Sierra Leone authorities have arrested 39 protesters in the south of the West African nation, following tensions between the local population and a unit of international agro-investor Socfin.
The locals were protesting a multi-million US dollar land deal in which the government is leasing to Societe Financiere des Caoutchoucs (Socfin) 12,500 hectares for oil palm production in Pujehun District.
The initial phase of the deal is worth US$112 million.
Green Scenery, an NGO in Sierra Leone, said some locals had complained they were not properly consulted and were not given information concerning the deal, signed in April.
Farmland in many developing countries has attracted foreign investors in recent years, but a UN Food and Agriculture Organization official last year warned some big land lease deals could risk deepening poverty and ramping up social tensions.
Green Scenery said in a statement that locals had blocked Socfin operations in the area since Oct. 3 because they were angry about not receiving information on the lease agreement, in which a local chief was involved.
The statement did not give details about what information the farmers said they had been deprived of.
Socfin Agricultural Company Sierra Leone Ltd general manager Gerben Haringsma said the company was investing in social -projects and the protesters were in a minority.
“We tried for weeks to reason with these guys [the protesters],” he said. “The government decided to stop it, saying this was getting out of hand.”
Socfin, part of France’s Bollore Group, owns more than 51,000 hectares of palm estates in Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Cameroon.
Assistant inspector general of police for the southern region Gerben Haringsma said officers arrested 39 people on Tuesday and took 27 to the country’s second city of Bo for questioning.
“The people were continually rioting, blocking the road, and impeding people from going to work,” he said.
Sierra Leone was devastated by civil war from 1991 to 2002, and held presidential elections in 2007.
Since the end of hostilities the mineral-rich country with abundant resources such as iron ore, bauxite, diamonds and titanium ore, has attracted a number of foreign investors.
African Minerals is developing a site at Tonkolili in the center of the country, which it has said is potentially the world’s largest deposit of the iron ore magnetite.
In the agricultural sector, alongside Socfin Swiss commodities trader Addax, has leased a large area of sugarcane for biofuel use near the town of Makeni.
“In some ways the renewed interest in agriculture is a welcome reversal after decades of under-investment in the agricultural sector that has contributed to rural poverty and urban migration,” Oli Brown, a UN environmental affairs officer in Freetown, said in an e-mail.
“However, agricultural investment needs to be carefully managed and designed to ensure that it contributes to rural development and does not exacerbate food insecurity,” he added.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the