(Kampala) Some 47 students were arrested in Uganda on Friday as they marched to parliament to deliver a petition against a TotalEnergies oil megaproject, police and their lawyers said.
“We have arrested a total of 47 suspects,” said Ugandan police spokesman in the capital Kampala, Luke Owoyesigire, adding that they were all students at Kyambogo University in the capital. Of the 47 arrested, two have been charged with inciting violence.
The students’ lawyer, Samuel Wanda, confirmed the multiple arrests.
“This march was supposed to take the petition to Parliament, but the police stopped the protesters on the way,” he said. The activists are demanding an end to funding for the oil project, which they consider dangerous for the environment.
TotalEnergies announced in 2022 a $10 billion investment agreement with Uganda, Tanzania and the Chinese company CNOOC, including the construction of a 1,443-kilometer oil pipeline (EACOP) linking the fields of Lake Albert, in western Uganda, to the Tanzanian coast on the Indian Ocean.
The project has been denounced by environmental protection organisations who believe it threatens the fragile ecosystem of the region and the people who live there.
It includes the drilling of 419 wells (Tilenga project) in the Murchison Falls National Park – a remarkable biodiversity reserve located in western Uganda, an African country in the Great Lakes region.
In June, an environmentalist and campaigner against the mega-oil project who had been missing for several days was found in “bad shape”, claiming to have been arrested and beaten by soldiers.
Lake Albert, the natural border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, contains an estimated 6.5 billion barrels of crude oil, of which about 1.4 billion are currently considered recoverable.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled the country with an iron fist since 1986, has repeatedly described the project as a major economic boon to the landlocked nation.