Nigerians seek $1 billion from Shell for oil spills

By Mira Oberman | AFP – Thu, Oct 20, 2011

Re-posted from AFP

A Nigerian tribal king filed a lawsuit in a US court seeking $1 billion from Royal Dutch Shell to compensate for decades of pollution that sickened his people and damaged their lands, his lawyer said.

The suit was filed a day after the US Supreme Court said it will consider a lawsuit accusing Shell of human rights abuses in Nigeria in a landmark case that could make companies liable for torture or genocide committed overseas.

That case will assess the potential liability of corporations — including multinationals with a US presence — under the Alien Tort Statute, a US law dating back to 1789 that scholars say was meant to assure foreign governments that the United States would help prevent breaches of international law.

The latest case alleges that Shell’s Nigerian operations are “well below internationally recognized standards to prevent and control pipeline oil spills” because the Anglo-Dutch company “has not employed the best available technology and practices that they use elsewhere in the world.”

It cited a recent United Nations report that found that contamination was widespread in the Nigerian Delta after 50 years of oil extraction left groundwater badly contaminated and the soil soaked with hydrocarbons to depths of five meters.

The suit was brought on behalf of the people of Ogale in the Eleme local government area, where the UN team found the most serious groundwater contamination and people drinking water laced with cancer-causing benzene at 900 times World Health Organization guidelines.

Scientists found an eight centimeter layer of refined oil floating on the groundwater that served the wells. The oil was linked to a spill that had occurred six years earlier and was not properly cleaned up.

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photo credit: © Kadir van Lohuizen/NOOR

From the website of Amnesty International: http://blog.amnestyusa.org/business/shell-accused-over-misleading-figures-on-nigeria-oil-spills/

17 October 2011
Re-posted from AFP

WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court said Monday it will consider a lawsuit accusing Royal Dutch Shell of human rights abuses, a case that could make companies liable for torture or genocide committed overseas.

The plaintiffs — relatives of seven Nigerians killed by the country’s former military regime — sued the Anglo-Dutch energy giant and other firms for apparently enlisting the government to suppress resistance to oil exploration in the Niger Delta in the 1990s.

The case will assess the potential liability of corporations — including multinationals with a US presence — under the Alien Tort Statute, a US law dating back to 1789 which scholars say was meant to assure foreign governments that the United States would help prevent breaches of international law.

The 12 Nigerian plaintiffs charge Shell with “complicity in human rights violations committed against them in the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta in Nigeria between 1992 and 1995,” according to their complaint put before the court.

“These violations included torture, extra-judicial executions and crimes against humanity.”

It said Shell “aided and abetted the Nigerian government in committing human rights abuses,” and added: “For the victims of human rights violations such cases often provide the only opportunity to obtain any remedy for their suffering.”

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image credit: Sweet Crude

Read the Reuters piece on the same subject

Another instance of the use of excessive force in the Niger Delta has prompted  Amnesty International to observe, “The excessive use of force by Nigeria’s security forces in Bundu waterfront community is contrary to Nigeria’s international human rights obligations and commitments.”

Probe Bundu waterfront shootings Amnesty Int’l, SERAP urge FG, River

October 12, 2010

By Innocent Anaba & Wahab Abdulah,
Re-posted from Vanguard News

LAGOS—Amnesty International and Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, yesterday, asked the government of President Goodluck Jonathan and the Rivers State Governor,  Mr Rotimi Amaechi to “urgently set up an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the excessive use of force and firearms by security forces, which  resulted in at least one death, and 12 serious injuries in Bundu Waterfront, Port Harcourt, last year.

Addressing newsmen in Lagos, at the  launch the report, Port Harcourt Demolitions: Excessive Use of Force Against Demonstrators, SERAP’s Executive Director,  Mr Adetokunbo Mumuni, said, “we consider the events of 0ctober 12, 2009 to constitute violation of the human rights of the victims to protest, demonstrate and take part in political activities. We also consider the excessive use of force to be unlawful, resulting in violation of the right to life.”

The 18-page report is an eye witness account  from the victims of the Bundu shootings as well as from women, who were intimidated and beaten by security personnel.

Lucy Freeman of Amnesty said, “the excessive use of force seen in the Bundu shooting is just one of many examples of the brutality with which the police and army operate throughout Nigeria, yet, few officers are held accountable. In most cases there is no investigation. There must be an end to the impunity enjoyed by Nigeria’s security forces.”

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Sneak preview & California Premier of The Naked Option, a film about the Nigerian women’s movement

7PM Saturday May 21st
Victoria Street Theatre
2961 16th Street, San Francisco
Q&A with Naked Option Director Candace Schermerhorn and Emem Okon from the Niger Delta
Tickets $10

THE NAKED OPTION reveals the inspiring story of an organized group of Nigerian women who use the threat of stripping naked in public, a serious cultural taboo, in their deadly struggle to hold the oil companies accountable to the communities in which they operate. The women, at the risk of being raped, beaten or killed, are trained and armed, but not with anything you can see. Through the leadership of the courageous, charismatic, and inexhaustible Emem J. Okon, these women are taking over where men have failed, peacefully transforming their ‘naked power’ into 21st century political action and mobilization. THE NAKED OPTION celebrates the perseverance and power of an organized group of women! A Q&A will follow the screening with film director Candace Schermerhorn, women’s rights activist Emem J. Okon, and Laura Livoti founder and director of Justice in Nigeria Now (JINN).

Presenting Partners: Justice In Nigeria Now, CounterCorp; Partner and Funder: Global Greengrants; Fund Coalition Partner: Women’s Earth Alliance; Special thanks to Rainforest Action Network, The True Cost of Chevron Network and the Global Fund for Women.

Nigeria: U.S. Court Declines to Hear Suit Against Shell, Chika Amanze-Nwachuku, This Day, AllAfrica Global Media, 8 February 2011

A United States Appeal Court on Friday refused to entertain a lawsuit that accused Royal Dutch Shell Plc of helping Nigerian authorities violently to suppress protests against oil exploration in the 1990s.

Specifically, the plaintiffs, families of seven Ogoni indigenes who were executed by the regime of the late General Sani Abacha, had accused the oil giant of violations related to the 1995 hangings of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other protesters by Nigeria’s then-military government.

The Ogoni Nine

In the case – Kiobel et al v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co et al, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Nos. 06-4800 and 06-4876, the plaintiffs had sought their claims from the oil giant under a 1789 U.S. law known as the Alien Tort Statute.

The Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) was adopted in 1789 as part of the original Judiciary Act. It gave the federal courts jurisdiction to hear tort claims brought by foreigners who allege a violation of international law or a treaty to which the United States is a party. For almost two centuries, the statute was relatively dormant, supporting jurisdiction in only a handful of cases. However, it was later invoked in several cases involving torture, disappearances, or killings committed by non-Americans in foreign countries.

In a divided vote that prompted a bitter debate among some of its judges, the US appellate court affirmed a September ruling, which held that companies cannot be liable in U.S. courts for violations of international human rights law.

Reuters reported that the full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York declined to hear the case by a 5-5 vote and instead left intact the original 2-1 panel ruling from September. Separately, the judges in that panel voted 2-1 not to rehear the case, the report said, added that the Friday ruling may not be the end of the lawsuit.

“The 2nd Circuit is alone among federal circuit courts in concluding that corporations cannot be responsible under U.S. law for human rights violations, ” the newswire quoted an international law professor at George Washington University, Ralph Steinhardt as saying. “This clears the way for the plaintiffs to seek review at the Supreme Court,” he added. The report added that a lawyer who has represented the families, Paul Hoffman, and Shell, did not immediately return requests for comment.

Shell had since denied allegations it is involved in human rights abuses.The 2nd Circuit ruling, the report said, applies in New York, Connecticut and Vermont. The Alien Tort Statute had underpinned other human rights cases. Reuters reported that in one, mining company Rio Tinto Plc was accused of forcing workers in Papua New Guinea to live in “slave like” conditions, and pushing the government to exact retribution after a mine was sabotaged.

The report cited another case where plaintiffs sought to hold Ford Motor Co. General Motors Co. and International Business Machines Corp liable for helping South African authorities when apartheid was in force more than two decades ago.

Friday’s split ruling showed major differences in the judges’ thinking. Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs, part of the September panel that ruled for Shell, wrote that the original ruling “has no great practical effect except for the considerable benefit of avoiding abuse of the courts to extort settlements.”

He chided what he called fears by dissenting Judge Pierre Leval that “slavers and pirates will now rush into corporate transactions,” resulting in “absolution to moral monsters. For the record: even moral monsters are humans, and I would happily see them hanged.” Leval countered that Jacobs’ opinion evinces an “intense, multi-faceted policy agenda” underlying an effort “to exempt corporations from the law of nations.”

The report noted that other judges who favored a rehearing by the entire court said the case presented “a significant issue,” and that September’s ruling conflicted with a 2008 ruling from the 11th Circuit appeals court, which sits in Atlanta.

See another article on this story:  Shell not liable for rights violations, UPI, published: Feb. 8, 2011 at 9:44 AM

Police violence injures and infringes on the free speech rights of Ogoni people at a candlelight vigil in remembrance of social and environmental activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists.

The Ogoni Nine

Police Open Fire at Ogoni Vigil in Port Harcourt

By Ben Amunwa, Remember Saro-Wiwa,  November 9, 2010

It’s the kind of text message you never want to receive. Sent from an activist in the Niger Delta on November 9th at 22.00, it reads:

Teams of heavily armed policemen stormed Saro-Wiwa’s No. 24 Aggrey Road, Port Harcourt, venue of the Saro-Wiwa candle light procession, shooting sporadically causing fear and panic.

[UPDATE 11/11/10: we have received further reports that police had beaten demonstrators with gun butts, kicks and horsewhips, leaving 12 people injured in the attack]. The crackdown shows utter contempt for the lives of Ogoni demonstrators, and infringes on their rights to freedom of assembly. Despite decades of non-violent protest, the Nigerian police continue to respond to demonstrators with brutal and excessive force. Similar repression occurred on 12th October last year when 13 people were shot and at least one person killed by police and army soldiers at Bundu Ama waterfront community in Port Harcourt, where residents were trying to protect their homes from government demolitions. On 5th April 2009, a number of well-known Delta activists were beaten and illegally detained by police. They were released following international pressure and interventions by civil society groups. On 26th May 2009, a rally in Ogoniland, timed to coincide with the landmark human rights lawsuit Wiwa v Shell in New York, was disrupted by police who arrested and detained five bus-loads of demonstrators. Women protestors were also beaten with rifle-butts and iron bars in January 2009, outside the gates of a Shell contractor.

Every year, Ogoni people assemble at 24 Aggrey Road in remembrance of Saro-Wiwa and his eight colleagues. In the 1990s, the building used to be known as the “Ogoni Embassy”. There is every indication that the protests will continue, because they have done so in defiance of police repression, military occupation and environmental devastation for well over 20 years. Perhaps one day, the government will stop using violence long enough to listen to the Ogoni’s message of human dignity and justice for all.

An afterthought contained in the text message reads:

“You can kill the Messenger, but you can’t kill the message” That was Ken Saro-Wiwa’s memorable words before he and other of his 8 comrades were hanged’