Shell on trial while Nigerians are slaughtered

By Bond, Patrick and Sharife ,Khadija

http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/3874

“We sometimes feed conflict
by the way we award contracts, gain access to land, and deal with
community representatives,” Shell Nigeria admitted in 2003.

It was a modest confession from a corporate giant that has long
collaborated with the state to access the Niger Delta’s oil and gas
resources, systematically destroying the indigenous ecology through
spills, deforestation, flaring and dumped waste, and in the process
fuelling climate change that threatens our collective future on the
planet.

But at a time of worsening state massacres of environmental justice
activists in the Delta, a moment of reckoning nears. In New York’s
Southern District Court this Wednesday before Judge Kimba Wood, Shell
goes on trial for crimes against the Niger Delta people and
environment, which could lead to substantive reparations payments.

The state’s most recent assault against the Delta left the villages of
Opuye, Okerenkoro, Kurutie and Oporoza (site of the new documentary
Sweet Crude – www.sweetcrudemovie.com ) burned to the ground in
mid-May, with hundreds of Ijaw people – both armed activists (called
‘militants’) and civilians – feared dead. Journalists are banned from
the area.

In a request last week to International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis
Moreno Ocampo, solidarity activists observed, “The Nigerian military
Joint Task Force commenced the land, water and aerial bombardment of a
large area in Gbaramatu Kingdom.”

They continued, “Questions regarding President Yar’Adua’s involvement
must also be investigated. The killings in the Delta today can be
traced back to similar massacres in 1990 in Umecheum, in Ogoni led by
Major Gen Paul Okuntimo in the mid 1990’s, and the 1999 massacre in Odi
under the command of Col Agbabiaka. To date no investigation of
previous massacres has been undertaken, although each was well
documented.”

The damage to the Delta goes back five decades. In 2006, the Niger
Delta Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Project
declared the region “one of the 10 most important wetlands and marine
ecosystems in the world”. Although 20 million people directly depend on
shared natural Delta resources such as fisheries, fertile land and
water sources, Shell is responsible for 2 900 oil spills.

Many have stood up to say “enough!”, but perhaps it was the Ogoniland
civic leader and writer/poet Ken Saro-Wiwa who is best known for a
courageous socio-environmental struggle against Shell, especially after
mobilising 300 000 non-violent protesters in early 1993.

Our comrade at the Centre for Civil Society, Dennis Brutus, recalls his
last meeting with the 54-year-old Saro-Wiwa, at the University of
Pittsburgh: “Ken was displaying his new novel Sozaboy, his 28th book.
He seemed very gloomy – even pessimistic: as if he had a foreboding
that he would be executed on his return to Nigeria.”

Brutus travelled to Johannesburg soon thereafter: “The US poet Amiri
Baraka and I brought a letter to President Nelson Mandela’s office
appealing for a stronger role in preventing his execution. But the
functionary who took the letter was not encouraging.”

Brutus reminds us: “Saro-Wiwa was executed in a bungled operation, with
three attempts. The evidence has emerged that the Nigerian regime of
Sani Abacha acted on instructions of Shell Oil.”

Saro-Wiwa’s son, brother and other victims’ descendants are suing Shell
under the Alien Tort Claims Act, a law Brutus himself helped to
publicize as part of a suit demanding apartheid reparations from
multinational corporations that profited from apartheid by colluding
with the white South African military prior to 1994.

Families of Saro-Wiwa and other victims claim that from 1990-1995,
Shell requested and financed Nigerian soldiers to repress a peaceful
environmental justice movement with deadly force. On November 10, 1995,
the “Ogoni Nine” were executed after being framed for murder and tried
by the military.

In addition to Saro-Wiwa, those killed were youth leader John Kpuinen,
Dr. Barinem Kiobel, Saturday Doobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbokoo, Paul
Levera, Felix Nuate and Baribor Bera.

After twelve years of preliminary arguments, the Ogoni finally get
their day in the New York courts, supported by Brutus’ anti-apartheid
ally Paul Hoffman, the Center for Constitutional Rights (led by lawyers
Jennie Green and Maria LaHood), EarthRights International (Marco Simons
and Rick Herz) and Justice in Nigeria Now.

Solidarity protests will be held around the world, including at two
Shell gas stations here in South Durban, an unfortunate neighborhood
that hosts the largest refineries south of Nigeria.

Shell’s South African refining operation – “Sapref” – is partly
responsible for the extreme leukemia and asthma rates suffered by
neighboring residents. Shell won the groundWork-Centre for Civil
Society “Corpse Awards” in 2005, for contributions to
mortality/morbidity in the South Durban basin: “13 thousand tones of
sulphur dioxide and 1.2 million tones of carbon dioxide as well as the
usual heady mix of volatile organic compounds.”

A few years earlier, in 2001, according to Desmond D’Sa of the South
Durban Community Environmental Alliance, “Sapref’s ageing pipelines
ruptured and leaked between one and two million litres of fuel into the
ground beneath local people’s houses, and 26 tons of tetra-ethyl-lead
leaked out of a holding tank adjacent to community houses. Shell then
set up a ‘Community Liaison Forum’ to divide the community.”

According to D’Sa, even after years of protest, “Sapref continues to
emit toxic gases into the neighbouring community and continues to
violate South African’s right to an environment that is not harmful to
health and wellbeing. Sapref continues to violate maintenance workers’
rights by employing them on a casual basis.”

The damage pales in comparison to the Niger Delta, where it is
estimated that 1.5 million tonnes of oil have spilled since drilling
began 51 years ago, the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill each year,
costing more than $5 billion in annual environmental damage.

Last year, Nigerian president Yar’Adua finally conceded the obvious:
“There is a total loss of confidence between Shell and the Ogoni people.
So, another operator acceptable to the Ogonis will take over.”

But Yar’Adua’s regime, like others before it, is rife with corruption
and collaboration, and Shell has hung on in a country responsible for
10% of its profits. The bulk of Nigeria’s wealth is held offshore by
corrupt officials, and is estimated at over $100 billion. Over 80% of
the state’s revenue is derived from the Delta region. According to
international agencies, just 1% of the population rakes in 80% of oil
and gas revenues.

It is not only Nigerian money that flows out. In Cape Town, Pastor
Barry Saro Wuganaale assists Ogoni exiles who still face exile “because
of founded fears of persecutions by the government against those who
believe in the liberation of their motherland.”

Nigeria, considered to be the US’s new oil cushion, is the seventh
largest producer in the world pumping out a minimum of 900,000 barrels
of crude each day. Nigeria is of crucial geopolitical importance to the
US, which imports almost 50% of Nigerian oil.

Inevitably, the World Bank is in on the action, and last month the
Nigerian Guardian newspaper editorialized, “Having fleeced the country
while acting as agents of the Paris and London clubs of creditor
countries, the World Bank/IMF seek to perform similar exploits as
agents of private international oil companies operating under Nigerian
jurisdiction in ‘getting more enforceable commercial framework about
the supply of gas’ for local generation of electricity… Plans by
World Bank/IMF to accord Nigeria-based multinational oil companies the
status of sovereign states subvert and contravene provisions of the
1999 Constitution.”

Even greater amounts of oil and profits would flow to those companies
were it not for militant activists of the Movement for the Emancipation
of the Niger Delta (MEND), who kidnap foreign workers both for ransom
and to halt the destruction.

As MEND spokesperson Jomo Gbomo put it a year ago, after an attack on a
Shell facility, “Our candid advice to the oil majors is that they
should not waste their time repairing any lines as we will continue to
sabotage them.”

A cease-fire ended in January, and MEND attacked a few more foreign oil
installations. But it was only in mid-May, following the state’s
bombing of Gbaramatu Kingdom, that an ‘all-out war’ was declared by
militants.

Earlier this month, MEND reportedly destroyed nine army gunboats and
captured three others, which is why, it claims, the army engaged in
“indiscriminate aerial bombardment on the defenseless civilians…
Casualties are mostly women, children and the elderly who could not get
away quickly into the bush or high sea.”

As a result, MEND insisted, all oil companies should “evacuate and cease oil production until further notice.”

Saro-Wiwa had made the same demand, using peaceful strategies and
tactics. “The military dictatorship holds down oil- producing areas
such as Ogoni by military decrees and the threat or actual use of
physical violence so that Shell can wage its ecological war without
hindrance,”
he said in his closing statement at the trial.

“This cozy, if criminal, relationship was perceived to be rudely
disrupted by the non-violent struggle of the Ogoni people under MOSOP.
The allies decided to bloody the Ogoni in order to stop their example
from spreading through the oil-rich Niger Delta,” said Saro-Wiwa.

Shell claims it operates on the policy of non-interference with
judicial and political processes. Company spokesperson Robin Lebovitz
claims Shell asked for clemency for Saro-Wiwa and was “shocked and
saddened”
when he and the others were killed.

Yet it has been documented that Shell executives met with the Nigerian
High Commission in London, stating that if the “Ogoni virus” spreads to
other areas in the Delta it would be the end of the oil business.

Shell’s then head Bryan Andersen has admitted he approached Owens Wiwa
with “the possibility that [Shell] would be prepared to put in some
humanitarian aid … in exchange for the undertaking to soften their
official stance” on reparations.

The plaintiffs allege that Shell hired Nigerian police for internal
security; that Shell purchased vehicles and arms for the military; that
Shell requested military support to build a pipeline through Ogoni
land;and that Shell assisted and financed the Nigerian military to
repress the resistance of the Ogoni people. Shell is also accused of
participating in the arrest of Ken Saro-Wiwa and John Kpuinen on fake
murder charges and of bribing witnesses to produce false testimony.

According to Brutus, “The reparations case against Shell strongly
relates to our South African anti-apartheid case.” In the same court,
six weeks ago, Judge Shira Scheindlin found that Daimler Chrysler,
Ford, GeneralMotors, IBM, Fujitsu and Rheinmetall must answer charges
in September.

Six years ago, US secretary of state Colin Powell arm-twisted Thabo
Mbeki and then justice minister Penuell Maduna to write a letter
opposing the apartheid reparations case on grounds that it interfered
with SA’s own reconciliation process and hence would harm US foreign
policy. Will Jacob Zuma and Jeff Radebe follow suit, given how they
have pledged to foreign investors that there will be no change in
economic policy?

Economist Joseph Stiglitz and Archbishop Desmond Tutu testified against
Pretoria’s alliance with the corporations. Last month Judge Scheindlin
confirmed that there was “absolutely nothing in the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission process … that would be impeded by this
litigation.”

As Brutus’s co-plaintiffs in the Khulumani Support Group observed:”That
ruling has certainly breathed new life into a class of human rights
litigation seeking to establish that corporations have obligations
under international law to not be complicit in human rights violations.”

Some of Saro-Wiwa’s last words are the most inspiring, and can ring
true with some assistance from the US courts: “I have no doubt at all
about the ultimate success of my cause, no matter the trials and
tribulations which I and those who believe with me may encounter on our
journey. Nor imprisonment nor death can stop our ultimate victory.”

(Are you in New York on Wednesday? Stop by to see the trial against
Shell, at 10am at the US District Court, 500 Pearl Street. Stay tuned at
http://wiwavshell.org/)

Sharife and Bond are, respectively, visiting scholar and director at
the UKZN Centre for Civil Society: http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs