Uganda Arrests Dozens of Students over Oil Project Protest

Sudan Events – Agencies 

Dozens of student activists were arrested on Friday as they marched to Uganda’s parliament to deliver a petition against a controversial multi-billion-dollar oil development scheme, police and their lawyers said.
The students were protesting a huge project headed by French oil giant TotalEnergies which involves drilling for oil in Uganda and sending the crude to Tanzania for export.
Environmental groups say it is having dire consequences for local communities and the environment as drilling is going on in Murchison Falls National Park, the largest protected area in Uganda.
“We have arrested a total of 47 suspects,” Uganda’s police spokesman for the Kampala metropolitan area, Luke Owoyesigire, said.
He said two of them were arrested at parliament and had been charged with “inciting violence” while the others who were en route to the site have yet to be charged.
The protesters were calling for international financiers not to lend money for the oil project, saying it was destroying the environment and the livelihoods of local communities, and that they should instead fund renewable energy.
TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) are drilling in Lake Albert, which has an estimated 6.5 billion barrels of crude, including about 1.4 billion barrels that are currently considered recoverable.
The crude will be shipped through the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, a 1,443-kilometre (900-mile) heated pipeline that will run from the oilfields in northwestern Uganda to Tanzania’s Indian Ocean port of Tanga.
Uganda’s first oil is expected to flow in 2025 and the project has been hailed by President Yoweri Museveni as an economic boon for the landlocked country where many live in poverty.
TotalEnergies says those displaced by the project have been fairly compensated and measures have been taken to protect the environment.