Photo: Melanie Gouby/RNW Displaced people (file photo) There are satellite imagery and other new evidence, exposing how the company's subsidiary, Entreprise Général Malta Forrest (EGMF), supplied bulldozers that were used to unlawfully demolish homes and forcibly evict hundreds of people living next to the company's Luiswishi mine in Kawama, Katanga in 2009. It also details how the companies and the Congolese government have obstructed attempts to achieve justice for the villagers ever since.
"There is now overwhelming and irrefutable evidence showing that the forced evictions that Groupe Forrest International has denied for years in fact took place," said Audrey Gaughran, Amnesty International's's Global Issues Director. "It is shameful for a mining giant to lie and deny people justice. It is time for them to finally come clean and compensate the villagers for what they lost."
Five years on, the villagers of Kawama have received no compensation. EGMF pulled out from the mining concession in 2012. In recent months, villagers living close to the Luiswishi mine, now owned by the State-owned company Gécamines, have faced the threat of further forced evictions.
The demolitions in 2009 occurred during a police operation to clear the Kawama area of small-scale miners who were allegedly stealing from the copper and cobalt mine.
Bulldozers belonging to EGMF and operated by its drivers destroyed homes and businesses in the three neighbourhoods closest to the Luiswishi mine.
"Some people lost their livelihoods as well as their homes. The impacts are still felt today. One woman, whose restaurant was demolished, told us that she doesn't have the money to buy enough food to eat and had to pull her children out of school. Proper compensation for villagers would have alleviated a lot of the suffering," said Audrey Gaughran.
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