“The path we’ve chosen”: Uganda’s young climate activists stay defiant
Despite being targeted by the police and courts, youth activists say the dangers of EACOP going ahead remain greater than those of protesting.
Eric Sskekindi, 25, vividly recalls the first moments after he entered Luzira Prison in November 2023. That hot afternoon, the new inmates were lined up before a warden whose words sent chills down their spines.
“Do you see this small line?” the guard roared at them, pointing at the thin black stripes on prisoners’ canary yellow uniforms. “It represents the freedom you have here. The remaining yellow part represents our rules, suffering, and more suffering.”
“I knew our future was doomed,” Sseikindi remembers thinking.
Just a few days earlier, on 24 November, the young man had been part of a group of 20 students from Kyambogo University who wished to deliver a petition to parliament. They had learnt about the devastating floods that swept through communities in Uganda’s Albertine region, where the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) is under construction, and wanted to express their concerns about the project’s environmental impacts.
Before they could do so, however, the police intercepted them. They took the seven they regarded as the leaders to an unknown location and, the students say, violently interrogated them.
“They continued with the beating while asking us ‘who is sponsoring you to put a bad image on the government and Total?’” says Ivan Sanya, 25, who was among those arrested. TotalEnergies, the French oil and gas major, has a 62% stake in EACOP.
“They treated us like terrorists,” he adds.
Four days later, the seven activists were charged with “holding unlawful procession” and “inciting violence”. While their classmates were attending the graduation ceremony on campus later that week, they were incarcerated in Luzira prison.
“They want to break their resolve”
In Uganda, state repression of dissenting voices has become almost normalised under the rule of President Yoweri Museveni. In recent years, this has meant rising arrests, harassment, and sometimes kidnapping of climate activists protesting the social and environmental impacts of EACOP. The controversial $5 billion oil project is set to transport crude oil 1,443km from Ugandan oil fields to the Tanzanian port of Tanga. Researchers warn that it will displace 100,000 people, endanger areas of critical biodiversity, and lead to 379 million tonnes of carbon emissions – more than 25 times the annual emissions of Uganda and Tanzania combined.
Since 2022, dozens of climate activists in Uganda have been detained. Many of them have been students and young people. Uganda is one of the youngest countries in the world, with 78% of the population under 35.
For Abdul Aziz Bwete, a member of the youth-led pressure group, Justice Movement Uganda, the rising mobilisation of young people is no coincidence.
“Our leaders won’t be around when deadly disasters start to happen,” says the 26-year-old. “All they care about is pushing to profit more from these dirty oil projects at the expense of the environment.”
In the past year, Bwete and fellow activists have delivered three petitions to TotalEnergies’ local office in Uganda, calling for meetings with the oil major to discuss EACOP’s impacts. They also marched to parliament in December 2023 to demand the release of Ssekindi and his colleagues. Four of them, including Bwete, were remanded in prison following that march for “holding unlawful assembly”. They were released on bail this January.
Samuel Wanda, a lawyer who has represented more than 30 climate activists in Uganda since 2022, says the police use restrictive laws such as the Public Order Management Act to stifle the rights of peaceful demonstrators. He suggests that the state does not have a legitimate case against activists but uses the law to “frustrate” them.
Since Ssekindi and Bwete’s groups have been released on bail, their court hearings have been postponed three times – most recently, from 7 February to 12 March, to a date in April. The grounds for adjournments given include the state prosecutor being unavailable and the magistrate judge being away on an annual “retreat”.
“They want to break their resolve,” says Wanda. “[The defendants] have to be in court after every month.”
The lawyer says that the environmental movement is now trying to push back against these repressive tactics by prosecuting individual police officers and officials for misuse of power.
“We can’t stop the police from acting illegally because we don’t have the power to do so,” he says. “But what we can do is hold [accountable] the police officers who are acting illegally when they harass and arrest the climate activists”.
When the African Arguments reached out to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the parent agency of Uganda National Police, spokesperson Simon Peter Mundey declined to comment.
Deputy Spokesperson for Kampala Metropolitan Police Luke Owoyesigyire denied the police had beaten or harassed any activists. “We always follow the right procedures when arresting anyone,” he said. “If the climate activists want to take us to court, let them do it.”
In the lost world
Since their release from prison, the climate activists arrested in Uganda in November say they have been living in fear. Ssekindi and his classmates have been staying in a one-roomed home in an informal settlement in the capital Kampala called Banda but known colloquially as the “lost world”. They say they continue to be haunted by their experience.
Ssekindi still has pain in his hips, which he attributes to the conditions in Luzira. “We used to sleep like match sticks in prison cells where we would lie on one side throughout the night,” he says. Sanya says he sees “faces of dead people” in his sleep after witnessing inmates dying next to him. “Prison guards would pick up the dead bodies up every morning like it was a normal thing,” he recalls.
Bwete and his colleagues have also moved home since their arrests, changed their phone numbers, and taken precautions to ensure their messages cannot be surveilled. They say they have sometimes received phone calls from unknown people threatening their lives. He also claims individuals from TotalEnergies promised them jobs if they quit their activism.
A report published by Global Witness in December 2023 found that TotalEnergies and its contractors have been party to bullying and intimidation of communities affected by EACOP. The investigation also uncovered instances in which “state authorities appeared to be in communications with TotalEnergies before reprisals [against climate activists] took place.”
TotalEnergies did not respond to African Arguments’ request for comment but have previously denied the allegations.
Defiance and unity
TotalEnergies and the Ugandan government are adamant that the EACOP project will go ahead. They hope to begin exporting oil next year.
Young activists in Uganda remain similarly determined to keep up their opposition. Prior to their arrests last year, Ssekindi’s fellow classmates registered more than 300 students at three universities during their outreach sessions who they hope will join their actions.
“Our parents are already scared for our lives,” says Ssekindi. “But this is the path we have chosen to take because we know we are fighting for the right cause, and we know that the government doesn’t want the young people to unite together because they know what would happen”.
For Sanya, the risks of doing nothing to combat the fossil fuel industry as the climate crisis worsens still outweigh the dangers of speaking out.
“What are we going to tell the younger generation to come when they ask us ‘what did you do when you had the chance to fight fossil fuels that are going to cause more climate disasters?’” he asks. “We can’t take any chances at this point in time.”
Correction (15/04/24): The date of the arrest in the opening section was corrected from 19 November to the correct date of 24 November.