A recent report based on 98 interviews revealed severe human rights abuses linked to the oil exploration in Uganda’s Albertine Basin.
Operating under the Chinese National Offshore Oil Company Uganda Ltd. (CNOOC), the Kingfisher oil development project is a part of a large US$15 billion project to drill for and export substantial oil deposits found in Uganda’s Lake Albert.
Back in 2022, Uganda and its collaborators, TotalEnergies and Tanzania got into an altercation with the European Union on a pipeline project, which the EU declared environmentally harmful.
Despite this, the country insisted on going ahead with its oil exploration, insisting that they had taken the rights and wellbeing of the residents and the environment into consideration.
The new report by Climate Rights International (CRI), titled “They Don’t Want People to Stay Here”, confirms the fears of the EU and other environmentalists who had been concerned about Uganda’s oil exploration since it was green lit.
Violent measures by Ugandan authorities
The report notes that the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF) have been responsible for forced evictions linked to CNOOC’s Kingfisher project which have been widespread and persistent.
“The process has at times involved violence. Families forcibly evicted have lost their homes, most of their possessions, their land, and means of subsistence without any compensation. Many forced evictions have been carried out without any prior notice,” the report reads.
“Challenges started when the UPDF came and gave us just hours to leave our house. ‘You have to leave today,’ they said. Soldiers came and told us that the authorities had allowed them to chase us,” a former resident of Kyabasambu village, a village with the most oil infrastructure for the Kingfisher project, housing two oil well pads, Edward Nsereka narrated.
“Some boys started taking pictures and the soldiers began to beat them, asking, ‘You are taking pictures as who?” After that, people had just a few minutes to leave. All our properties were lost, including our animals, etc” he continued.
The report also revealed the shocking case of Stephen Kwikiriza, which happened in June 2024 when an environmental observer with the Environmental Governance Institute was abducted, interrogated, and beaten by the UPDF.
Kwikiriza had documented the environmental devastation and human rights violations suffered by his community from the Kingfisher project.
At the time, he compiled evidence of the Kingfisher project’s destruction of the environment and abuses of human rights that confronted his countrymen.
“On June 9, Kwikiriza was found in Kyenyoyo, five hours from Kampala, after being dumped on the side of a road. He had been beaten and tortured, and was then hospitalized for several days,” the report states.
The report states that every interviewee for this study, aside from two individuals, was too terrified to be named specifically. Because doing so would make them an even bigger target for retaliation, even the two people who identified themselves were not named by their real name.
