UAEPrison

The Ortelo Business Corporation (OBC) is one of the major Hunting companies operating in Tanzania. The Company is owned by the royal family of the UAE (United Arab Emirates), possessing hunting blocks in the area covering over 4,000 sq km. The hunters fly directly from the UAE to the area using huge cargo and passenger planes which land on an all-weather airstrip inside the OBC camp. The planes are loaded with sophisticated Hunting equipment, including four-wheel drive vehicles, weapons and communication gadgets. On their way back, the planes carry a variety of live animals, game trophies and meat.

The Guardian UK reports “The Sheikhs and their friends drive Japanese off-road vehicles at high speed through the bush and they shoot at the animals. No living thing, it appears, is safe, even in Tanzania, a country that sells itself to the ever-growing safari market as an eco-tourism destination, where “harassment of animals is avoided”. A district councillor in Ololosokwan, the nearest village to Arabiya, told me that OBC’s licence permits only five lions to be killed per season. But then, who’s counting? He cannot. The area is closed to journalists and NGOs, and the locals have been warned by the police that even to speak about OBC will get them into trouble. A request to OBC’s local agent for an interview was not answered. Discreetly, people in the villages tell us about “the Arabs” and their bizarre colonisation of Loliondo district.