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TechnoratiSecret Papers 'Show How Shell Targeted Nigeria Oil Protests'
Documents seen by The IoS support claims energy giant enlisted help of country's military government
Serious questions over Shell Oil's alleged involvement in human rights abuses in Nigeria emerged last night after confidential internal documents and court statements revealed how the energy giant enlisted the help of the country's brutal former military government to deal with protesters.
![[]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/shell_177472s_0.jpg "shell_177472s.jpg")
The documents, seen by the IoS,
support allegations that Shell helped to provide Nigerian police and
military with logistical support, and aided security sweeps of the
oil-rich Niger Delta. Earlier this month Shell agreed to pay $15.5m
(£9.6m) in a "humanitarian settlement" on the eve of a highly
embarrassing US lawsuit.
One of the allegations was that Shell was complicit in the regime's execution of civilians. The Anglo-Dutch firm denies any wrongdoing and said it settled to help "reconciliation". But the documents contain detailed allegations of the extent to which Shell is said to have co-opted the Nigerian military to protect its interests.
The legal settlement came 14 years after the Abacha government hanged nine protesters, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, the environmentalist and writer, after a charade of a trial in 1995. Saro-Wiwa led a successful campaign against Shell in his Niger Delta homeland, even forcing the company to quit Ogoniland in 1993. The campaign focused on environmental devastation and demanded a greater share of oil revenues for his community. As the campaign grew, the Ogoni suffered a brutal backlash that left an estimated 2,000 dead and 30,000 homeless. The documents claim there was systematic collusion with the military and Mobile Police Force (MPF), known as the "Kill and Go". Shell has always denied this but is believed to have settled in court as a result of the embarrassing contents.
In one document written in May 1993, the oil company wrote to the local governor asking for the "usual assistance" as the Ogoni expanded their campaign. There was a stand-off between the Ogoni and the US contractor Willbros, which was laying a pipeline. Nigerian military were called in, resulting in at least one death.
Days later, Shell met the director general of the state security services to "reiterate our request for support from the army and police". In a confidential note Shell suggested: "We will have to encourage follow-through into real action preferably on an industry rather than just Shell basis". The Nigerian regime responded by sending in the Internal Security Task Force, a military unit led by Colonel Paul Okuntimo, a brutal soldier, widely condemned by human rights groups, whose men allegedly raped pregnant women and girls and who tortured at will. Okuntimo boasted of knowing more than 200 ways to kill a person.
In October 1993, Okuntimo was sent into Ogoni with Shell personnel to inspect equipment. The stand-off that followed left at least one Ogoni protester dead. A hand-written Shell note talked of "entertaining 26 armed forces personnel for lunch" and preparing "normal special duty allowances" for the soldiers. Shell is also accused of involvement with the MPF, which worked with Okuntimo. One witness, Eebu Jackson Nwiyon, claimed they were paid and fed by Shell. Nwiyon also recalls being told by Okuntimo to "leave nobody untouched". When asked what was meant by this, Nwiyon replied: "He meant shoot, kill."
One former Shell employee, Kloppenburg Ruud, head of group security in the mid-1990s told lawyers that the deployment of Nigerian security forces at two Shell jetties in the delta was at the company's request.
Since the settlement, Malcolm Brinded, Shell's executive director, said: "We wanted to prove our innocence and we were ready to go to court. We knew the charges against us were not true." He added: "I am aware that the settlement may - to some - suggest Shell is guilty and trying to escape justice," but said this was not the case.
Shell 'lobbied' Guardian to soften its Nigeria stance
Confidential internal documents reveal how the oil giant lobbied The Guardian newspaper to reduce its support for Saro-Wiwa.
In an assessment of the political and security situation, a Shell executive noted: "The Guardian newspaper ran a much more balanced article on the Ogoni issue, with their position moving from apparent support for Saro-Wiwa to the middle ground. There is a slight possibility that this may have been influenced by the meeting we had with The Guardian's editor the week before."
Peter Preston, The Guardian's editor from 1975 to 1995, said yesterday that he could not remember a meeting with Shell. "I have absolutely no memory of one. And Nigerian politics was never one of my interests."
11 Comments so far
Show AllI agree with Bornfreemen. The Bill of Rights in the Constitution must be restored. The Patiot Act should be recinded because it has enabled known and unknown agencies to spy on Americans with warrentless wiretaps. American torture must be abolished and the people that wrote the torture memos should be brought to justice. The powers of a "unitary" president, one who can classify anything and take away civil liberties from citizens to "keep them safe" is a policy that can be abused by any future president.
This was a horrible horrible case of genocide by corporation or ,GC'. Corps. practiced techniques of suborning military intel in South American countries, then moved it around the world. The commonality of it surely earns them their own tag.
I recall using the guerilla video of the execution scene on my public access TV show in Reno, NV. The video came from a group in England,bless their hearts.
No one ever mentioned the incident, or the open gas wells whose poisonous pollution drove the native Nigerian people off their land in the first place. (not on TV not in newspapers.) Nada. Shell = Oil = Suborning our own government, so why indeed not the Nigerian goverment?
Already the US paramilitary types, demobbed US soldiers, (1 in 6 are reported as being sociopaths) have turned their attention to people with contrary opinions, especially the elderly, the unprotected. And that is here, in Virginia.
Corporations that earn billions of dollars a year will always have thier own private armys to do their imperial dirty work.
Now, thanks to the Patriot acts and warrant less surviellance , everyone can do what ever they want, the courts and good lawyers are like a bunch of old men without viagra.Impotent.
The American people have been stripped of the most important thing that we need to protect us, the Constitution.
In oil rich countrys far from the American main stream media Corporations can destroy people and opposing leaders at will.
Oil companys are tied at the hip to the military industrial complex, who also have thier own private Armys to do thier dirty work in the USA and all over the world.
Where ever we have oil interests, the Army wont be too far behind.
From controlling lives in poor countrys to blackmailing and bribing washington politicians.
Corporations sponsers militants, extremists, and domestic terrorists.
One need only read about gang stalking in America,which is the recriuting and training grounds for these right wing extremist domestic terrorits, and you know that the money and the leaders are corporate sponsered.
The right wing neocon good old boy network under Bush/Cheney grew into a nationwide spy/stalking machine in the last 7 years.Billions have been spent on building this stazi police state, Not to protect the nation,but to put a strangle hold on people and reporting of the right wing religeous take over of our country.
Say what you will about the election of President Obama, but one thing is for sure, the American people , have had enough of the right wing neocon corporate fake christian criminal take over.
We are alive , thinking , and well.
We need to keep the Neocons out of office for the next 100 years if we are to save our Constitution, Freedoms and Democracy.
... walk on byyye...walk on byyye...
It makes it pretty easy to drive right on past any gas station with a SHELL sign. I've been doing this for a while now. Just imagine if everybody drove right on by . . .
Yes 'rice production' just stirred a memory. Wasn't Condyloma Rice on the board of Shell?
Even when a government is just and fair, along comes corporate money and the lure of power.
SS Chevronlizza Rice AKA "The Nigerian Queen"
PRIOR AND INFORMED CONSENT is the essence of a democracy. It is absent from the strictures defining corporation and government in far too many instances rendering such intances a form of organized crime that is a tragedy.
Thank you Andy Rowell for writing and Guardian News for publishing the story. Please continue to dig for the truth. Connect it to import export policies that caused the collapse of traditional rice production in the region colonalism named Nigeria. Dig beyond the colonization line that demonized traditional social structures. Dig into the pollution and social collapse that the oil industry has precipitated.
We are not witnessing an economic bubble collapse we are living through the internal disintegration of of a spiritually empty giant with rectums for ears.
I really must make sure I edit...
Collusion between Corporation and Government is the the greatest threat to any society.
Only reason collusion occurs is because of greed. Greed for money.
Given that Shell and other corporations are shameless and will not end these methods of doing business. It must be the government that should be shameful to have done business with these ever demanding international corporations and their Investors. Corporations best friend is a fascist regime.
There must be a way to bring an end to such collusion's or bring to minimum the monetary benefits reaped by these partnerships.
toophat for you!
More Americans need to hear and understand these events-all, as in Peru and along the Amazon. They need to hear how these corporations do not follow even the minimal anti-pollution saftey in these countries. They get away with stuff that they never would in the U.S.
The time has come for education. If Americans knew the consequences of Corps having the same rights as an individual ( but non of the responsibility), I would hope their would be an uprise of dissent.
When I was protesting, for almost two years, I has plenty of signs naming corporations and their ills. One was
"It's the corporations stupid"...