KICUCULA, Uganda According to the companys proposal to join a United Nations clean-air program, the settlers living in this area left in a peaceful and voluntary manner.
People here remember it quite differently.
I heard people being beaten, so I ran outside, said Emmanuel Cyicyima, 33. The houses were being burnt down.
Other villagers described gun-toting soldiers and an 8-year-old child burning to death when his home was set ablaze by security officers.
They said if we hesitated they would shoot us, said William Bakeshisha, adding that he hid in his coffee plantation, watching his house burn down. Smoke and fire.
The case twists around an emerging multibillion-dollar market trading carbon-credits under the Kyoto Protocol, which contains mechanisms for outsourcing environmental protection to developing nations.
The company involved, New Forests Company, grows forests in African countries with the purpose of selling credits from the carbon-dioxide its trees soak up to polluters abroad. Its investors include the World Bank, through its private investment arm, and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/world/africa/in-scramble-for-land-oxfam-says-ugandans-were-pushed-out.html