[b]In Scramble for Land, Group Says, Company Pushed Ugandans Out




More than 20,000 people were expelled from their homes, a report says




An evicted woman showed proof of her family's land ownership.

In Scramble for Land, Group Says, Company Pushed Ugandans Out
By JOSH KRON
KICUCULA, Uganda — According to the company’s proposal to join a United Nations clean-air program, the settlers living in this area left in a “peaceful” and “voluntary” manner.

People here remember it quite differently.

“I heard people being beaten, so I ran outside,” said Emmanuel Cyicyima, 33. “The houses were being burnt down.”

Other villagers described gun-toting soldiers and an 8-year-old child burning to death when his home was set ablaze by security officers.

“They said if we hesitated they would shoot us,” said William Bakeshisha, adding that he hid in his coffee plantation, watching his house burn down. “Smoke and fire.”

According to a report released by the aid group Oxfam on Wednesday, the Ugandan government and a British forestry company forcibly expelled more than 20,000 people from their homes here in recent years, emblematic of a global scramble for arable land.

“Too many investments have resulted in dispossession, deception, violation of human rights and destruction of livelihoods,” Oxfam said in the report. “This interest in land is not something that will pass.” As population and urbanization soar, it added, “whatever land there is will surely be prized.”

Across Africa, some of the world’s poorest people have been thrown off land to make way for foreign investors, often uprooting local farmers so that food can be grown on a commercial scale and shipped to richer countries overseas.

But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming.

The case twists around an emerging multibillion-dollar market trading carbon-credits under the Kyoto Protocol, which contains mechanisms for outsourcing environmental protection to developing nations.

The company involved, New Forests Company, grows forests in African countries with the purpose of selling credits from the carbon-dioxide its trees soak up to polluters abroad. Its investors include the World Bank, through its private investment arm, and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC.

In 2005, the Ugandan government granted New Forests a 50-year license to grow pine and eucalyptus forests in three districts, and the company has applied to the United Nations to trade under the mechanism. The company expects that it could earn up to $1.8 million a year.

But there was just one problem: people were living on the land where the company wanted to plant trees. Indeed, they had been there a while.

“He was a policeman for King George,” Mr. Bakeshisha said of his father, who served with British forces during World War II in Egypt.

Mr. Bakeshisha, 51, said he was given land in Namwasa forest in Mubende district in 1997 by a local kingdom through his father’s serviceman association. Mr. Bakeshisha lived happily on the property for years, becoming a local administrator and ardent supporter of President Yoweri Museveni. In a neighboring district, people had been living on land the company would later license since the 1970s.

Tensions brewed. The company and government said the residents were living illegally in a forest. Residents said they had rights. Community members took the company to court in 2009 and a temporary injunction was issued, barring evictions. Nevertheless, Oxfam and residents say, evictions continued.

Residents were given until Feb. 28, 2010, to vacate company premises while soldiers and the police kept surveillance. Company officials visited, too. From time to time a house would be burnt down, villagers said. Then came Feb. 28, a Sunday.

“We were in church,” recalled Jean-Marie Tushabe, 26, a father of two. “I heard bullets being shot into the air.”

“Cars were coming with police,” Mr. Tushabe said, sitting among the ruins of his old home. “They headed straight to the houses. They took our plates, cups, mattresses, bed, pillows. Then we saw them getting a matchbox out of their pockets.”

Homeless and hopeless, Mr. Tushabe said he took a job with the company that pushed him out. He was promised more than $100 each month, he said, but received only about $30.

New Forests says that it takes accusations that settlers were forcibly removed “extremely seriously” and will conduct “an immediate and thorough” investigation.

“Our understanding of these resettlements is that they were legal, voluntary and peaceful and our first hand observations of them confirmed this,” the company said in a response to the Oxfam report.

A Ugandan government spokesman said residents in Namwasa were illegal encroachers, but he acknowledged and deplored the use of violence to remove them, saying it was done by corrupt politicians and police officers operating outside the law.

Olivia Mukamperezida, 28, said her house was among the first in her community to be burned down. One day in late 2009, she said, her eldest son, Friday, was sick at home, so she went out to find medicine. Villagers suddenly told her to rush back. Everything was incinerated.

“I found my house when it was completely finished,” she said. “I just cried.”

Ms. Mukamperezida never found the culprits. She buried Friday’s bones in a grave, but says she does not know if it is still there.

“They are planting trees,” she said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 22, 2011


A previous version of this article misstated the name of HSBC, a global banking and financial services organization.
[/b]

lord please save your people from satanic domination. they tryna extinct your people. please do something about these invaders oh LORD. amen

buzugee:

lord please save your people from satanic domination. they tryna extinct your people. please do something about these invaders oh LORD. amen

You're Praying to the wrong God. Not until you start praying to the African Gods, will the Gods answer your prayer.

Rgp92:

You're Praying to the wrong God. Not until you start praying to the African Gods, will the Gods answer your prayer.

there is only one God. the same God regurgitated to you after the europeans plagiarized all the manuscripts from africa used to write the bible. its all the same Yahweh. African gods are why africa is in the predicament we are in right now. we are being put through a baptism of fire hence our current state. this is cuz we were worshipping african gods and using each other as human sacrifices. so i wouldnt be quick to subscribe to african gods

buzugee:

there is only one God. the same God regurgitated to you after the Europeans plagiarized all the manuscripts from Africa used to write the bible. its all the same Yahweh. African gods are why Africa is in the predicament we are in right now. we are being put through a baptism of fire hence our current state. this is CZ we were worshipping African gods and using each other as human sacrifices. so i wouldn't be quick to subscribe to African gods

Human sacrifices is not why we fail today. Christianity and Islam have killed more people than anyother religion combine. The maya sacrifice people more people than any ethnical group in Africa, yet they were succes. Thing have not being good for Africans since we abando our gods, and mate only a small ethnic group in Africa sacrifices human.

Rgp92:

Human sacrifices is not why we fail today. Christianity and Islam have killed more people than anyother religion combine. The maya sacrifice people more people than any ethnical group in Africa, yet they were succes. Thing have not being good for Africans since we abando our gods, and mate only a small ethnic group in Africa sacrifices human.

believe it or not but the bible was actually written by men inspired by yahweh. of course it may have been slightly corrupted when emperor constantin compiled it into a bible. the MAYANS sacrifice people alot , where are they today ? wiped out and conquered and destroyed. thats where they are. let me tell you something bruh, dunno how conversant you are with the bible but let me give you an assignment. read the old testament cover to cover and page by page from the book of ecclesiastes to the book of malachi. there is a recurring theme in those prophetic scriptures, do you know what it is ? the recurring theme is that God extremely hates when people worship idols and sacrifice other humans for religious purposes. what is the recurring retribution he does to these people ? he allows their enemies to come and invade them and conquer them and take away all their goods and enslave them and use them as slaves, do you see that happeneing in todays world ? what happened to africans conquered colonized sold as slavery, the constant exploitation of africa etc etc, how bout the mayans and the aztecs, the native indians ? wiped out. how bout the aborigines ? wiped out. these are all the tribes on earth who worship idols and do human sacrifices. do you see a common thread now ?

oh and people are not killed by xtianity or islam as you put it, people are killed by religious people. see, religion is man-made, spirituality is divine. big difference.