By Ezaruku Draku Franklin

Religious leaders under “Body and soul against EACOP” on Thursday protested in Paris, the capital city of France against the construction of the East African Oil Pipeline by chaining themselves to a Parisian footbridge to protest against Total’s oil pipeline project in Uganda.

About 80 believers from different traditions blocked the Léopold-Sédar-Senghor footbridge (VIIe arr, Paris) to demand the immediate abandonment of TotalEnergies’ “deadly” oil projects in Uganda and Tanzania.

In the name of their beliefs and faith, two rabbis, two pastors, a Buddhist master and nun, a Jesuit priest, a bishop emeritus, and a Muslim thinker chained themselves together from one guardrail of the Parisian walkway to the other.

“With this blockage, these nine leading religious figures wanted to denounce the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project and the new Tilenga oil field – both of which are mainly owned by the French multinational TotalEnergies,” a statement released by the group shortly after the protest said.

The religious personalities belong to the Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions included; Yeshaya Dalsace, rabbi of the Massorti Dor Vador community (Paris); Gabriel Hagai, Orthodox rabbi; Caroline Ingrand-Hoffet, pastor of the Protestant parish of Kolbsheim (Alsace); Olivier Reigen Wang-Genh, Zen Buddhist master, former president and co-president of the Buddhist Union of France (2007-12, 2015-18, 2019-21); Father Marcel Rémon, sj, director of the Center for Social Research and Action (CERAS) and of the Revue Projet ; Bishop Marc Stenger, Bishop Emeritus, former Bishop of Troyes (1999-2020); Otto Schaefer, retired pastor of the United Protestant Church of France (EPUdF – 1987-2018); Kankyo Tannier, Zen Buddhist nun, international speaker and author; and Ousmane Timera, a Muslim thinker.

AGM

The protest by the religious leaders took place on the eve of the TotalEnergies Annual General Meeting, held on Friday, May 26 in Paris.

Arriving at about 11:30am on the bridge, the believers blocked pedestrian and bicycle traffic for 1,443 seconds (24 minutes), to symbolise the 1,443 kilometers of the future pipeline. More than seventy believers were also present at the side of the nine religious figures.

Some carried a banner written in French, depicting a black pipeline. It read in large white letters: “Dans les tuyaux de Total, coule la mort” (“In Total’s pipes, death flows”), in reference to French poet Guillaume Apollinaire’s famous line, “Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine (“Under the Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine”).

Another banner stated, “Croyant·es, corps et âme contre EACOP” (“Believers, body and soul against EACOP”), to emphasize their physical and spiritual commitment against the TotalEnergies project.

Sitting on the ground, other believers held signs stating that “1 x EACOP = 2 x THE SEINE”. Indeed, if built, the EACOP pipeline (1443 km) will be almost twice as long as the Seine River (777 km).

First of the many protests

This is the first time in France that religious figures have blocked a public space to denounce the EACOP and Tilenga oil projects.

Pastor Caroline Ingrand-Hoffet, Protestant pastor said it wrong for shareholders to support the project of a multinational company that is destructive of nature, the human environment, biodiversity, working conditions and the lives of populations.

“Light, when it is given to us to resist together.  Our chain becomes freedom, commitment in an alliance with this planet to be respected, protected and loved,” she said

Master Olivier Reigen Wang-Genh, Buddhist monk, said called on other leaders both religious and non-religious to join the struggle to demand for environmental protection:

“I invite you now to collect yourselves in silence and to connect internally with this who inspires you in your faith and practice. Our inspiration and our exhalation is a reality that we all share. This present moment is a reality that we all share. This land that carries us is a reality that we all share. This universal consciousness that is ours is the reality that we all share All,” he said.

Rabbi Yeshaya Dalsace said human beings must not be chained by the greed of few individuals who are bent on destroying the habitat for the rest.

 “All men are born free, but life sometimes creates chains for them which little by little imprison and often, these chains, the human beings manufacture them themselves. We have all our own channels and we all have a duty to regain our freedom. The biblical story breaking the chains of slavery in Egypt is founding,” he said.

“Today, as men and women of faith from diverse backgrounds and traditions, we come to express our desire to see certain chains broken: the chains of our need for profit at all costs, the chains of the unbridled consumption of natural resources, the chains of our inability to reduce our need for oil, chains our indifference to irreversible damage to the nature and men, the chains that our mode of operation imposes on populations who have no real means of defending themselves,” he added.

Affected people speak out

Agnes Mwenda, a resident of Dodoma in Tanzania, said she just learnt from a friend that her land was to be affected by the EACOP project, yet she was not personally informed by the decision to construct the oil pipeline.

“A friend told me that she had seen people evaluating my land and that without me being consulted obviously. To me, it’s like thieves coming to take this on which I depend to live,” she said.

Baraka Machumu, a climate justice activist in Tanzania when he raised the concerns of the affected people to the officials of TotalEnergies in Tanzania, police and the company officials descended on him, threatening him will all sorts of intimidations.

“I was working with a journalist to assess the extent of human rights violations caused by EACOP, by interviewing the people affected by the project. We then went to the EACOP office in Dar Es Salaam to get their perspective on the information and testimonies that we had collected from the people affected by the project. After that, the TotalEnergies team and the police started tracking me, using police. I decided to leave my house for two weeks because they were planning to arrest me,” he said.

EACOP

This is the longest oil pipeline to be constructed. If completed, EACOP will be the world’s longest heated pipeline, running 1,443 km from Uganda to the port of Tanga in Tanzania.

Climate activists in the May 25 action consider these projects immoral and contrary to their values and said TotalEnergies is attacking climate justice, human rights and biodiversity.

They said by causing the emission of 379 million tons of CO2 equivalent, EACOP and Tilenga will exacerbate climate disruption – to which countries like Uganda and Tanzania are among the most vulnerable.

They also said the EACOP pipeline crosses many rich and fragile ecosystems, with Tilenga’s operation in the Murchison Falls Nature Park endangering endangered species and is already causing permanent alteration of the park.

With these projects, TotalEnergies is directly contradicting the scientific data of the IPCC and the studies of the International Energy Agency (IEA), according to which zero fossil fuel projects should be developed after 2021.

On May 7, 2023, a collective of 188 scientists and experts, called in Le Monde “TotalEnergies shareholders to vote against the firm’s climate strategy,” denouncing the “carbon bomb” that EACOP represents.