WWF accused of funding guards who 'tortured and killed scores of people'
The charity is accused of supporting anti-poaching units that attacked, sexually assaulted, shot and killed villagers. It is also accused of providing paramilitary forces with salaries, training and supplies – including knives, night vision goggles, riot gear and batons – and funding raids on villages.
WWF operated like a “global spymaster”, organising, financing and running networks of “informants”, to provide park authorities with intelligence, while publicly denying working with informants, Buzzfeed reported. The investigation will also look at claims WWF embroiled itself in a botched arms deal, in the Central African Republic, to buy assault rifles from an army that paraded severed heads of criminals though the streets.
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“At the heart of WWF’s work are places and the people who live in them. Respect for human rights is at the core of our mission.
No, it isn't. Protecting animals is. You're doing a pretty good job of that it'd seem, too good a job really. I mean, I get it, terrorize the humans and the animals will be left alone. It's just, you know.
Though it's worth noting WWF has been the target of shenanigans before;
The news follows mediation by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2017 into claims by Survival International that WWF had not gained the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous people, the Baku, in Cameroon, when setting up protected areas.
Survival International later dropped its complaint. WWF, which denied the allegations, said it was “appalled” by the NGO’s decision to abandon the process it had triggered. The OECD criticized SI over a breach of confidentiality rules and “inaccurate” description of the mediation.
So NSG, is this the start of a secret environmentalism shogunate?
More seriously, leaving it up to independent organization to hire paramilitaries to protect animals means this kind of thing is inevitable. Paramilitaries do not have the training, accountability, culture, nor oversight to adequately take on this task without this kind of thing. It should be a government or international effort. The accusations against WWF, if proven true, might lead to a withdrawel of support for these paramilitaries, which may see a rise in poaching again.
Examples from Buzzfeed:
Shikharam was in too much pain to swallow. He crawled toward Hira, his thin body covered in bruises, and told her through sobs that forest rangers were torturing him. “They beat him mercilessly and put saltwater in his nose and mouth,” Hira later told police.
The rangers believed that Shikharam helped his son bury a rhinoceros horn in his backyard. They couldn’t find the horn, but they threw Shikharam in their jail anyway, court documents filed by the prosecution show.
Nine days later, he was dead. An autopsy showed seven broken ribs and “blue marks and bruises” all over his body. Seven eyewitnesses corroborated his wife’s account of nonstop beatings. Three park officials, including the chief warden, were arrested and charged with murder. WWF’s staff on the ground in Nepal leaped into action — not to demand justice, but to lobby for the charges to disappear. When the Nepalese government dropped the case months later, the charity declared it a victory in the fight against poaching.
That's obviously concerning. The lack of due process as well as extremes of capital punishment, let alone the torture involved, and the fact the charity appears to take the view that it should put pressure on governments to ignore this behavior suggests it isn't oversight but a cultural issue at the charity.
