By witnessradio.org Team
Kassanda – Uganda; after a decade of anguish, a community of over 10,000 people that forcefully lost their livelihood to a British Company, the New Forest Company (NFC) are facing fresh threats from their evictors, witnessradio.org has learnt.
It should be remembered that NFC, in August 2013 after three years of dispossessing a poor community, offered to support and resettle victims following a global campaign that spoke against violence used to evict communities off their land to give way for tree plantation in Mubende and Kiboga districts.
The development project by 2011 which had attracted investment from international banks and private equity funds including the European Investment Bank (EIB) with five million Euros (almost US 6 million dollars) to expand one of its plantations in Uganda; The Agri-Vie Agribusiness Fund, a private equity investment fund, had invested US 6.7 million dollars; the World Bank’s private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the UK bank HSBC with around US 10 million has caused unimaginable pain to hundreds of households and continued to suffer gross human rights abuses, mainly in Mubende district.
Early 2020, evictees rose up again to revive their demands to repossess back their land following NFC’s failure to resettle and compensate them for the human rights violations and damages.
Evictees, further narrate that ever since NFC grabbed their land, they are experiencing increased deaths among children due to malnutrition and hire out land to bury their relatives that have died. All children that were attending school at the time of eviction have dropped out of schools and gotten married at a tender age. Furthermore, many families of the evictees have since broken up and the list of long-standing impacts goes on.
When these concerns were brought to the attention of the media (NTV , Daily Monitor and WRM Boletin) later published, the New Forest Company Limited got furious and deployed tactics to attack leaders of the affected community using government agencies including the district internal security agency to force leaders quoted in the media to write apology letters to the company (NFC).
Witness Radio’s investigations reveal that NFC has so far convened two meetings with purpose to intimidate and harass leaders of the affected community on 26th/November/2020 and on 07th/December/2020 all held at Kampindu village, Mbirizi parish, Kitumbi Sub County, Kassanda district respectively.
“We have further discovered that NFC is inciting evictees that it will ‘withhold Uganda Shillings 4 billion (equivalent to approximately USD 1,085,500) that the company had earmarked for evictees’ developmental activities if their leaders do not apologize over media stories. It’s a cooked up figure being used by NFC (the evictor), to divide and cause infighting within the affected community hoping that there’s money for them. For ten years without consultation with communities and no valuation of their lost properties, how can you be trusted? Asked, one of the researchers at Witness Radio.
We have confirmed that some leaders of the affected community are living in total fear for their lives while others’ whereabouts are not yet known.
