Eacop: 15 activists arrested in renewed anti-oil pipeline protests

Police arrested 15 youths who had marched to Parliament on November 11 in protest against the construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (Eacop).

The more than 20 activists under their umbrella body of the Students Against Eacop Uganda were marching to present their petition to the Speaker of Parliament, highlighting what they describe as grave dangers of the Shs10 trillion project.

Mr Patrick Onyango, the Kampala metropolitan police spokesperson, said some of the protesters managed to evade arrest.

“We arrested 15 activists who were marching at Parliament in the morning while protesting the ongoing development of oil in Uganda. … we managed to arrest 15 and others took off,” Mr Onyango said. 

“The suspects are being held here at the Central Police Station. We have charged them with common nuisance, I want to urge Ugandans to use peaceful means when demonstrating,” he added.

Their demonstration coincides with the 29th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29), which started yesterday in the Azerbaijan capital Baku and will run until November 22.

In his opening remarks at the conference, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called upon countries to shun fossil fuels and replace them with clean energy.

The November 11 arrest also came two months after police arrested 18 youths from the same association who tried to march towards the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development on August 27 over the same pipeline protests.

“New oil infrastructure such as the Eacop threatens the region’s biodiversity where hundreds of wildlife will be displaced once constructed as it passes through most of the prominent national parks like Murchison Falls National Park and Queen Elizabeth National Park,” the petition seen by this newspaper reads in part.

Construction of the pipeline was meant to start in July this year, but funding gaps delayed. Some of the pipes that are meant to be used were, however, procured and imported by Eacop Ltd, a firm contracted to construct the pipeline.

Officials from Eacop Ltd in August told this publication that 99 percent of the project-affected persons (PAPs) in Tanzania and 97 percent of their colleagues in Uganda had fully been compensated to greenlight the project. The petitioners, however, said 

thousands of Ugandans have lost their land and property as the joint venture partners prepare the construction.

The students are not the first people to protest the construction of this $3b project. In 2020, a group of environmental activists filed a lawsuit in the East African Court of Justice, asking it to block this project, which they believed would harm fragile ecosystems in areas rich in biodiversity as well as the livelihoods of tens of thousands of local people.

Five judges in November 2023 dismissed this petition on grounds that the activists had filed the case late.

The EACJ is on November 15 again hear the case through which the anti-Eacop campaigners will be fronting their arguments how the project violates laws on human rights, environment and conservation.

Background
Four joint venture partners; State-owned Uganda National Oil Company, French firm Total Energies, China state-owned China National Offshore Oil Company (Cnooc), and Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (Tpdc), are constructing the heated pipeline which will deliver Uganda’s crude oil to the cost where it will later be exported overseas.