:48The other one fall in the water until he died.
04:52We did not find even the dead body.
04:55These allegations of extrajudicial killings are widespread around Murchison Falls National Park.
05:00People here say dozens have disappeared after encountering rangers in the park.
05:09These four children are growing up without a father.
05:12Their mother is raising them alone.
05:22Her husband went into the park last year and never came back.
05:27Poaching felt like the only way to support his family.
05:45A member was just trying to live their family.
05:47A member was working at St. Croft-Sister-R-R-R-R-R-D-O-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R.
05:57Welcome to the house.
06:00I'm here to teach you how to do this.
06:05I'll be in the house and I'll go to the house.
06:13I'll be in the house.
06:17I'll be in the house.
06:21And they say the rangers fired without warning.
06:51In the park, rangers are getting ready to go on patrol.
07:21You are reminded of the human rights.
07:25Once you get a poacher, don't harass him.
07:28Put him down very slowly, restrain him, and come back with him.
07:35We are in the northern part of Marxion Falls, where we have a lot of the dirty tooth,
07:41mostly wires, cutting off wires.
07:43For instance, they are poaching their facility.
07:46You can get almost around 400 individual poachers.
07:52The park's chief warden is a military veteran.
07:55His job now is to bring poaching under control.
08:00How have you brought your military expertise to protecting this park?
08:05You say military expertise.
08:08We have paramilitary.
08:12We are not fully military expertise.
08:16But we have got basic training in the military.
08:20That training is essential, he says, as some poachers are armed.
08:24Because you will appreciate with me that today, poaching, poachers are not the tradition.
08:31Some poachers are ex-combatants.
08:34So they need at times a skill which can level with them.
08:39But he insists the allegations of killings are unfounded.
08:42It is good that you even call it an allegation.
08:46For us, the bottom line is that we don't kill.
08:49We arrest.
08:50Killing is not a training we have acquired.
08:55But according to this professor's research, some rangers do kill.
08:59In Uganda, it's quite an open secret that these killings are taking place.
09:05A few rangers themselves, they told us about the practice of hiding the evidence.
09:10So if they have encountered a suspected poacher or a person in the park,
09:15and someone had been killed on the spot,
09:17it would have been very easy for the rangers to actually get rid of the body.
09:21If you take all the anecdotal evidence together,
09:25this really shows the need for an independent investigation
09:29that needs to take place at a national level.
09:32But such an investigation seems unlikely any time soon.
09:37So we carried out our own.
09:39We managed to convince a conservationist who used to work in the park to talk to us.
09:44For his safety, we agreed to hide his identity.
09:47I worked there for two years.
09:51I ended up reporting cases to do with how rangers were killing many of the young guys,
09:57young people within the community of Nwoya.
10:04I received 23 cases of lost lives in 2023.
10:09Enforcement rangers were killing local poachers.
10:14He also witnessed the aftermath of a killing with his own eyes.
10:17The community ranger called me while I was in the office.
10:22They said the person is in the park.
10:24He has been killed by an elephant.
10:27But when I reached there,
10:29there was nothing like an elephant that killed the person,
10:33because I know the state under which an elephant can kill a person.
10:37So I got there.
10:38The person was shot on the chest and died.
10:41I mean, the chest was shattered with bullets, bullet shots.
10:46We had to put him in a bag and put in the car and drop it to the community.
10:52Back in Bolisa district, Charles Arembi used to poach in the park
11:01until he and his best friend Wilbur were ambushed by rangers.
11:05I was in the house.
11:35A lot of villages told us similar stories.
11:49They recount instances of killing and disappearances.
11:53In Belisa alone we heard accounts of at least 44 killings in the last five years.
12:02The conflict between local communities and the park goes back to the colonial era.
12:07Before the Europeans came in to colonize, the chiefs and kings of our different tribes
12:14and places were in charge.
12:18And they had specific areas for hunting and they only hunt for food and it was okay.
12:27The creation of wildlife reserves upset that balance.
12:31Tens of thousands of Ugandans were forced off their ancestral land, sparking resentment
12:36and conflict that persists to this day.
12:39We are unfortunately in a very severe poaching time now.
12:43Eighty percent of Uganda's population is under 25 years old.
12:48They don't have skills, they're not literate, it's very difficult to get jobs.
12:53And often they're very vulnerable to criminal gangs to use them as the front line of the
13:00poaching force.
13:02We would go on patrols and find industrial size poaching camps.
13:06The piles of bones, the thousands and thousands of snares.
13:10The tools poachers use are as innovative as they are cruel.
13:14So this is a wheel trap made out of the leaf springs of a vehicle.
13:19These are probably the most lethal.
13:23In terms of snares, any animal, it will put its limb in and as it pulls, this will get
13:28tighter and tighter and tighter until eventually it will sever that limb or damage it so much
13:35that it will cut a tendon or ligament.
13:38At one point, one in three elephants in Murchison had an injury from snares.
13:45People here often see elephants as a threat to their lives and their livelihoods.
13:51We have a challenge of the elephant crossing into the community, destroying the crops, the
13:57foods.
13:58The matter has been put across to the government, but we could not see any change.
14:12The challenge we are getting now, when the animals come and destroy our food, the government
14:19cannot take any action.
14:21But when the community kills the animals, they can react very fast to arrest the person.
14:28They are not minding about human life.
14:33Wildlife authorities say that's not true and that they've taken measures to support local
14:38communities.
14:39We get 20% of all entry fees into the park.
14:46It goes to the local communities.
14:48We have community conservation programs.
14:50We even engage and recruit from within the communities.
14:56But unfortunately, there will always be, you know, the people who do not listen.
15:01It must be a carrot and a stick.
15:07In the park, the anti-poaching unit arrives at the location of today's patrol.
15:11My father was a ranger, so I was born.
15:15He was a ranger.
15:16I grew up in a national park.
15:18And that's why I'm here.
15:19For the love of nature, the job that paid my school fees.
15:23It's the animals.
15:24We call them bosses.
15:25They are our bosses.
15:26The mood quickly turned serious.
15:28I've got a wire snare.
15:29We have more than two wires here.
15:30We have two.
15:31Behind us, there are also more two.
15:32So people, they are safe in the park where they expect animals to be passing.
15:37Where we are, being a very busy legal activity area, sometimes we can even collect more than eight.
15:58Yes, there have been times, like during dry season, at this particular time, we can collect even a hundred, depending on years, in a single day.
16:09So wires can be very dangerous, and we have had elephants that move without trunks just because of wire snares.
16:16Scenes left behind by the poachers are often gruesome.
16:20We get angry, that's a fact. When we get on such a scene, we are very angry, but at the end, when we get, we intercept them, we arrest them, we forward them, the other side, and they go and fight their law.
16:36Back in Belisa, we tracked down a poacher. He agreed to speak to us, providing that we don't show his face.
16:42After his father died, he was left to provide for his siblings. Now, he also has four children of his own.
17:03He takes us into the bush to show us how he poaches.
17:10For those of us, we are OK.
17:13Our parents are in the school for two years.
17:15My family.
17:20Thanks for having us.
17:23He is very very busy.
17:25We are very happy and happy.
17:28We are very well focused on the school.
17:31We are very happy to compromise.
17:33We are very happy to have a good day or to not let them know how to be done.
17:37We are doing this for a while.
17:39Hippos are the main victims of poaching here.
17:45Exact numbers are hard to find, but by some estimates,
17:49as few as 300 are left in the park.
17:52A decade ago, there were six times as many.
17:56There are several other sources,
17:58people who can see him,
18:01but if they want to see him,
18:03they can see him in the past.
18:05They can see him in the past.
18:09He can see him.
18:11The rest of us are just like him.
18:15And yet our total information is here.
18:21Then they heard gunshots.
18:42Poachers aren't the only ones endangering their lives.
18:45Back in Kampala, authorities keep confiscated ivory in secret locations.
18:51The traffickers will do anything to get their hands on it.
18:54If they're left here, it's such a very risky thing,
18:58because they may come for them.
19:00And if traffickers came for them, that would mean death.
19:06I mean death, because those in charge of the security of court may die.
19:12They'll have to kill somebody to get to where we store them,
19:16so that's why we can't have them at court.
19:20One whole tusk.
19:22So from here to this way was outside the head of an elephant,
19:28and from here downwards was embedding the head of an elephant.
19:35This one means bloodshed, means loss.
19:39To have elephant ivory, the elephant must die.
19:46Our poacher admits he's involved in wildlife trade,
19:50a dangerous but lucrative business.
19:52These hippo teeth will likely end up in Asia, where they are sold for up to $3,000 per kilogram.
20:08Tonight, if he's lucky, our poacher will get 10.
20:10When we put our findings to the head of the wildlife authority, he was deeply sceptical.
20:24What evidence do you have that the police and the judiciary hasn't found?
20:43Because if people have been killed, the normal thing to do is for those aggrieved to go to police.
20:55So I don't think that those numbers are correct.
20:59But the villagers say they have tried to report these deaths to the authorities.
21:04When they bring reports home, we can take that matter to police,
21:08and even they don't allow us to go and search for a dead body.
21:12When we try, nothing we can do, we borrow the clothes.
21:19It's relatively easy to hide any evidence before any independent police or other fact-finding missions
21:29can actually enter the park and do their own independent investigation.
21:36For the husband of Evelyn, we did not found the dead body, we borrow the clothes.
21:42We borrow the clothes.
21:45Murchison isn't the only park facing allegations of abuse.
21:48Similar stories are emerging from the south of Uganda at Queen Elizabeth National Park.
21:56In Katabu, a village adjoining the park, a school has been set up for the children of dead poachers.
22:02CHOWERS
22:04Premaresu, Awamoto, Education in the States.
22:13I was born here and I was born here and I was born here.
22:20As I talk now, the number has increased to 96.
22:27On this list, there are people who perished in the National Park, sometimes back.
22:41Others in the village paint an even darker picture.
22:44They say at least 100 poachers never came out of the park in the last five years
22:50and they suspect they were killed by rangers.
22:53I feel very, very sorry because their children are suffering,
22:58their wives they left are also suffering.
23:01We also put these allegations to the head of the Wildlife Authority.
23:06It is inconvincible that in one area you have 100 men killed in five years.
23:15Meaning every month you're losing somebody in that village
23:19and people continue getting into the park because they are getting killed.
23:25You think it continues that way? Are they that desperate?
23:29The villages you visited, are they that desperate?
23:32With few other ways to make a living, it seems they are.
23:36These parents could go poaching to get school fees for the children
23:42and also to get money to facilitate them in other home activities.
23:49Back in Kampala, Gladys Kamasanyu has reached a verdict.
23:53The kids person having admitted the charge today is convicted on each of counts one, two, six.
24:06Ongwen Solomon will spend the next 15 years in jail.
24:12And back in Belisa, Evelyn visits her husband's burial site.
24:16With no body to bury and no money for a headstone.
24:20It's just a patch of dirt.
24:22Well, we are living up there all the time.
24:26All the friends that are living here,
24:29we are living and living there for the bluegrass.
24:32We are living here with this.
24:33We are living here with this,
24:37and I'm living there with this.
24:39He has also worked here with this.
24:42Time is being killed by a village at the
24:44It's not that we can't do it anymore, it's not that we can do it anymore.
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