Uganda

How A British-owned PR Firm Helped ‘Squash’ Pipeline Protests in Uganda

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Original article by TJ Jordan at DeSmog

MetropolitanRepublic staff celebrating at the Silverback Awards, November 2023. (Credit: MetropolitanRepublic Uganda)

MetropolitanRepublic enlisted social media influencers to promote giant oil project as climate campaigners suffered beatings and arrests.

Last November, a beaming group of staff from MetropolitanRepublic collected their gorilla-shaped trophy at the Silverback Awards, Uganda’s top advertising and public relations gala.

The South African PR agency had won its prize for promoting the “sustainable development” of Uganda’s untapped oil reserves by French oil company TotalEnergies.

MetropolitanRepublic — which is part-owned by British communications giant WPP — described the brief for the award-winning “Action for Sustainability” campaign in its entry to the Silverback Awards: to devise an approach that “squashed all the negative PR” from protests against TotalEnergies’ plans for a 1,443-kilometre pipeline to export oil from Uganda’s Lake Albert via neighbouring Tanzania.

An accompanying video featured photographs of Ugandan anti-pipeline campaigners to illustrate this “backlash” and described them as “haters”.

“How do you launch a successful project off the back of this?” asks the narrator in the video. “Well, you develop a 360 PR campaign that retells your story the way it should be told.”

A screenshot from the award submission published on the Silverback Awards’ website. The Tilenga pipeline is a feeder pipeline under construction to carry oil from the Tilenga oilfields to the start of EACOP. (Credit: Silverback Awards)

Now, DeSmog can reveal that Ugandan police or military personnel have arrested, beaten, threatened, or harassed at least eight of the 15 campaigners pictured in MetropolitanRepublic’s award submission video.

These incidents — documented via video taken at protests, interviews with the campaigners, and police records — took place both before and after the video was published on the Silverback website in March.

There is no indication that MetropolitanRepublic’s campaign or the award submission led directly to any specific incidents affecting the activists. Nevertheless, DeSmog found that the agency engaged a network of social media influencers to post hundreds of times in support of TotalEnergies’ plans to mitigate the impact of the pipeline — even as protestors were being beaten and harassed.

“These PR firms are sponsoring our oppression,” said Hillary Innocent Taylor Seguya, one of the campaigners pictured in MetropolitanRepublic’s award submission video. “The more you push misinformation to the rest of the world, the more it means that you don’t care about our rights.”

Protestors from student human rights group Justice Movement Uganda opposing the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline. (Credit: Bruce Nahabwe)

Since the pipeline project was first announced in 2017, advocacy groups have highlighted concerns over the displacement of communities in Uganda and Tanzania, damage to ecosystems and wildlife, and the climate impact of burning Uganda’s oil. The outcry has prompted some banks, insurers, and the PR company Edelman — which has represented oil companies for decades — to shun the project, known as the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline, or EACOP.

In June this year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged communications agencies to stop working for fossil fuel companies, saying PR campaigns run by “Mad Men fuelling the madness” were making the climate crisis harder to address.

MetropolitanRepublic, however, defended its role in promoting the pipeline — a joint venture between TotalEnergies and state oil companies from Uganda, Tanzania, and China.

…

Original article by TJ Jordan continues at DeSmog

Continue ReadingHow A British-owned PR Firm Helped ‘Squash’ Pipeline Protests in Uganda

Climate Activists Demand Justice for ‘Unjustly’ Arrested Ugandan Anti-EACOP Protesters

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

“The arrests of these activists are a clear attempt to silence dissent and suppress opposition to the EACOP,” said one organizer.

Climate campaigners around the world on Wednesday urged Ugandan authorities to drop charges against four climate activists arrested and jailed overnight after peacefully protesting a highly controversial oil pipeline under construction in the region.

Bob Barigye, Mutesi Zarika, Naruwada Shamim, and Nalusiba Phionah were violently arrested Tuesday in the capital Kampala for protesting the environmental and social impacts of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). The activists—who were later released on bond—were charged with inciting violence.

However, the #StopEACOP coalition—which said the protesters were “unjustly” arrested and jailed—argued that photos and videos from the demonstration show that it was peaceful.

“The arrests of these activists are a clear attempt to silence dissent and suppress opposition to the EACOP,” the coalition’s campaign coordinator, Zaki Mamdoo, said in a statement. “We call upon the international community and civil society organizations to join us in condemning these arrests and demanding justice for those detained.”

Samuel Okulony, director of the Environment Governance Institute, said that “it is not a crime to voice opposition to the controversial EACOP project or to advocate for the government and project proponents to explore alternative, sustainable solutions.”

“Peaceful protest and dialogue are fundamental pillars of a democratic society, and these rights must be protected and upheld,” Okulony added.

Charity Migwi, the African regional campaigner for U.S.-based 350.org, condemned the arrests “in the strongest terms possible.”

“These activists were exercising their democratic right to peacefully protest against a project that they believe will have devastating consequences for the environment and the people of Uganda and beyond,” she said, urging the Ugandan government to “drop all charges against them.”

This isn’t the first time anti-EACOP activists have been arrested for peacefully protesting the pipeline. Last October, nine student leaders were arrested by police and subsequently charged with inciting violence for holding a Kampala demonstration in support of a European Parliament resolution condemning the project’s human rights and environmental violations. Four more anti-EACOP activists were arrested last December.

Barigye, a 34-year-old biology teacher and climate activist, was arrested in January for anti-EACOP organizing despite having police permission to protest. Barigye toldAfrican Arguments earlier this year that he was held for four days, during which time he was “psychologically tortured” by police.

“They threatened my life and family,” he said. “They dragged me into a filthy cell, made me starve… I could not sleep as they would interrogate me at any time of the night.”

“We are looked at us the enemies of the state,” Barigye said of the anti-EACOP activists. “The police now prefer psychological torture because physical torture will create bad publicity around the oil pipeline project, which could push away investors and insurers… The government doesn’t want to be in the international spotlight for the wrong reasons.”

If completed, the $3.5 billion, nearly 900-mile EACOP would transport up to 230,000 barrels of crude oil per day from fields in the Lake Albert region of western Uganda to the Tanzanian port city of Tanga on the Indian Ocean.

Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch published a report detailing how EACOP has devastated the lives and livelihoods of tens of thousands of people in its path while exacerbating the climate emergency.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingClimate Activists Demand Justice for ‘Unjustly’ Arrested Ugandan Anti-EACOP Protesters

Just Stop Oil protest the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) at Total Energies HQ, Canary Wharf

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At around 8am four Just Stop Oil supporters entered the UK headquarters of Total Energies, the French multinational and majority shareholder in the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) at Canary Wharf. They sprayed the interior of the lobby with black paint from fire extinguishers. Meanwhile outside, four further supporters sprayed the exterior of the building with orange paint and then sat down to await arrest. They were joined by a group of about 60 students who gave speeches describing the crimes perpetrated against the people of Uganda by the EACOP project. 

Experts have described the project as a ‘carbon bomb’, which would release over 379 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere- 25 times the combined annual emissions of Uganda and Tanzania, the host nations. 

One of those taking action at Canary Wharf this morning, Solveig, 27, a Doctor of Philosophy student at the University of Oxford, said:

“I believe that it is my duty to support the brave protesters of Students against EACOP, who are standing up to Total Energies as it destroys the lives of people for profit. The extractive colonialism executed by Total is not only making 100,000 people homeless, but it will exacerbate climate breakdown globally. I wish we could stop these atrocities through peaceful and quiet protest, but we can’t. This is why I have to stand up to Total and push for the de-funding of EACOP.”

In October, a group of over 50 Ugandan university students were brutalised after marching to deliver a petition on the pipeline to the European Union Embassy in Kampala. Nine students were imprisoned and are currently facing trial on a charge of common nuisance.

The pipeline runs 900 miles from a biodiverse national park in Uganda, to a port in Tanzania. The project could lead to the displacement of over 100,000 people and outrage has been sparked at the multitude of human rights abuses being imposed on those in the path of construction. The EACOP pipeline will cut across several ecosystems, including forests, wetlands and rivers, displacing wildlife and destroying vital habitats that support rich biodiversity. The main backers of the multibillion dollar project are Total Energies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

[from a JSO press release]

Continue ReadingJust Stop Oil protest the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) at Total Energies HQ, Canary Wharf