ENVIRONMENT: Shell Faces Lawsuit For Nigerian activities

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 8 1996 (IPS) - Three Nigerians filed a lawsuit against Shell petroleum in U.S. federal courts in New York Friday, charging the company with complicity in the detention and hanging of nine Nigerian environmentalists a year ago.

Shell produces half of Nigeria’s daily two million barrels of petroleum, some of which comes from territory that is home to 500,000 Ogoni people.

Two of the plaintiffs — Owens Wiwa and Ken Wiwa — are the brother and son, respectively, of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the writer and environmental activist who was hung Nov. 10, 1995 in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, after a Nigerian military tribunal found him guilty of helping to kill four Ogoni elders.

North American activists commemorated last year’s hanging with protests Friday, including a candle-light vigil in the western Canadian city of Calgary, a demonstration in Washington, and another by about 50 persons in San Francisco, where three dummies were propped up on a billboard outside a shell station to recall the hangings.

“Shell oil, Nigeria’s blood,” read a banner in San Francisco.

Also Friday, the Washington-based Sierra Club released a letter it wrote to U.S. President Bill Clinton, calling on the administration “to help the Ogoni people in their struggle against Shell for a clean and healthy environment”.

Activists believe that Saro-Wiwa was executed because of his grassroots campaign directed at what the Sierra Club called “the devastation from Shell’s oil exploitation in the Ogoni region”.

“We call on yo]:o again press American allies to prohibit new investment in Nigeria, freeze the overseas assets of Nigeria’s rulers and, most importantly, impose an oil embargo against the country,” says the letter dated Nov. 6.

Noting that Nigeria derives most of its foreign revenue from oil, the letter says, “Because of this dependence, oil sanctions would quickly and effectively remove the funding General (Sani) Abacha’s despotic regime uses to silence environmentalists.”

Also filing suit in New York was Blessing Kpuinen, a relative of John Kpuinen’s who hanged with Saro-Wiwa.

Saro-Wiwa and Kpuinen belonged to the Movement for the survival of the Ogoni people (MOSOP) which was formed to protest the environmental problems caused by the company and to point to the 2,000 people killed by the Nigerian military in Ogoniland in recent years.

MOSOP activists say that Shell has made 30 billion dollars from their lands since 1958 but have given the people nothing in return.

“What we receive is death,” Barika Idamkue, a representative of MOSOP, said recently. “We have no water, no electricity, no schools, no roads, and no hospitals for 500,000 people.”

According to published accounts, Shell operations spilled 6.2 million litres of oil in 27 incidents in the region between 1988 and 1992. Shell, however, claims that the spills were not its fault.

“We’re upset, because not all the facts are correct,” a spokesman for Shell in New York said last year. “We stopped our operations in Ogoni territory in 1993 after our flow stations were vandalised by the community.”

“Some 69 percent of the problems with our pipelines since 1985 have been traced to hacksaw cuts and tampering by the community,” he added.

The Shell spokesman has also said that Shell does not endorse the Nigerian government.

“We are very upset about the treatment of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the abuse of democracy,” he said.

But in recent months, evidence that Shell was quietly helping the Nigerian police has come to light. Official company documents obtained by IPS show that Shell imported Beretta handguns and ammunition to supply the Nigerian police through a company called Humanitex Nigeria.

The Britain-based Observer newspaper recently quoted Shell spokesmen as acknowledging the purchase of handguns on behalf of the Nigerian police who guard Shell’s facilities.

“But once imported, the arms remain the property of the Nigerian police, who store, guard, and use them,” the Shell officials were quoted as saying.

The newspaper also revealed a May 1994 memorandum from the Nigerian Chairman of Internal Security, Major Paul Okuntimo, to the Military Administrator of Rivers State (which includes Ogoni territory). The memo reads: “Shell operations still impossible unless ruthless military operations are undertaken for smooth economic activities to commence.”

According to Judith Chomsky, a lawyer working on behalf of the plaintiffs, “Companies that profit from crimes against humanity should not get to do business as usual in the United States.”

She charged that Shell called in the military to suppress peaceful demonstrations at its sites and alleged that the company bribed witnesses at the trial of Ken Saro-Wiwa.

“Shell had direct involvement in human rights abuses,” she says.

Chomsky is working with the Jennie Green, a lawyer with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), who designed the lawsuit.( Shell officials did not return IPS calls regarding the court action.)

The lawsuit is based on the Alien Tort Claims Act, an early 19th century statute that has been used successfully in recent years against foreign individuals accused of murder, torture and other serious human rights abuses committed abroad.

The CCR last month helped 15 victims of human rights abuses in Burma file a lawsuit against the company Unocal under the same act. And the CCR has won lawsuits under the act against individuals in Argentina, Ethiopia, Haiti, and Paraguay. Other CCR lawsuits on crimes committed in Bosnia, Guatemala, Haiti, and Palestine are still being heard.

“Human rights law doesn’t only apply to governments and individuals,” Greene says. “Multinational corporations also must be held accountable when they violate such fundamental international legal principles.”

But to date, no U.S. court has awarded damages to plaintiffs against a multinational corporation for acts committed in other countries.

But lawsuits currently being heard include a suit against Texaco for environmental pollution during oil exploration in Ecuador and another against Freeport McMoRan for environmental and human right abuses on the western half of the island of New Guinea.

ENVIRONMENT: Shell Faces Lawsuit For Nigerian activities

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 8 1996 (IPS) - Three Nigerians filed a lawsuit against Shell petroleum in U.S. federal courts in New York Friday, charging the company with complicity in the detention and hanging of nine Nigerian environmentalists a year ago.
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