Struggles Against Tree Monocultures
Corporate profit drives land grabs to install industrial tree monocultures. Where industrial plantations take root, communities' territories and lives are violently invaded, their forests destroyed and their water polluted. When communities resist, companies tend to respond with aggression. Despite this extreme violence, communities around the world are resisting, organizing and joining forces to defend their territories. Every September 21 the International Day of Struggle against Monoculture Tree Plantations is celebrated.
(Only available in French) Polices et militaires tirent à balles réelles sur des ouvriers de la Société FERONIA/PHC en grève à la plantation de Boteka.
Available only in French.
A young man was killed and other people are still in prison. It was after a protest against the failure of the PHC company to provide local communities with any benefits after 100 years of illegally occupying their land.
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.
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 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.
We ask for your urgent support. Please sign on to the Action Alert. It is important to send the letter as soon as possible.
A member of the Congolese environmental and human rights organisation RIAO-RDC was brutally killed by a security guard of the Canadian palm oil company Feronia Inc. on Sunday, July 21, 2019, near the company’s Boteka plantations in Bempumba, Eqauteur Province, DRC.