The United States has announced an increment in visa processing fees countrywide.

According to a statement from the US Embassy, the changes will take effect from May 30.

The statement pointed out that the “application fee for the most common noni- immigrant visa types which has been costing $160 (Sh21,800) will now attract $185 (Sh25,206).”

“Visitor visas for business or tourism (B1/B2s) and other categories, such as student (F) and exchange visitor visas (J), will increase from $160 to $185. The fee for certain petition-based non-immigrant visas for temporary workers (H, L, O, P, Q, and R categories) will increase from $190 (Sh25,916)to $205(Sh27,962),” it stated.

“The fee for a treaty trader, treaty investor, and treaty applicants in a specialty occupation (E category) will increase from $205 (Sh27,962)to $315(Sh42,966),” the statement further read.

It further indicated individuals who already paid the existing, lower NIV fee will not have to pay the difference once the fee increases on May 30, 2023.

“All NIV fee payments made on or after October 1, 2022, are valid for 365 days. Receipts for NIV fees paid prior to October 1, 2022, will continue to be valid until September 30, 2023,”it read.

According to the statement the slight increases to the costs of some fees reflect the rising cost of the inputs associated with the services provided by consular sections around the world.

“Visas for work and tourism are essential to President Biden’s foreign policy, and we recognize the critical role international travel plays in the U.S. economy,” it stated. By Wangeci Thuo, Capital News

Last week, civil society in Burundi breathed a collective sigh of relief at the announcement that five human rights defenders charged with state security crimes had been released from prison. But as is often the case in Burundi, their relief was short-lived. Four days later, an appeals court in Bujumbura confirmed the conviction of journalist Floriane Irangabiye.

Irangabiye was convicted in January on charges of criticizing the government during a radio broadcast, in defiance of her most basic media freedoms. Her conviction came less than a week after lawyer and former human rights defender Tony Germain Nkina was released following two years of unjust imprisonment.

Irangabiye was given a 10-year sentence and fined 1,000,000 Burundian Francs (US$480). Her months-long detention without charge and the prosecutor’s failure to produce credible evidence of a crime during the trial amounted to flagrant violations of Burundian and international law.

Adding insult to injury, the appeals court’s decision was announced on the eve of World Press Freedom Day, underscoring Burundian authorities’ contempt for freedom of the press.

The five rights defenders released last week were charged with rebellion and undermining state security and the functioning of public finances. The charges appeared to stem from their relationship with a foreign organization and the funding they received from it. Three were acquitted and two were convicted of rebellion, fined 50.000 Burundian Francs ($25), and handed a two-year suspended sentence. They work for some of Burundi’s few remaining human rights organizations, and their arrests sent a chilling message to the few activists who stayed in Burundi despite a brutal crackdown against civil society triggered by the country’s 2015 political crisis.

As Burundi, faced with serious economic and humanitarian challenges, is pressing international partners to restore financial assistance, it seems reckless to jeopardize the government’s relationship with donors over abusive arrests and trials of human rights defenders and journalists. Yet after repeated convictions and acquittals, it looks increasingly like they are being used as bargaining chips.

Burundi should put an end to this cynical game. The European Union, the United States, and Burundi’s other international partners should call for Irangabiye’s immediate and unconditional release. They should also make clear, through public statements and concrete demands, that their trust in Burundian authorities will only be restored once they truly respect the rights of media and civil society. - Human Rights Watch

On 27 April, TotalEnergies announced staggering profits of $6.5bn for the first three months of 2023. Meanwhile, the nonprofit Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) revealed that in 2022, TotalEnergies was one of the five worst companies for projects linked to attacks against human rights defenders (HRDs). The company is developing the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project in Uganda and Tanzania.

According to the records held by the BHRRC, projects operated by TotalEnergies are linked to at least 42 attacks against HRDs since 2015. As many as 14 of these – a third – were committed in 2022 alone.

Specifically, all 13 attacks in 2022 involved activists and defenders fighting against the EACOP project. The French oil giant is the majority shareholder in the pipeline.

Total’s EACOP project

The 1,443km-long pipeline will transport oil from Hoima in Uganda to the port of Tanga in Tanzania for international export. TotalEnergies and EACOP project partner China National Offshore Oil Corporation Ltd (CNOOC) have discovered oil fields with approximately 1.7bn barrels of recoverable oil. These oil fields sit on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Uganda’s national oil company is also involved in the pipeline project.

In September 2022, the Parliament of the European Union (EU) passed a resolution calling for the developers to bring the pipeline development to a halt. It highlighted that the project could have severe impacts on the communities living along the path of the proposed development. Moreover, the resolution suggested that over 100,000 people are at risk of the project displacing them.

A report by Just Finance International identified that communities have already raised issues around insufficient compensation. The project consortium has been acquiring farmland since 2018. Many communities fear that the inadequate compensation will push them into poverty.

As a result, communities and environmental and human rights campaigners have formed an alliance to fight the project. The StopEACOP movement has mobilised multiple protests in Uganda. In addition, it has inspired solidarity actions from groups across the world.

Read on...

However, Just Finance highlighted that the Ugandan authorities, police, and project subsidiaries have subjected HRDs helping communities in Uganda to increasing criminalisation and safety threats.

Heartless profiteering

As the Canary previously reported, the StopEACOP international coalition of activists and communities has also been calling for investors to shelve the project.

Coordinator of StopEACOP Zaki Mamdoo said that the company’s huge profits for the start of 2023 demonstrated the need to:

stop the flow of money to reckless fossil fuel companies like Total.

On 2 May 2023, British multinational bank Standard Chartered announced it would not finance the pipeline. The announcement followed pressure from the StopEACOP movement. Significantly, this now brings the number of banks who have distanced themselves from the project to 25. Moreover, nine out of ten of TotalEnergies’ top financiers have confirmed they will not back the project.

Mamdoo called Standard Chartered’s announcement “a victory” for the impacted communities and climate activists across the world who have been fighting the project.

He also stated that the EACOP project and Total’s profits showed how:

TotalEnergies is truly heartless in its relentless profiteering on the African continent. The firm’s ever-growing profit margins are generated at the expense of our communities, the natural world, and an exploited African workforce.

Despite multiple banks confirming that they will not finance the project, the BHRRC briefing showed that it has continued to cause violence against communities and activists.

A call for fossil fuel abolition?

Police violently arrested four StopEACOP HRDs in December 2022. They arrested the activists without a warrant during another peaceful demonstration. Between the arrest on 9 December and the morning of 12 December, the police kept one of the activists in an unknown location. The authorities also charged the four defenders with ‘common nuisance’.

The BHRRC briefing revealed that police are the primary perpetrators of attacks. The attacks against StopEACOP HRDs exemplify this. In addition, it identified that authorities’ malicious use of the judicial system to criminalise defenders was the next most common type of attack.

What this highlights is the complicity of the criminal justice system in the physical and systemic violence enacted against human rights and environmental defenders. Moreover, this is part and parcel of racial capitalism.  This is a system which innately devalues Black and brown lives and exploits Global South communities for corporate profit.

Evidently, it points to a need to abolish all the oppressive machinery of a system which criminalises HRDs fighting for the rights of marginalised communities. Moreover, this system is enabling corporations to commit violence against them.

Climate justice essayist Mary Annaise Heglar argued that:

We have to get rid of this world where human beings are disposable, but systems that we know to be harmful are indispensable.

The bottom line

In short, the BHRRC report shows that we cannot end the era of fossil fuels without first ending the colonial and capitalist system that underpins it.

Overall, the BHRRC recorded over 550 attacks that companies, governments and unidentifiable perpetrators enacted against HRDs in 2022. On top of this, it found that 75% of these were committed against people protecting land, climate, and environmental rights. These include attacks that companies themselves will have perpetrated against HRDs, as well as those they did not commit directly.

TotalEnergies responded to the BHRRC findings. It said that:

In particular we recognize the important role of Human Rights Defenders… We do not tolerate any threats, intimidation, harassment or violence against those exercising their Human Rights to freedom of expression to protest peacefully against our business or activities.

Yet, as the 13 HRDs awaiting court show, the Ugandan state continues to criminalise pipeline protesters. Furthermore, TotalEnergies is continuing to develop the project in a country violating the rights of its citizens.

Fossil fuel and extractive companies like TotalEnergies claim to engage in due diligence on human rights. In reality, however, they operate in the same ways they have always done. Consequently, marginalised communities like those in the path of the EACOP project continue to pay the price. But as long as it doesn’t impact the company’s bottom line, anything goes. By Hannah Sharland, Canary