June, 08 2009, 05:43pm EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
David
Lerner, Riptide Communications 212.260.5000
Settlement Reached in Human Rights Cases Against Royal Dutch/Shell
WASHINGTON
Today, the parties in Wiwa v. Shell agreed to settle human
rights claims charging the Royal Dutch/Shell company, its Nigerian subsidiary,
Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC or Shell Nigeria), and the former
head of its Nigerian operation, Brian Anderson, with complicity in the torture,
killing, and other abuses of Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and other non-violent
Nigerian activists in the mid-1990s in the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta.
The settlement, whose
terms are public, provides a total of $15.5 million. These funds will
compensate the 10 plaintiffs, who include family members of the deceased
victims; establish a Trust intended to benefit the Ogoni people; and cover a
portion of plaintiffs' legal fees and costs. The settlement is only on
behalf of the individual plaintiffs for their individual claims. It does
not resolve outstanding issues between Shell and the Ogoni people, and the
plaintiffs did not negotiate on behalf of the Ogoni people.
Plaintiff Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jr.,
the son of Ken Saro-Wiwa explained, "In reaching this settlement, we were
very much aware that we are not the only Ogonis who have suffered in our
struggle with Shell, which is why we insisted on creating the Kiisi
Trust." The Kiisi Trust-Kiisi means "Progress"
in the plaintiffs' Ogoni language-will allow for initiatives in
Ogoni for educational endowments, skills development, agricultural development,
women's programs, small enterprise support, and adult literacy.
Judith Chomsky, cooperating attorney with
the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and of the attorneys who initiated
the lawsuit, stated, "The fortitude shown by our clients in the 13-year
struggle to hold Shell accountable has helped establish a principle that goes
beyond Shell and Nigeria-that
corporations, no matter how powerful, will be held to universal human rights
standards."
Added Jennie Green, the CCR staff attorney who
initiated the lawsuit in 1996, "This was one of the first cases to charge
a multinational corporation with human rights violations, and this settlement
confirms that multinational corporations can no longer act with the impunity
they once enjoyed."
Wiwa v. Royal Dutch
Petroleum, Wiwa v. SPDC, and Wiwa
v. Anderson are three lawsuits filed by CCR, co-counsel EarthRights
International (ERI), and private law firms on behalf of relatives of murdered
Ogoni activists and other injured Ogonis who were fighting for human rights and
environmental justice in their homeland. Plaintiffs charged Royal Dutch
Shell, Shell Nigeria, and Anderson with complicity in extrajudicial killing,
crimes against humanity, torture, and other human rights claims.
Plaintiffs in the case
include the relatives of the executed activists Ken Saro-Wiwa, John Kpuinen,
Saturday Doobee, Daniel Gbokoo, Felix Nuate, and Dr. Barinem Kiobel. Dr.
Owens Wiwa, Ken Saro-Wiwa's brother, and Michael Tema Vizor brought
claims for the torture and detention that resulted in their exile from Nigeria.
Further claims were brought by Karalolo Kogbara, who lost her arm, and on
behalf of Uebari N-nah, who was killed in attacks on Ogoni civilians.
Anthony
DiCaprio, an attorney who has worked on the case for many
years, commented, "Throughout this very long process, I have been humbled
by our clients' unwavering courage and resilience. Their satisfaction
with the result that we have been able to achieve is extremely
gratifying."
Human rights attorney Paul Hoffman, trial counsel in the Wiwa cases and partner at the law firm of
Schonbrun, De Simone, Seplow, Harris and Hoffman, noted, "This settlement
is only a first step towards the resolution of still outstanding issues between
Shell and the Ogoni people."
Oil
operations in Nigeria
have been chief among Shell's assets for many decades. Critics charge
that Shell's aim for the lowest possible production cost, without regard
for the resulting damage to the surrounding people and land, has wreaked havoc
on local communities and the environment, including the still on-going practice
of gas flaring. In the early 1990s, the Ogoni, led by Ken Saro-Wiwa and
the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, began organized, non-violent
protests against Shell's practices. Shell grew increasingly concerned
with the heightened international prominence of the Ogoni movement and made payments
to security forces that they knew to be engaging in human rights violations
against the local communities. The military government violently
repressed the demonstrations, arrested Ogoni activists, and falsely accused
nine Ogoni activists of murder and bribed witnesses to give fake
testimony. The nine, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, were denied a fair trial
and then hanged on November 10, 1995.
Said Agnieszka Fryszman, co-counsel with the law
firm of Cohen Millstein Sellers & Toll, "The case has been pending
for many years, and this settlement puts an end to what would likely
have been yet another long round of appeals."
Marco Simons, ERI Legal Director, stated,
"The courts repeatedly rejected Shell's efforts to dismiss this
case, setting important legal precedents for the continued prosecution of
corporations in breach of international law. This reinforces the
plaintiffs' demands that corporations such as Shell safeguard human
rights and the environment."
For complete documentation of the legal briefs and further background
information, click here
or visit www.ccrjustice.org, www.earthrights.org, and www.sdshh.com.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. CCR is committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.
(212) 614-6464LATEST NEWS
GOP Still Lacks Votes to Pass Budget Bill 'Because It's a Moral Monstrosity,' Says Senate Democrat
"We have been debating amendments for 21 hours and we are still going because through 12 hours of debate and 21 hours of amendment votes, Republicans still don't have 50 votes for their bill," said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Jul 01, 2025
Even after an all-night session of amendment votes and wrangling behind closed doors, Senate Republicans still did not have enough support to pass their reconciliation package as of Tuesday morning, leaving party leaders scrambling to placate GOP holdovers who are purportedly nervous about the legislation's unprecedented cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) argued in a social media post that the reason for the GOP's inability to quickly rally its own members around the legislation is straightforward: "Because it's a moral monstrosity."
"We have been debating amendments for 21 hours and we are still going because through 12 hours of debate and 21 hours of amendment votes, Republicans still don't have 50 votes for their bill," Murphy wrote at roughly 5:30 am ET, as the marathon "vote-a-rama" continued with no end in sight.
With Democrats unanimously opposed to the bill, Senate Republicans can only afford to lose three GOP votes if they are to send the measure back to the House for final approval. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have said they will vote against the bill in its current form, and Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) are undecided.
Republican leaders have been working to bring Murkowski into the yes column with a proposal that would temporarily exempt Alaska and other states from the bill's massive cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, ripped the proposal as "absurd" and said it would reward the states with the highest SNAP error rates.
"Insanity reigns," Klobuchar wrote on social media.
Senate Republicans' margins became more difficult after Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) announced his opposition to the legislation over the weekend, pointing to the Senate version's devastating cuts to Medicaid.
"What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding's not there anymore?" Tillis asked in a floor speech on Sunday, citing an estimate of the number of people in North Carolina who could lose health insurance under the Republican bill.
Throughout the country, nearly 12 million people would lose coverage under the Senate reconciliation bill, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
"Kicking millions off healthcare, blowing up the national debt by trillions, and devastating generational economic harms—all being written into law on the fly," Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said early Tuesday morning after hours of debate and amendment votes.
Keep ReadingShow Less
At Least 95 Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks Including Massacres at Beach Café, Aid Points
"I saw body parts flying everywhere, and bodies cut and burned," said one eyewitness to a strike on the popular al-Baqa Café.
Jun 30, 2025
Israeli forces ramped up their genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip Monday, killing at least 95 Palestinians in attacks including massacres at a seaside café and a humanitarian aid distribution center and bombings of five school shelters housing displaced families and a hospital where refugees were sheltering in tents.
An Israeli strike targeted the al-Baqa Café in western Gaza City, one of the few operating businesses remaining after 633 days of Israel's obliteration of the coastal strip and a popular gathering place for journalists, university students, artists, and others seeking reliable internet service and a respite from nearly 21 months of near-relentless attacks.
Medical sources said at least 33 civilians were killed and nearly 50 others wounded in the massacre, including footballer Mustafa Abu Amira, photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab—who survived an earlier Israeli airstrike and is reportedly the 227th journalists killed by Israel since October 2023—and prominent artist Frans Al-Salmi, whose final painting depicting a young Palestinian woman killed by Israeli forces resembles photographs of its slain creator posted on social media after her killing.
Warning: Photos shows image of death
Survivor Ali Abu Ateila toldThe Associated Press that the café was crowded with women and children at the time of the attack.
"Without a warning, all of a sudden, a warplane hit the place, shaking it like an earthquake," he said.
Another survivor of the massacre told Britain's Sky News: "All I see is blood... Unbelievable. People come here to take a break from what they see inside Gaza. They come westward to breathe."
Eyewitness Ahmed Al-Nayrab toldAgence France-Presse that a "huge explosion shook the area."
"I saw body parts flying everywhere, and bodies cut and burned," he said. "It was a scene that made your skin crawl."
Witnesses and officials said Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) troops opened fire on Palestinians seeking food and other humanitarian aid from a U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution point in southern Gaza, killing 15 people amid near-daily massacres of aid-seekers.
"We were targeted by artillery," survivor Monzer Hisham Ismail told The Associated Press. Another survivor, Yousef Mahmoud Mokheimar, told the AP that Israeli troops "fired at us indiscriminately." Mokheimar was shot in the leg, another man who tried to rescue him was also shot.
IDF troops have killed nearly 600 Palestinian aid-seekers and wounded more than 4,000 others over the past month, with Israeli military officers and soldiers saying they were ordered to deliberately fire on civilians in search of food and other necessities amid Israel's weaponized starvation of Gaza.
Another 13 people were reportedly killed Monday when IDF warplanes bombed an aid warehouse in the Zeitoun quarter of southern Gaza City, according to al-Ahli Baptist Hospital officials cited by The Palestine Chronicle. IDF warplanes also reportedly bombed five schools housing displaced families, three of them in Zeitoun. Israeli forces also bombed the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinian families are sheltering in tents. It was reportedly the 12th time the hospital has been bombed since the start of the war.
The World Health Organization has documented more than 700 attacks on Gaza healthcare facilities since October 2023. Most of Gaza's hospitals are out of service due to Israeli attacks, some of which have been called genocidal by United Nations experts.
Israel's overall behavior in the war is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and using starvation as a weapon of war.
Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 204,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried under rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose casualty figures have been found to be generally accurate and even a likely undercount by peer-reviewed studies.
The intensified IDF attacks follow Israel's issuance of new forced evacuation orders amid the ongoing Operation Gideon's Chariots, an ongoing offensive which aims to conquer and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza and ethnically cleanse much of its population, possibly to make way for Jewish recolonization as advocated by many right-wing Israelis.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'We Cannot Be Silent': Tlaib Leads 19 US Lawmakers Demanding Israel Stop Starving Gaza
"This current blockade is starving Palestinian civilians in violation of international law, and the militarization of food will not help."
Jun 30, 2025
As the death toll from Israel's forced starvation of Palestinians continues to rise amid the ongoing U.S.-backed genocidal assault and siege of the Gaza Strip, Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Monday led 18 congressional colleagues in a letter demanding that the Trump administration push for an immediate cease-fire, an end to the Israeli blockade, and a resumption of humanitarian aid into the embattled coastal enclave.
"We are outraged at the weaponization of humanitarian aid and escalating use of starvation as a weapon of war by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people in Gaza," Tlaib (D-Mich.)—the only Palestinian American member of Congress—and the other lawmakers wrote in their letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. "For over three months, Israeli authorities have blocked nearly all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, fueling mass starvation and suffering among over 2 million people. This follows over 600 days of bombardment, destruction, and forced displacement, and nearly two decades of siege."
"According to experts, 100% of the population is now at risk of famine, and nearly half a million civilians, most of them children, are facing 'catastrophic' conditions of 'starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels,'" the legislators noted. "These actions are a direct violation of both U.S. and international humanitarian law, with devastating human consequences."
Gaza officials have reported that hundreds of Palestinians—including at least 66 children—have died in Gaza from malnutrition and lack of medicine since Israel ratcheted up its siege in early March. Earlier this month, the United Nations Children's Fund warned that childhood malnutrition was "rising at an alarming rate," with 5,119 children under the age of 5 treated for the life-threatening condition in May alone. Of those treated children, 636 were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, the most lethal form of the condition.
Meanwhile, nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,000 others have been injured as Israeli occupation forces carry out near-daily massacres of desperate people seeking food and other humanitarian aid at or near distribution sites run by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Israel Defense Forces officers and troops have said that they were ordered to shoot and shell aid-seeking Gazans, even when they posed no threat.
"This is not aid," the lawmakers' letter argues. "UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has warned that, under the GHF, 'aid distribution has become a death trap.' We cannot allow this to continue."
"We strongly oppose any efforts to dismantle the existing U.N.-led humanitarian coordination system in Gaza, which is ready to resume operations immediately once the blockade is lifted," the legislators wrote. "Replacing this system with the GHF further restricts lifesaving aid and undermines the work of long-standing, trusted humanitarian organizations. The result of this policy will be continued starvation and famine."
"We cannot be silent. This current blockade is starving Palestinian civilians in violation of international law, and the militarization of food will not help," the lawmakers added. "We demand an immediate end to the blockade, an immediate resumption of unfettered humanitarian aid entry into Gaza, the restoration of U.S. funding to UNRWA, and an immediate and lasting cease-fire. Any other path forward is a path toward greater hunger, famine, and death."
Since launching the retaliatory annihilation of Gaza in response to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have killed at least 56,531 Palestinians and wounded more than 133,600 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which also says over 14,000 people are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Upward of 2 million Gazans have been forcibly displaced, often more than once.
On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated a call for a cease-fire deal that would secure the release of the remaining 22 living Israeli and other hostages held by Hamas.
In addition to Tlaib, the letter to Rubio was signed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Democratic Reps. Greg Casar (Texas), Jesús "Chuy" García (Ill.), Al Green (Texas), Jonathan Jackson (Ill.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Henry "Hank"Johnson (Ga.), Summer Lee (Pa.), Jim McGovern (Mass.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Chellie Pingree (Maine), Mark Pocan (Wisc.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Delia Ramirez (Ill.), Paul Tonko (N.Y.), Nydia Velázquez (N.Y.), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.).
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular