Cameroonians occupy plantation in protest against multinational

Cameroonian farmers kicked off Thursday a series global protests against a multinational firm monopolising land by occupying a palm plantation.

“We are blocking work on the Dibombari plantation,” owned by a unit of the Luxembourg holding company Socfin in the south of Cameroon, said Emmanuel Elong, one of the organisers of the protest.

“We are demanding (the company) to hand back to local residents the state lands it was given,” he said.

The group Alliance of Residents living near plantations owned by Socfin, in which the company of French business magnate Vincent Bollore holds a 39 percent stake, plan to hold a series of protests in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Liberia as well as Cameroon.

The protests are aimed at putting pressure on the companies before Socfin holds its annual shareholders meeting on May 27 and Bollore on June 4.

The protesters want the company to scale back its domination of land in the countries.

Socfin’s Cameroonian unit Socapalm farms nearly 26,000 hectares (64,000 acres) and produces over 40 percent of unrefined palm oil in the country.

The company expanded the amount of land it farms by a quarter between 2011 and 2014, which led to conflicts with locals who could no longer use land.