As a how do you use the soldiers destroyed my banana and coffee bean fields. They took all my livestock and destroyed all my buildings i lost everything how did you listen. I mean a double cause soma a small farmer from uganda is haunted by his familys violent eviction from their home. Town but first i thought that war had broken out then we heard that a white man wanted to grow coffee beans there. The man the customers are talking about lives in hamburg and is the owner of a coffee empire michael our no a man is the worlds leading importer of unroasted coffee beans. This is what happened when he set up a plantation in uganda. Weve come to move in southwestern uganda its a fertile region thats home to Small Farmers who grow bananas avocados pineapple and above all coffee beans. The climate is perfect for coffee which is why in the year two thousand and one the newman coffee group decided to establish a new plantation in the area. The ugandan government found the perfect site but the land was already occupied. Hunts fessler from switzerland is the plantations manager hes overseen it right from its inception. You could see that there were settlements and fields scattered across the land we knew people were here. On. The Small Farmers had been living there for a long time some for generations and had a claim to the land but their rights were ignored. Torn not in one if you watched as a military vehicle full of soldiers came and then a second vehicle but civilians in a war no uniforms and were with cudgels and sticks. They ran from house to house yelling everyone out immediately well no because of the larger. Kind of films and with. No film footage. Of people being driven out of movie ended. But such accounts square with what has happened in other parts of uganda thanks for talking to. Anyone who tried to get there with longings from their homes was beaten with sticks. Of the children were afraid and ran away in every direction. Some people tried to save the goats and other belongings but they didnt know how they had to leave the chickens behind to. Then they set fire to my beehives and my house. Thank the soldiers burnt down whole villages and pillaged livestock and food supplies. I was able to save this photo i had it in my pocket when they drove us away. Were standing in front of my house i had the photo taken earlier. The only thing i was able to say from the house was this radio to him when his wife betty lived with her parents back then she says that her mother begged the soldiers who were stealing their livestock to leave them at least one cow but theyd be turned stad how do. They demolished houses with a bulldozer. My father was hit with stones when we tried to get him out of the house. He survived for three days. When he died. Betty in get there as mother also died two months later of injuries suffered from blows to her kidneys. And after that we camped out under trees. They gave us about years for food but sometimes there was nothing to eat. And there were six of us children we were so hungry that the two youngest ones died. Then there were only four of us. Like many of those driven from their homes but he now has no choice but to work on the plantation theres no other work. Our life today isnt very nice every time i work at the plantation and come to the place where we used to live i have to cry plotted to. Not eat. I mean a double because so much family also used to be able to make ends meet but they lost everything when they were evicted. Live in a no the soldiers came with a backhoe and destroyed everything because they tore our house down to as we were fleeing good news the previous. Land crabs are a huge problem in africa Small Farmers ownership of their properties is seldom officially registered how again why i mean if. This. Were going to first night we tried to return to our village and salvage whatever we could from our houses were never good the soldiers kept shooting what none of us dared to return again. This photo is all that remains from better days in the past. Where young. It was very difficult to feed a family we didnt have any blankets and we didnt have enough to eat. One of my children dying at the age of only seven to the end of. Did the normal and coffee group know what was going on. The show and also news i think that not everything went the way it should have certainly pressure was exerted but i think its possible that the army which was already present here intervened with the really possible its hard to imagine the company knew nothing of the many people being driven from their homes to make room for the car where a Coffee Plantation. If youre on the one on one Firm Provides services and products along the whole value chain of green coffee production again farming with the intention of a stablish ing environmentally renewable plantations in all senses of that term. You go. Byo corridors were set up to protect wildlife diversity on this model farm. Environmental sustainability is one of the newman coffee groups major selling points. No human coffee group is located in the upscale Port District in hamburg it controls ten percent of the worlds raw Coffee Market and supplies some of germanys best known brands it has forty six subsidiaries in twenty eight countries and did two point seven billion dollars in business in twenty fourteen. The name no i am on appears everywhere in the coffee sector. Peter k. Year has taken on the Corporate Giant in uganda the former School Director is the spokesman for people driven from their homes in a bandaid having all those other avenues blocked. We felt that hes now its due ive made it ease the court to get back. The newman firm claims only fifty families used to live on a plantation land. He said of our car i arrived a few days later and i noticed that something had gone on i must have been pretty harsh but two thousand people there were never two thousand People Living here right house no like housing or the here. Year i filed a complaint on behalf of all the people addicted from their homes four thousand people from four villages he says. But some people are saying that the poor people like we could not take the government to court so refused to register we me but i are just two thousand and four to one people. The dispossessed were helped by the Human Rights Organization food first information and Actions Network or fear. Is of protocol theyre up on. The come wary plantation is one of the first cases of land grabbing thats well documented. Multinational corporations im governments are taking peoples land away to produce goods for export. Gertrud funk has been helping the dispossessed since two thousand and three and is regularly in uganda. And supports peoples right to feed themselves in the case of the career the plantation the ugandan government with support from the norm and company clearly violated this right by their land was taken from the local populace and they couldnt feed themselves. Some of the dispossessed come together in the Village School there hoping for some good news in the conflict which has been going on for ten years. The lawyers from feehan International Say the ugandan government is responsible as well. Youve got an government. Laws in the constitution is very clear ugandans people have the right to say. Anywhere in the uganda so once they said they have rights on the run these people. Bonafide. The owner of the land accepted that these people are living in the river there for a long time. The fee and representatives are trying to arrange a meeting with the german ambassador to uganda. The ambassador should help us get out of this miserable situation. He should talk to those responsible they should compensate us and give us our land back. But. When they reached in the book. With them for those use in india they just stood there without coffee. Without the. Other people are being. Miners weve got one here by that we dont have great we dont have. Yet taken over put these on for nothing. Some of the School French or raids donated by career. Newman highlights its support for the new school what the company doesnt say is that it converted the old one into plantation offices and that children had to go without instruction for a year. This is an end user cutn. Day shes eighty three years old she lived here all of her life until she was driven from her home. All she has left is a small plot of land where she lives with her daughters and grandchildren and i used to own six houses more than one hundred animals and forty two hectares of land. Then on august eighteenth two thousand and one the soldiers came. Home with you while you live band on the stall woman goats were. Only the goats were all burnt to death. Thank god i know its dreadful. I cant help crying when i think of it. You know were much bigger. After that i had to come power under the trees i had nothing to go with b. I put a straw mat on the ground and leaned up against a tree i couldnt sleep the soldiers kept moving around circling us and i patrolled here for five days you know but. Now you get this land belongs to me i inherited it from my father. You know these papers prove that my father bought this land. You know he was alive back then he signed these papers and nine hundred sixty four. Even now. The documents also show that i know his land doesnt belong to the plantations block ninety nine its part of block one or three. As they were very. Known as block ninety nine where graft. On the local one hundred and its very it is not just you know you can used it because theres actually a pool. Square mouse. This map you see is content and then every such report by market or university they hide it that part of the plantation yet it is part of local one hundred and its the. And this is an official map from the department of land and some very entity reads it shows you the boundaries of the land you see is it is so sure that stones which we abided inside the city by the subway as limited a boundary is so it can be proven. Another villager also has a receipt for the purchase of the land that was stolen from him these are my arguments which is. That all of the land owns little one hundred fifty years but afterwards they would you want you to prove that that you knew. This area was resort of eighteen twenty twelve and the surveyor said the boundaries were correct but downs remained what about an as deed entitled. Peter k. Year a is taking some visitors through the two thousand five hundred hectare plantation ugandas biggest and most modern this is a public road but theres a checkpoint at every crossing. Peter says its painful to pass by the plot of land that used to belong to him. Ever since two thousand and two hes been trying to get the dispossessed to sue the ugandan government and kaleri plantation. We were one of the oldest balinese in this land it is margaret a grandfather settled it is one. This is where my home used to be before the eviction so my house was then just a there and this is michael michael. I had a son seeing more than two thousand plants of course. I was the person who was leading the people refused to go then they wanted to they ordered to me when they came to kill me but one of the soldiers was my friend. He said no should not die so i got a message so i ran out they want to twist their wife the wife ran out they drove through the house i knew that every problem so i lost everything. Here in. The village of the dispossessed after the military drove them from their land many people fled into the woods and resettled near the plantation all they had over their heads were sheets of plastic there was no clean water or medical care some later build houses but other families still live in wretched conditions clay huts are all that many people have for shelter poverty and malnutrition are rife here. I used to have my own my aunts and we used to have enough to eat. I had my own home and livestock were safe and secure not much food today i have to rely on others help and become a refugee this indeed. Well you know they always say well be compensated and be given land elsewhere but were still waiting and so far weve been given nothing. The government says these people have been compensated we meet up with the highest ranking Government Official in the area. Did. These families agreed. They were. Being lifted and. Willingly. So is the story of villagers being driven off their land a lie village elder patrick said watto recalls how white men arrived and some attempt for a meeting going to. Mention my function as a village elder they said they were bringing progress to the village and promised that we would be compensated for our lost homes and property. And we would be given equally good land elsewhere. They said they were going to build new roads hospitals and water wells. They said we were going to live in a promised land. But as sure as im sitting here today those promises were never kept you know when you get it on t. V. Interview you not to be out to the. John patrick can body is another village elder he says the dispossessed were given fifty thousand shillings compensation thirty euros going to pass and was being having. Have a house has been having i resign him or just being having all of that and you give to. These people you see that these were the complicity of many many of these people do not read and write a good deed only wish you did this these forms were to the english. So you would come you. You want to get your money come on the good ones and. The no im on company says the dispossessed were adequately compensated and that the process was correctly documented that on the on the safe village elders signed the document so did lawyers for both the sellers and the state. We had no reason to question that and we still dont. We head to the ugandan capital kampala to meet the villages attorney. He contradicts hans fessler he says people were coerced into signing the compensation documents. That is an assistant. Who was going around the villages. Escorted by army so yes forcing people to sign that he had been given land as well and that had been given the composition. The lawyer says newman employees were complicit in this process. After the of his opening day employees of the Coffee Plantation started cutting down over the crops coffee trees but in a plant and everything in the process of clearing the ground for them to start planting there. We showed them where they would participate in the actual conviction and destruction of my. Property. So what did no women managers know about the militarys role in driving people from the land. I can well imagine that they exerted pressure to move the resettlement and compensation process forward we would have known about it if the army had moved in and started threatening people like you both. Whats clear is that on the eve of the evictions everyone concerned matter up including to know why my managers. They were in that meeting when the representative of the government gave the evictees they are timid to they had to leave before eight a. M. Before the woman. So there can be no sin theyre not innocent. The dispossessed have been waiting a long time for justice but they havent made any progress with their lawsuits against however a plantation and the ugandan state. And. The cooks and the state prosecutor have used every trick in the book to drag out the trial. And the Norman Company has done Everything Possible to slow things down. We urgently need legal avenues to see Companies Like this particularly in industrialized nations. Parent companies skim off the profits but theyre not held accountable when their subsidiaries violate the law. The tiny swiss canton is almost six thousand kilometers away from banda it has the lowest tax rate in switzerland and is home to many multinational corporations and a number of newman owned companies they include Tropical Farm Management which runs the cohen plantation. We meet up with an expert who served as the president of this was coffee Dealers Association for fourteen years laughed at slides knows what hes talking about. Fish much dying in norman is giving the coffee industry a bad name the company should have all dumped what happened long ago and admitted that it made a mistake you have and i should have investigated how the land was truly obtained. And obviously its difficult to get established in countries like this but you can do things the right way and. Yet so shameful for one of the worlds leading Coffee Companies to be involved in Something Like this in coffee. Gipped. Says what happened in banda is widely known in the industry but its not discussed publicly he says others need to hold newman accountable. Diesel Industry Organization should have told norman a long time ago you are not allowed to use our labels anymore const the label. Vacuuming in university in the netherlands un special rapporteur on the rights to food. Is speaking to an International Conference he knows about move bending and questions newmans behavior this company should become a sky customed to the new Corporate Culture that is now expected from from companies throughout the world and that Corporate Culture is one in which they should respect human rights by acting with Due Diligence to seek information about the impacts of the activities and if these impacts are negative they should remedy them. Uganda late march twenty third team a court issues a long awaited ruling finding that people were driven from their land in the bending it holds no im on partially responsible and awards damages of eleven Million Euros oddly newmans lawyers who are not named in the suit are the ones ordered to pay the money still activists applaud the ruling. For this ruling as a milestone and dispossessed peoples battle for compensation its the first Court Decision at all in eleven years. The judge supported the view and arguments of the dispossessed he analyzed this case very carefully and was very fair and his argument as well. April twenty fourth teen we return to a bandaid its a year after the court