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
"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 19 November, the young man had been part of a group of 20 students from
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
"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
Since 2022, dozens of climate activists in
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
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
Deputy Spokesperson for
In the lost world
Since their release from prison, the climate activists arrested in
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
A report published by Global Witness in
Defiance and unity
Young activists in
"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."
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