GreenFaith - Baraka in TZ here. Please sign our open letter today

Sign the open letter calling for an end to intimidation and rights violations against grassroots people working to Stop EACOP.

My name is Baraka Lenga. I’m the GreenFaith Tanzania Organizer and I live in Dar es Salaam. We are mobilizing grassroots faith communities in the fight against climate change. Currently, we are working to stop the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline.

Every month, I travel twelve hours by bus to meet with our GreenFaith Circle leaders in northern Tanzania. They are my colleagues and friends. For people in rural villages, it is not easy to stand up against the government and huge multinational corporations. These Circle members and the community around have a lot of courage.

Our local volunteers are facing unjust policing and intimidation—from the government, police officers, and TotalEnergies. As I speak to you now, we still have faith-based grassroots community members who are under pressure. They received a summons letter on 9th of March from the district commissioner ordering them to report to the regional police office. After reporting, their phones were taken away. Until now they have not yet received their phones. The government has now forced them to report to the police station weekly or more, the last was yesterday Monday April 29th. No interrogation took place, but they were made to wait for someone to talk to them from 8:00 to 21:15—13 hours!—being told that the police were in a meeting, discussing their issue. They sat waiting without food or water, then were released to go home, with a demand to return to the same police station on May 7th. This kind of intimidation and abuse of power needs to STOP! And we need your help.

Why is the government doing this? Is it because our volunteers are considered poor and illiterate? These are the people who are at the front lines in the fight against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, from whom the oil giant TotalEnergies is profiting. The government, and the corporations behind this project, want to silence them.

Please sign this letter to ask Tanzanian President Samia Suhulu, TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné, and the CEO Li Fanrong of the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation, to stop intimidating the people working around Stop EACOP.

I am requesting that you join us in the fight against intimidation, against this human rights violation, against these threats, and for climate justice.

We are calling on the Tanzanian and Ugandan governments to stop EACOP, because this is a project which is going to worsen climate change, violate human rights and displace 80,000 people. Our faiths are clear: there is no way we can support such a project.

Baraka Lenga
GreenFaith Tanzania Organizer

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