A land dispute between residents of a Cameroonian village and a major palm oil company remains unresolved despite protests and requests for meetings with authorities, NGOs and community members say. Residents of Apouh village in the country’s Littoral region have long accused Socapalm, a subsidiary of Luxembourg-based multinational Socfin, of encroaching on their ancestral land to establish its oil palm plantation. In late March this year, residents protested against Socapalm replanting oil palms on contested land, insisting it should be returned to them as part of a land retrocession process. The protests took a violent turn when deployed police used tear gas to disperse the crowd. Cameroonian NGO AFRISE, which represents the women of the Édéa region where Apouh village is located, has since written to the Ministry of State Property, Surveys, and Land Tenure (MINDCAF). It’s seeking a meeting to present the community’s grievances and follow up on a claim to redistribute 700 hectares (1,730 acres) of land community members say MINDCAF has found Socapalm to be occupying in excess of its land titles. But there’s been no meeting to date, AFRISE chair Félicité Ngo Bissou told Mongabay. “And while we are waiting, they are planting their palm trees around our houses all the way into our courtyards.” “They are planting under the watchful eye of law enforcement,” added Emmanuel Elong, president of the nonprofit National Synergy of Farmers and Residents of Cameroon (Synaparcam). After the nonprofit Business & Human Rights Resource Centre contacted Socfin about the replanting of…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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