NGO reports 'human rights disaster' at Uganda oil project

A massive oil project in Uganda co-owned by French group TotalEnergies and China's CNOOC is mired in reports of sexual violence, forced evictions and environmental damage, climate activists said Monday.

The $10 billion investment includes drilling for oil in the Lake Albert area in northwestern Uganda and building a 1,443-kilometre (900-mile) heated pipeline to ship the crude to Tanzania's Indian Ocean port of Tanga.

Climate Rights International (CRI), a non-profit organisation, interviewed dozens of local residents for a report that listed a "Catalogue of Abuses" at the Kingfisher project.

"It is appalling that a project that is touted as bringing prosperity to the people of Uganda is instead leaving them the victims of violence, intimidation,and poverty," CRI executive director Brad Adams said in a statement.

"The Kingfisher project, which is operated and co-owned by CNOOC and majority owned by TotalEnergies, is not only a dangerous carbon bomb but also a human rights disaster," Adams said.

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The report said residents of villages in the Kingfisher area described "being forcibly evicted, often with little or no notice", by the army, the Uganda Peoples' Defence Forces (UPDF).

"Interviewees described being ordered to leave and fleeing with what little they could carry," the report said, adding that homes had been emptied and, in some cases, demolished.

"Many residents told Climate Rights International that they faced threats, coercion, and intimidation when they questioned or opposed the acquisition of their land by CNOOC," it said.

Families also described "pressure and intimidation" by officials from TotalEnergies's Ugandan subsidiary and its subcontractors "to agree to low levels of compensation that was inadequate to buy replacement land".

Since CNOOC and the military's arrival, fishing boats, the primary economic activity in the region, that do not comply with new regulations banning smaller vessels are regularly seized or burned by the army, the report said.

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CRI said "numerous women" reported sexual violence resulting from "threats, intimidation, or coercion by soldiers in the Kingfisher project area".

"Many reported that soldiers threatened them with arrest or confiscation of their fish merchandise unless they agreed to have sex with them," it said.

The non-profit added that it also received reports of sexual violence by "managers and superiors within oil companies operating at Kingfisher, including one involving a CNOOC employee".

As for environmental damage, two people who worked for China Oilfields Services Limited, a drilling service contractor, told CRI that their former supervisor, a Chinese national, instructed them to empty contaminated water basins from the drilling rig directly into the lake or vacant land.

TotalEnergies has said in the past that those displaced by the oil project have been fairly compensated and measures have been taken to protect the environment.

Uganda's first oil is expected to flow in 2025 and the project has been hailed by President Yoweri Museveni as an economic boon for the landlocked country where many live in poverty.

Source: AFP