A landmark trial against oil giant Royal Dutch Shell’s alleged involvement in human rights violations in the Niger Delta begins in a federal court in New York. Fourteen years after the widely condemned execution of the acclaimed Nigerian writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, the court will hear allegations that Shell was complicit in his torture and execution.
Ken Saro-Wiwa was the founding member and president of MOSOP, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, a group committed to use nonviolence to stop the repression and exploitation of the Ogoni and their land by Shell and the Nigerian government.
The indigenous people have been cheated through laws such as are operated in Nigeria today. Through political marginalization, they have driven certain people to death. In recovering the money that has been stolen from us, I do not want any blood spilled, not of an Ogoni man, not of any strangers amongst us. We are going to demand our rights peacefully, nonviolently, and we shall win. – Ken Saro-Wiwa
In 1996, a year after Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists were hanged, the Center for Constitutional Rights, EarthRights International and other human rights attorneys brought a series of cases against Royal Dutch Shell and Brian Anderson, the former head of Shell’s Nigeria operation. They accused Shell of working closely with and financing the Nigerian military government to brutally quell the peaceful resistance against Shell’s presence in the country. Shell strongly denies all charges.
The cases against Shell were brought under the US Alien Torts Claim Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act and will finally go to trial this week despite Shell’s attempts to get the cases thrown out of court over the past decade.
Ken Wiwa, Saro-Wiwa’s son, told reporters earlier this month that, quote, “In a sense we already have a victory, because one of the things my father said was that Shell would one day have its day in court.”
When Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill and I traveled to the Niger Delta in 1998, we went to Ogoniland. We visited Ken Saro-Wiwa’s parents. An Ogoni man stepped forward from the hundreds of villagers who gathered to greet us, and he began reciting the final speech of Ken Saro-Wiwa, made shortly before he was hanged.
Ken Saro-Wiwa was an amazing man. philosophically and strategically committed to nonviolence. the protest of the Niger Delta peoples against the way that the oil companies have polluted their landscape and conspired with the Nigerian government for decades has really gone on since at least 1970. That’s the earliest recorded references we have to protests by local communities. But it took until Ken came on the scene in 1990 with the formation of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People to internationalize the cause and for his articulate voice, for his charisma to be lent to the cause, which really educated all of us around the world about the tragedy that is ongoing today in the Niger Delta.
Shell does not want to negotiate with the Ogoni people. Each time they’ve come under pressure from local people, their want has always been to run to the Nigerian government and to say to the Nigerian government, “Oil is 90 percent of your foreign exchange earning. If anything happens to oil, your economy will be destroyed. Therefore, you must go and deal with these people, these troublemakers.” And most times, the government will oblige them and visits local communities of poor, dispossessed people with a lot of violence.
And when these communities then protested and said, “Look. Look at the amount of violence that is being used against us, even though we are only protesting peacefully,” then the oil companies will come and say, “Well, there is no way we can determine how much violence a government decides to use against its own people.” So, basically, the local communities have no leverage with the oil companies at all.
But for a long time now, Nigeria has been under military dictatorships. And the oil companies like military dictatorships, because basically they can cheat with these dictatorships. The dictatorships are brutal to people, and they can deny the rights of—human rights of individuals and of communities quite easily, without compunction. – Ken Saro-Wiwa
He returned in 1994 to Nigeria, and he was soon arrested. The trial was widely condemned by independent observers—Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, even the British government—as being a sham and a “travesty of justice,” was the quote that Prime Minister John Major at the time said about the trial and the ultimate execution of Ken.
Shell’s role is obviously the issue that begins this week in court. there are some truly amazing aspects and pieces of evidence that will come out. One of the most damning is the signed affidavits from the witnesses who were at the trial. There were witnesses at the trial who said that Ken was involved in a crime. This is the crime for which he was framed. Those witnesses subsequently signed affidavits with a British lawyer saying that they were bribed by the Nigerian government and Shell to testify against Saro-Wiwa. So that’s one of the most damning pieces of evidence that will come out over the next several weeks in the New York courtroom.
Shell also, we will see that they were deeply involved in the planning of the trial and really, the campaign to silence the Ogoni and Ken Saro-Wiwa. And, it’s quite troubling, the cozy relationship that existed in between this oil company, which is the largest multinational that operates in Nigeria today and was at the time, and what was a military dictatorship at that time. It’s extremely troubling and should give us all pause about the role of multinational corporations in the world today.
On November 10th, 1995, after a trial universally condemned as a sham and a sentence met with shock and outrage around the world, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni leaders were hanged by the Nigerian military government. Ken’s last words were, “Lord, take my soul, but the struggle continues.”- The Case Against Shell
Gas flaring is a practice that Shell would never get away with in the US, they would never get away with in Europe, and they do it today in Nigeria twenty-four hours a day, and they’ve been doing it for decades. It’s the burning off of associated gas, gas that’s released through oil extraction activities. And they do it because it’s cheaper and easier than re-injecting the gas into the wells or actually capturing it and using it.
It could be used to actually give electricity and power to some of these impoverished villages that have enriched Shell and the Nigerian government so much. But instead, they burn it off in these toxic plumes of fire that release all kinds of toxins and enormous amounts of greenhouse gases that add to the climate crisis.
it’s something that aggravates local communities. It’s poisonous to local communities. Shell has continued to choose to engage in this practice, because it’s more cost-efficient than doing the right thing and finding a solution with its $30 billion in annual profits and utilizing the gas or at least re-injecting it.
There are now three cases, in federal court in New York against Shell. The first lawsuit was filed, back in 1996, almost exactly a year to the day after the Ogoni Nine were hanged. And that was brought by Owens Wiwa, Ken Saro-Wiwa’s brother, and Ken Wiwa, his son. But subsequently, there were other lawsuits, as well: one against Brian Anderson, the head of Shell Nigeria at the time, as well as some lawsuits related to a few other incidents that are part of this trial. So, a shooting incident in which Shell requested the Nigerian military and later compensated them, they basically arrived at a nonviolent protest and shot and killed a man named Uebari N-nah.
Steve Kretzmann was in London for the Shell shareholder meeting. Perhaps not surprisingly, this case was not particularly prominent inside the shareholder meeting at all. The primary issue of concern inside the shareholder meeting was the remuneration package for the board of directors and the directors of the company, in particular, which actually the shareholders, interestingly, revolted against. majority of Shell’s shareholders voting against that package, which is a fairly unheard of thing to have happen. Shell’s directors said that they will take it under advisement and come back and perhaps modify the raises that they’re giving themselves, while, of course, they continue to gas flare in Nigeria. So, the company is continuing on with business as usual and sort of keeping their head in the sand.
Ken Saro-Wiwa never carried a gun. He was calling for international attention. He was calling for dialogue. What did they do to him? He was hanged. And every other person who was with him was executed. – Sandy Cioffi’s film called Sweet Crude.
we certainly expect justice in terms of greater profile for the issue. But, you know, one thing I really hope comes out of this is the recognition that the struggle that Ken and the Ogoni took up twenty years ago and came to a head fourteen years ago is really the same struggle, the same issues that are going on in Nigeria today.
Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International. He was at Shell’s annual shareholder meeting in London earlier this month and has been following the case against Shell. He also worked closely with Ken Saro-Wiwa in the last two years before Saro-Wiwa’s death.
Han Shan, the coordinator of the ShellGuilty campaign, a coalition initiative of Friends of the Earth, Oil Change International, and PLATFORM/Remember Saro-Wiwa.
– from Democracy Now
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