Congo DR

European development banks have financed a plantation company in DRC that is built on injustice and violence dating back to a colonial-era land grab. When the company went bankrupt in 2020, the banks chose to uphold the plantation model.

More than 100 years ago, lands were stolen from communities in DR Congo for industrial oil palm production. Since 2009, those lands are under control of the company FERONIA.

A group of riparian Batwa people, exasperated by the extreme poverty following their eviction in order to establish the Kahuzi Biega National Park, decided to return to their ancestral forests. Since then, they regularly clash with the “eco-guards,” sometimes leading to the loss of human lives.

Groups call for the immediate release of villagers in the DR Congo imprisoned for over 5 months on false charges related to a land conflict with the Canadian oil palm plantation company Feronia Inc. Sign the letter!!!

Community leaders and traditional chiefs in areas affected by the plantations of Canadian company PHC-Feronia in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continue to suffer all kinds of massive human rights violations.

On 18 September 2019, Mombulu Boyama Alphonse was arrested in Yangoma, and subsequently detained at Lokutu Police Station following a complaint against him from the General Prosecutor of Tshopo province. The complaint is related to a protest by villagers against Feronia in March 2019.

In 2009, the global food corporation Unilever sold its palm oil subsidiary Plantations et Huileries du Congo (PHC), in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), to the Canadian company Feronia.

The Centre for accompanying Pygmy Autochthones peoples and Vulnerable Minorities (CAMV, for its French acronym) alerts on the disturbing and disastrous situation at the Kahuzi Biega National Park, DRC. There already have been violent incidents in April and July 2019, where people have been seriously injured and killed. And on August 1, 2019, a Pygmy and an eco-guard were killed as a result of another altercation in a territory occupied by the Pygmies inside the park. Other clashes between eco-guards and pygmies are reported daily.

A new report on the state of industrial oil palm plantations in Africa shows how communities are turning the tide on a massive land grab in the region.

In a statement released on 14 August 2019, RIAO-RDC and support organisations call on DRC authorities to immediately find and arrest the murder suspect. Weeks have passed since the killing of Joël Imbangola Lunea without an arrest of the murder suspect.

A letter signed by over 140 organizations and social movements from different countries around the world and by over 110,000 individuals has been sent to the President of the DRC and the Governour of Equateur province, where the killing took place.

We ask for your urgent support. Please sign on to the Action Alert. It is important to send the letter as soon as possible.