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DEFENDING LAND AND ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS

Benet: Uganda’s stateless people

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Kapchewuut cave in Benet Sub-County in Kween District still acts as a home for some of the evicted people who were evicted 13 years ago from their ancestral home.

Kampala, Uganda. The Ugandan government must recognise the Benet as the indigenous inhabitants of the forest from which it evicted them and restore them to their ancient home.

Amnesty International, the London-based international human rights NGO made the demand in a report titled, ‘13 Years in Limbo: Forced Evictions of the Benet in the Name of Conservation,’ that it launched on Nov.08.

“The treatment of the Benet is a flagrant violation of Uganda’s constitution and its own international human rights obligations,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa during the release of the report.

This is the latest call for the restoration of the rights of the Benet, a community of an estimated 18,000 people who lost their ancestral land in Mount Elgon area of Sebei in eastern Uganda in 1920 when the British colonial protectorate classified the moorland and grasslands as a forest reserve.

Subsequent governments have piled violations on the minority group, including violent forced evictions since 1983, further deepening the plight and poverty of this community. Amnesty International says the Benet face a multi-generational struggle.

The Benet is one of Uganda’s indigenous ethnic minority groups who have been deprived of their right to health, adequate housing and education, it said.

“They are still living in temporary settlements made of flimsy huts of mud and stick, deprived of essential services such as clean drinking water and electricity and cut off from healthcare and education,” said Muchena.

Perhaps the most brutal evictions happened on Feb.16 in 2008 when 178 families were rendered homeless.

The Uganda Wildlife Authority and the national army—the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF)—forcefully evicted the families claiming they were still settled inside the national park despite government allocating the same land to them after previous evictions.

People’s houses and crops were destroyed, cattle were confiscated. The displaced Benet found shelter wherever they could: in caves and under trees. The luckier ones stayed in a nearby primary school or joined relatives elsewhere.

David Chemutai, the current coordinator of the Benet-Mosop Indigenous Community Association, a community based organisation in Kween District in eastern Uganda still remembers the 2008 evictions.

“I came back home from school only to find our home burnt. All the houses in the homestead were burnt,” he told The Independent on Nov.10, “Our food which we used to keep in the house was also burnt. My parents were gone and I did not know where to find them.”

Chemutai who was 23 at the time was only able to find his parents days later in a cave. Over a decade later, hundreds of families of the Benet community still live in temporary resettlement sites. Some still live in the cave.

They accuse UWA of killings, unlawful use of force and firearms, including shootings, beatings, and even crimes under international law, including torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. This often happens when they try to enter the forest which was declared a national park in 1993.

In 2004, the Uganda Land Alliance (ULA) filed a legal suit, Uganda Land Alliance, Ltd. v. Uganda Wildlife Authority in the High Court of Uganda on behalf of the Benet community, for enforcement of their right to use their forest land.

On 27 October 2005, the court in a judgment commonly referred to as the “Consent Judgment”, which was settled and agreed to by the affected Benet community, the UWA, and the Attorney General of Uganda, recognised the Benet as the historical and indigenous inhabitants of the forest that the government had classified a national park in 1993.

The judgment underlined the need to “redress the imbalance” facing the Benet in education, infrastructure, health, and social services, provided for under Article 32 of Uganda’s Constitution.

Despite the court ruling, the Benet are still not permitted to build permanent structures and live in small huts constructed from sticks and mud in temporary resettlement camps, with no electricity and potable water.

The restriction has impacted the Benet peoples’ agro-pastoral lifestyle and other economic, social, and cultural practices such as the right to access cultural sites for rituals, fruit gathering, bee keeping, and hunting.

“We are now a stateless community,” says Chemutai, “This is something we are still fighting for.”

The Uganda Wildlife Authority insists it is not to blame for the fate of the Benet.

“We are not responsible for the gazettement and degazettement of these places. The Uganda Wildlife Authority only manages these spaces,” Bashir Hangi, the UWA public relations officer,told The Independent on Nov.10, “Regardless whether they were evicted or not, when the government handed over the area to us, we had no alternative but remove the people.”

But Amnesty International’s Muchena says academic research says conservation, such as by UWA, works best when the state works with the indigenous people as equal partners in conservation.

“It must not result in human rights violations, or be used to justify them,” he said.

Original Source: independent.co.ug

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DEFENDING LAND AND ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS

Mityana district police rounded up and arbitrarily arrested over 50 Kikuube PAPs to block them from meeting Uganda’s Prime Minister.

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By Witness Radio team

Two (2) community land rights defenders and 68 projects-affected persons from Kikuube district including children have been rounded up and arrested by Mityana district Police, Witness Radio has learned.

The community group led by Fred Mbambali and Ahumuza Busingye, were arrested from City Healing Church in Mityana Municipality, Mityana district. They were arrested on the orders of Mityana District Police Commander, Mr. Hasunira Ahmed, without being informed of the reasons for the arrest.

To seek justice and reclaim their grabbed land, the community decided to journey from the Kikuube district on Saturday, 2nd March 2024. Their objective was to petition Uganda’s Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Robinah Nabanja, to intervene in grievances concerning forced evictions from their land and their unsuccessful attempts to regain ownership of their land that was grabbed by the officials of the Prime minister’s office for Kyangwali resettlement camp.

“On Friday, we departed from Kikuube district to Kakumiro intending to meet the Prime Minister. We aimed to convey the challenges we are facing following the unlawful seizure of our land. We sought her intervention to help us regain ownership, especially since many offices that were approached have not helped end our misery. Unfortunately, upon our arrival, we discovered she was in preparations to leave her residence. Instead, she instructed her private security team to escort us to her party’s offices (National Resistance Movement, NRM) in the Kakumiro district, assuring us that she would meet with us there. But she did not come back.” Mr. Mbambali Fred, one of the group leaders told Witness Radio.

Little did the affected community members know that their stay at the offices would be short-lived. Initially, they were welcomed by the security officers at the party offices, but their situation took a turn when the District security committee of Kakumiro led by the Resident District Commissioner (RDC), Mr. Matovu David and the District Police Commander (DPC) in the area Mr. Niyonzima Morris visited and questioned them about the reasons for their visit.

Subsequently, PAPs explained that they had been directed to wait at the offices by the Prime Minister. Despite their explanation, the Committee was skeptical and held an emergency meeting to resolve that Kikuube PAPs should leave the premises. The committee stated that the issue raised was not within the mandate of the Kakumiro district and thereafter, were asked to relocate to a different location, not within Kakumiro.

The stern Kakumiro district leaders directed the group to depart and proceed to the Office of the Prime Minister in Kampala for their meeting with her.

Shortly after being chased, they proceeded to Kampala via Mityana road, but PAPs sought to rest at one of the churches in the Mityana district. As soon as they occupied the church, Mityana district raided the premises, arrested all of them, and took them to Mityana Central Police Station, claiming that PAPs were posing a threat to the community.

“We were rounded up and arrested without being given any opportunity to explain ourselves. They didn’t even inform us of the reason for our arrest. We were kept at the police for nearly 12 hours without food. Both children and elders were starving, and the children even reached the point of crying because we were not allowed to move. It’s a double punishment to us because we haven’t committed any offense,” Ahumuza Busingye, another defender, told Witness Radio.

They were cautioned and later released without charges.

The Mityana District Police Commander, Mr. Hasunira Ahmed confirmed the arrest, stating that people neighboring the church had lodged complaints with the police about unknown individuals with a large amount of luggage occupying their premises. This led the police to arrest them.

“We received complaints about these individuals occupying a particular church, which posed a potential threat because they hadn’t obtained permission to stay there and didn’t possess a letter authorizing their movement to their destination. That’s why we intervened with an arrest, as many of them looked like rebels,” stated the Mityana District Police Commander.

PAPs arrested are part of the larger group of over 90,000 people evicted between 2013 and 2019 in 29 villagers by the office of the Prime minister (OPM) to give their land to the refugees in Katikala and Bukinda in Kyangwali district.

The community was evicted by officials led by Charles Bafaki from the Office of the Prime Minister, accompanied by the police and Uganda People Defence Forces (UPDF), from their land measuring 36 square kilometers located in various villages, including Bukinda A and B, Bukinda 2, Kavule, Bwizibwera A and B, Kyeya A and B, Nyaruhanga, Kabirizi, Nyamigisa A and B, and Katoma, all in Kyangwali sub-county for the Kyangwali refugee resettlement camp.

Despite receiving various directives, including two from the President, instructing the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) officials to facilitate the return of the residents to their land, they have chosen to turn a deaf ear and disregard the implementation of these directives.

In 2016 and 2018, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni issued directives to resettle PAPs back to their ancestral land, but unfortunately, these directives remained unimplemented.

In 2021, Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja visited the victims and promised action, which, as of the time of writing this article, it’s yet to be realized.

On March 1, 2022, Minister of Relief, Disaster Preparedness, and Refugees, Mr. Hilary Onek, accused the victims of encroaching on government land. He also criticized local leaders and officials for potential involvement in stage-managed evictions.

In 2022, approximately 1,000 of the evictees camped at the office of the Kikuube Resident District Commissioner, Amlan Tumusiime, demanding his intervention to help them return to their land. Unfortunately, this intervention did not materialize. Some of the evictees sought shelter in temporary shelters provided by Florence Natumanya, the Kikuube Woman MP, and Francis Kazini, the Buhaguzi Member of Parliament, while others continued to search for livelihoods in other parts of the country.

“People are suffering immensely, and we are witnessing deaths without having a proper place to bury our loved ones. No one is coming to our rescue, and it’s heartbreaking to see our children deprived of education, as they are the future of tomorrow,” expressed the community members in an interview with Witness Radio.

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DEFENDING LAND AND ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS

Breaking: A community land rights defender in the Kiryandongo district is charged with assault and released on a cash bail.

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By Witness Radio team.

Magistrate Court sitting in Kiryandongo district has released a community land rights defender on a cash bail. He was arbitrarily arrested, and detained Thursday, February 29th, 2024, for attempting to open a criminal case against Great Seasons SMC Limited workers for erasing his 3 acres of land with ready-to-harvest cash crops.

Mwawula Fred’s release came after spending five (5) days in detention. Mr. Mwawula is a community land rights defender based in Kisalanda village, Mutunda parish, Kiryandongo district help to mobilize communities to resist forced land grabbing by multinational companies in Kiryandongo district.

The prosecution alleges that Mwawula assaulted workers of the Great Seasons SMC Company Limited who were in his garden.

The Penal Code Act, Cap 120, states that any person who commits an assault occasioning actual bodily harm commits a misdemeanor and is liable to imprisonment for five years on conviction.

On February 22nd, 2024, Witness Radio ran an article about four Great Seasons SMC Limited Company workers with a numberless tractor who had invaded and erased Mwawula’s garden with crops ready for harvest such as maize, green pepper, and tomatoes in Kisalanda village.

When he (Mwawula) went to Kiryandongo Central Police Station to open up criminal cases against the company, he was instead arbitrarily arrested, detained by local police, and preferred an assault charge before appearing before the court.

While granting the defender bail, Her Worship Amweno Hellen released Mr. Mwawula on a cash bail of 700,000 Ugx (Equivalent to 178.47 USD) while the sureties conditioned a non-cash bail.

The defender will report back to Court on the 13th/March/ 2024.

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DEFENDING LAND AND ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS

Breaking: A community land rights defender in Kiryandongo, who was arrested for attempting to open a case against company workers at Kiryandongo Central police for erasing his garden, is facing assault charges.

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By Witness Radio team.

Kiryandongo Central police have preferred an assault charge against a community land rights defender who was arbitrarily arrested and detained Thursday, February 29th, 2024, for attempting to open a criminal charge against workers of Great Seasons SMC Limited.

On February 22nd, 2024, four Great Seasons SMC Limited Company workers with a tractor invaded and erased Mr. Mwawula Fred’s garden with crops ready for harvest such as maize, green pepper, and tomatoes. The workers used a numberless company tractor to destroy the defender’s 3 acres of crops.

According to the police charge sheet, Mwawula allegedly assaulted workers of the Great Seasons SMC Company Limited who were in his garden.

Defender’s lawyers said Mwawula bravely tried to intervene to stop the destruction of his crops by company workers, but they (workers) callously persisted with their destructive actions, disregarding the defender’s pleas.

The lawyers also stated that company workers made off with sacks full of maize belonging to their client.

The Penal Code Act, Cap 120, states that any person who commits an assault occasioning actual bodily harm commits a misdemeanor and is liable to imprisonment for five years on conviction.

Mwawula, on several occasions, has been in and out of prison on several charges over eight times for mobilizing local communities to resist land grabbing and forceful evictions by multinational companies in the Kiryandongo district. However, the court has dismissed all of them for want of prosecution.

Frequently, the gardens belonging to smallholder farmers, activists, and defenders have been targeted and vandalized by Great Seasons SMC Company Limited, demanding that the local community should vacate what the company asserts as its land. In a distressing incident last December 2023, many defenders’ gardens were set ablaze by workers of the company, resulting in a prolonged famine within projected affected families.

The defender is yet to be produced in court to answer to assault charges.

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