ABC News
4 Killed in Uganda Protest
4 Killed in Uganda Protest Over Company's Land Deal
Ugandan police remove the body of a protestor after he was killed when police fired live rounds in the air to disperse a crowd protesting against government plans to allocate forest land to a sugar company, Thursday, April 12, 2007, in the capital Kampala. Protesters stoned to death two people of seeming Asian origin and vandalized a Hindu temple Thursday during a demonstration against a company that wants to plant sugar in part of a Ugandan nature reserve, police said.(AP Photo)
By GODFREY OLUKYA
KAMPALA, Uganda Apr 12, 2007 (AP)— Protesters stoned to death two people of Asian origin Thursday during a demonstration against a Ugandan-Asian company that wants to grow sugar cane in this country's largest natural forest, police said. Two others were also killed in the rioting.
The protesters also vandalized a Hindu temple in the capital but they were quickly repelled by police, said Simeon Nsubuga, a police spokesman.
He said police fired bullets in the air and used tear gas to disperse protesters chanting: "We are tired of Asians!" and "They should go back to their land!"
"Our police officers at the scene say two people of Asian origin have been killed by demonstrators," Nsubuga said. "They were stoned to death."
Two other Ugandans also were killed in the melee, police spokesman Edward Ochom said. No other details were immediately available about the circumstances of their deaths.
The nationality of the victims was not immediately known and they were not believed to be connected to the Mehta Group, which has businesses in both Uganda and Kenya working in sugar, cement and financial services.
A subsidiary of the company, the Sugar Corporation of Uganda, wants to use 17,000 acres nearly a third of the Mabira Forest Reserve to expand its sugar plantation.
"This forest is our heritage and cannot be given away by the Ugandan government," said Phillip Karugaba, spokesman of the Ugandan-based Environmental Action Network, a local lobby group campaigning against the plans. He said Ugandan troops had set up roadblocks in parts of the capital and trying to halt the protests.
He said the forest was home to 50 different species of monkeys, along with bird and plant species only found in Mabira.
Calls to the Sugar Corporation of Uganda were not answered.
The Mehta Group's founder, Nanjibhai Kalidas Mehta, migrated to Uganda from India in 1900 to set up a trading outpost. Over the following decades, the Mehta family became one of the biggest local investors in East Africa.
During the mass expulsion of Ugandan South Asians in the 1970s under the rule of dictator Idi Amin, the Mehta family fled to Britain and India.
 |
