Posted by jinn on 23rd April 2009
San Francisco, CA: Judge Susan Illston, on Wednesday, denied Chevron Corp’s request to recoup over $485,000 in costs associated with a human rights case filed by Nigerian villagers. The corporation said the plaintiffs owed them the costs – including the cost of photocopies and deposition fees – after they were found not liable last fall. However, the judge disagreed.
Lead Plaintiff Larry Bowoto with Attorney Bert Voorhees
“The economic disparity between plaintiffs, who are Nigerian villagers, and defendants, international oil companies, cannot be more stark,” Illston stated in her brief.
Illston compared Chevron’s 2008 earnings of $23.93 billion to the income of the villagers who were plaintiffs in the case citing their respective jobs at a gas station – (earning as much as $100 per month), operating a kerosene business ($867 per month), and odd jobs that involve cutting or selling firewood, fishing, and construction ($60 per month), among other low paying jobs, and stated that ten of the plaintiffs were minors who have no income.
The judge also cautioned against Chevron’s efforts to use the threat of a cost order such as the one requested by Chevron to deter future human rights litigation.
“At root, this case was an attempt by impoverished citizens of Nigeria to increase accountability for the activities of American companies in their country. Plaintiffs’ ultimate failure at trial does not detract from the fact that this was a civil rights case. The threat of deterring future litigants from prosecuting human rights claims in the future is especially present in a case such as this, where plaintiffs have paltry resources and defendants are large and powerful economic actors,” she continued in the brief.
The lawsuit was filed 10 years ago by Nigerian villagers who were peacefully protesting Chevron for the lack of jobs and environmental damage caused by the company in their communities. To quell the protest, Chevron paid for and transported the notoriously ruthless Nigerian military to remove the protesters from an oil platform where the villagers had staged a sit-in. As a result, two villagers were killed and several others were injured and tortured.
On December 1, 2008 a San Francisco jury found Chevron not liable. The plaintiffs have since appealed the decision in the 9th circuit court of appeals.
Read the press release issued from the Plaintiffs counsel
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Tags: Alien Tort Statute, Bowoto v. Chevron, Niger Delta, Nigeria, Oil, Susan Illston
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Posted by jinn on 16th April 2009
This piece is reprinted from George Monbiot’s blog which appeared in the UK Guardian on April 10, 2009:
Multinationals accused of human rights abuses can no longer feel safe now that the oil giant is facing allegations of complicity in the execution of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa
Could this be the beginning of the end of the age of impunity? Fourteen years after the judicial murder of the Nigerian novelist, environmentalist and human rights activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Shell is about to go on trial in New York, accused of complicity in his execution. This represents a remarkable moment in the struggle between people and multinational corporations. Regardless of the outcome of the trial, the fact that one of the planet’s most powerful companies finds itself in the dock changes everything. From now on, no transnational corporation involved in possible human rights abuses will feel completely safe.
Ken Saro-Wiwa, with eight other Ogoni rights activists, was executed by Nigeria’s military dictatorship in 1995. The men were a constant irritant to the generals, reminding the world that their lands in the Niger Delta were being wrecked and their health and livelihoods destroyed by gas flaring, oil spills and military attacks. Imprisonment and beatings failed to shut them up. So the government constructed false charges against these men, paid people to pose as witnesses and hanged them.
The plaintiffs claim that Shell, which still has major operations in the Niger Delta, paid Nigerian troops to terrorise the Ogoni and bribed two of the witnesses at the trial of the activists. Shell denies these charges and claims it intervened to try to stop the executions, but there is no doubt that it worked alongside one of Africa’s most brutal regimes. It also continues to pollute the Ogoni’s land today by burning off the gas from its oil wells and this was one of the subjects over which I clashed with Shell’s chief executive Jeroen van der Veer during our fierce exchange a little while ago.
Aside from the damage to the health of the Ogoni and their environment, gas flaring in Nigeria produces more carbon dioxide than all other activities in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. One day, perhaps, that might be the subject of a lawsuit too.
What this trial shows is that people like the Ogoni, though they may be poor and though they may possess little power, can no longer be treated as disposable. For two centuries corporations and governments from the rich world have treated the people they encounter overseas as nothing but obstacles to the extraction of resources, who – when they could not be enslaved to assist that work – had to be disposed of as expeditiously as possible: by bribery, deception, terror or massacre. The richer the resources a land possesses, the more viciously its inhabitants are treated. Now these inconvenient people might begin to be seen as human beings.
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Posted by jinn on 2nd April 2009
JINN presents:
April 15, 2009 in San Francisco
Delta Force, a Documentary by Glen Ellis about Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Struggle for the Ogoni People
Followed by a Panel Discussion about the upcoming case against Shell
6pm – Wine and Beer Reception
7pm – Film Screening
8pm – Panel Discussion
Artist Television Access
992 Valencia Street (at 21st) – Map
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415)824-3890
ata@atasite.org
This is a benefit screening for JINN
$10-$30 suggested donation (no one turned away for lack of funds)
Panelists include:
Cindy Cohn – Counsel to the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed against Chevron by Nigerian villagers for human rights abuses committed in 1998 and heard in US court last fall in San Francisco. The Chevron case is now entering the appeals process. Cohn is the Legal Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as its General Counsel.
Beresuanu Kingston – Ogoni activist now living in the San Francisco Bay Area who has first hand experience with Shell’s abuses in Ogoniland.
On November 10, 1995, Nigerian environmental activist and internationally acclaimed non-violent resistance leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and 8 of his Ogoni colleagues were executed by Nigeria’s brutal military dictatorship. This one hour documentary, tells the story of the rise of Saro-Wiwa and the Movement for Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) and its violent suppression by the Nigerian military with the complicity of Shell Oil.
On May 26, 2009 relatives of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other MOSOP members will bring Shell to trial in New York for the company’s complicity in the death of Ogoni leaders and the destruction of Ogoni villages at the hand of the Nigerian military.
Join us at this benefit for Justice in Nigeria Now (JINN) to support JINN while socializing and learning about the Ogoni and the upcoming trial
This event is co-sponsored by Global Exchange and the CounterCorp Film Festival (this year’s festival is May 28-30, 2009)
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Tags: Cindy Cohn, Delta Force, Glen Ellis, Ken Saro Wiwa, Michael Watts, Nigeria, Ogoni, Oil, San Francisco Events, Shell
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