How Protecting Animals Led to Allegations of Torture and Rape
Recent human rights abuses in Tanzania's fight to stop wildlife poaching call into question whether drastic new measures will be above board.
Tarangire, TanzaniaLoota was working late one Sunday evening in 2013 when a truck full of army officers stopped outside his butcher shop. They hopped out and ran toward a group of teenage boys playing at a pool hall behind his stall. The boys scattered; a few got away by slipping out of their shirts as they were being grabbed.
The 43-year-old butcher walked out to see what was happening just as the soldiers were throwing two boys into the back of their truck. They seized Loota too.
“They started kicking, hitting me on the ground and jabbed me into the vehicle, where they stepped on me and started kicking me all over,” Loota told National Geographic.
Over the next few days, he was taken
