Rejoinder from Witness Radio to TotalEnergies' Response
Witness Radio Uganda strongly affirms that Total Energies and its projects are partly responsible for the forced land eviction in Kapapi that caused over 2,500 locals to lose their land, homes and livelihood and should be held accountable.
Whereas it states that the affected villages are far away from its project, we refer to its February 2021 “Tilenga Project – Resettlement Action Plan 4,” which mentions and identified the villages of Kapapi, Runga, Waaki, and Kiryatete as project affected areas for the Tilenga Feeder Pipeline Component.
... [S]everal interviews conducted by Witness Radio Uganda with Kapapi project-affected people reveal that in 2022, their land was surveyed for the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) under the Tilenga project, and the registration exercise of Project-Affected Persons (PAPs) commenced. Victims stated that officials (present during the survey) assured them that compensation would be forthcoming... In February 2023, after that survey exercise, the Kapapi community was forcefully evicted without compensation and without being offered alternative resettlement.