SHELL WON, MAYBE CHEVRON WON'T

I wrote already about the trial that should have started in New York last week against Royal Dutch Shell for the killing of seven Nigerian activists, including the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa. It was suddenly suspended and then... magically... settled. Shell didn't want to go to court, it would have been too dangerous for its reputation to have Nigerians revealing dirty details of its activities in the Niger Delta. It was easier to pay 15.5 millions and avoid witnesses to explain openly how oil companies pollute, destroy and kill in almost every country they operate in. After more than a decade struggling, the plaintiffs consider the settlement a real victory: "This shows that corporations cannot act without accountability” said Jennie Greene, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the case on behalf of the plaintiffs. I am not so sure about it. The 15.5 million dollars are peanuts for a company as big as Royal Dutch Shell and it won't make any difference in the polluted and violent landscape in the Niger Delta. Although it's true that it's a symbolic precedent in the fight against corporate impunity, I agree with El malcontento, "it's a scandal that they sign a check and get free of responsibilities" (in Spanish).

picture by Dolores Ochoa, AP

But maybe there is hope. Another similar case is actually in development in Ecuador against Chevron-Texaco. An Ecuatorian lawyer representing 30,000 people is fighting alone against the monster. The battle between the indigenous communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon (nearly destroyed by oil drilling) and Chevron started 16 years ago. The lawsuit alleges that Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001, unleashed 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater across an estimated 1,700 square miles of rainforest (check ChevronToxico web for details) . Plaintiff's lawyers say Texaco's dumping represent 30 times more than the crude spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska. Hundreds of people have died of cancer and thousands are sick. According to a report by a court-appointed expert, Chevron could face $27 billion in damages. That's not only real money, it would be an unprecedented victory for environmentalists and local communities alike. Unfortunately, Chevron has also the money to make this process as long and as tortuous as possible so the sentence could still take years.

Picture of Bryan Patrick from his award winning series The Devil's excrement for the Sacramento Bee (Ecuador, 2003)

If you are curious about this case you should see the documentary Crude, (playing in New York on June 13 at the Human Rights Watch Festival) by director Joe Berlinger (director of great titles such as Paradise Lost and Metallica: that kind of monster). Crude is quite good although it probably pays too much attention to Trudi Styler, one of the celebrities who has embraced this cause. In the other hand, the involvement of stars in this fight has brought lots of attention to their lawsuit and recently even 60 Minutes did a story on it. I don't know how to feel about celebrity-activism but it seems that lately journalists take an interest in forgotten stories only when there is a famous face behind so, I guess in this case we have to thank Sting???

NIGERIA, NEW YORK, SO FAR, SO CLOSE

This is a very old story: we need things, a company provides, we don't give much thought about how those things get to us, we just consume them, we feel happy. That's how bananas entered the USA during the 20th century, through United Fruit Company, a multinational that in order to keep its power in Central America supported some of the most horrifying dictatorships in the area, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica... all to provide us with things we learn to need.

So, where is the oil to power your car or your AC coming from today? From places like Nigeria -the 8% of the total US imports come from there, it is also the 4th provider of oil for Spain- Nigeria is the tenth most petroleum-rich nation worldwide. Almost twenty years ago an activist movement grew out in that country against Shell for appropriating land and polluting the air and water in the Ogoni homeland, an indigenous area around the Niger Delta region of southeast Nigeria, where most of the oil reserves land. According to Amnesty International 70% of the six million people in the Niger River Delta live off of less than 1$ US per day. The leader of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) was the author Ken Saro-Wiwa, who led a non-violent campaign against the environmental degradation of the area and against the corruption of the Nigerian government, at the time ruled by ruthless Sani Abacha.

In 1993, following protests that were designed to stop contractors from laying a new pipeline for Shell, the army raided the area and destroyed 27 villages, resulting in the death of 2,000 Ogoni people and displacement of 80,000. Saro-Wiwa was arrested along with eight activists that two years later were sentenced to death by a military tribunal. The execution provoked international outrage but it was quickly forgotten: everybody still consumes Nigerian oil pumped among others by Shell (on and off because of continuous attacks of its oil plants), and actually, the area is still immersed in a violent war that nobody wants to call 'war'. In the last few days this no-war has taken a very ugly turn:



After 13 years, a trial against Shell (now Royal Dutch Shell) was supposed to start this week in Manhattan federal court with a lawsuit by three alleged victims of attacks and relatives of seven activists killed from 1990 to 1995, including the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa. The plaintiffs claim Shell’s Nigerian unit assisted the government in the abuse and murder of opponents of the company’s operations in the Niger Delta. (here a link in Spanish)

The trial was once again postponed until June 2. It seems Royal Dutch Shell didn't like the idea of having powerful human rights attorney Paul Hoffman counseling the plaintiffs. Actually, they complained that Hoffman's company harbors a video that it is not to there liking. The judge refused to ban Hoffman from the trial but asked the website Wiwavshell.org to remove the video. Thanks to 21st century technology, it's very difficult to hide things from public view: