Shell execs accused of 'collaboration' over hanging of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa

Source: Telegraph

Shell execs accused of 'collaboration' over hanging of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa
Oil giant Shell's relationship with Nigeria's former military dictatorship will face scrutiny this week as a New York lawsuit begins, reports Leonard Doyle in Washington
Last Updated: 8:40AM BST 31 May 2009

"If you call off the campaign, maybe we can do something for your brother." A New York court will claims this week that Brian Anderson, Shell's former top official in Nigeria, used those words when asked to intercede with the country's military regime to save activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa from being executed.

After a secret trial, widely viewed as rigged, Mr Saro-Wiwa was convicted of murder and executed in November 1995 along with eight other members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). To international outrage, Mr Saro-Wiwa's body was burned with acid and thrown in an unmarked grave.

~snip~
Owens Saro-Wiwa also said that Mr Anderson also demanded three conditions for the activitists to show "goodwill" towards Shell.

The first was to get a press statement published in Nigerian newspapers, "that there was no environmental devastation in Ogoni". The second was to call off the protest against Shell and the Nigerian government internationally. The third was that a Channel Four documentary, Drilling Fields, be withdrawn.

Should the jury conclude that Mr Anderson and other executives were culpable in Nigeria's suppression of the protest movement, which led to numerous murders and the executions of the Ogoni Nine, they could be liable for huge damages to the families of those executed. The lawsuit asserts that as Mr Saro-Wiwa's campaign grew, Shell become worried that it would hit oil production across the Niger Delta, disrupt its operations and tarnish its image abroad. The multinational "sought to eliminate that threat, through a systematic campaign of human rights violations," the lawsuit alleges.



Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/niger/5413171/Shell-execs-accused-of-collaboration-over-hanging-of-Nigerian-activist-Ken-Saro-Wiwa.html

http://wiwavshell.org

Latest update is that it has been postponedL

Trial Postponed

May 26, 2009: The Wiwa v. Shell trial was originally scheduled to begin on May 27, 2009. On May 26, Chief Judge Kimba Wood ordered the trial postponed; she did not yet set a new trial date but set a hearing date for June 1, 2009 and stated that the earliest that jury selection will now begin is June 2, 2009. Please see the order, here. We will post updates to www.wiwavshell.org as soon as they become available.

Update: May 29, 2009: The hearing set for Monday has been removed from the court’s calendar.
http://wiwavshell.org/trial-schedule/


If you missed it there is also a thread on this in the DU videos forum:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x317510

They are a powserful entity to contend with, after all.

PLEASE watch the Paddy Chayefsky,Oscar award winning film,entitled Network.

Although originally written as a satire about corporatism and media control,it has proven to be prophetic.

Most notably the soliloquiy by Ned Beatty that there are no more countries,merely corporations.

And,Howard Beale's immortal words,"I'm mad as hell,and I'm NOT gonna take it anymore!"

We need to resurrect Beale's outrage.

Ressurrection for an insurrection,no?

Isn't that an awfully polite word for racketeering?

How's about some RICO action on this Shell game?

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Glad to see this finally coming to trial.

to me at all. I don't think big oil cares about anything except its business and profits.

to disrobe, thereby communicating great shame to the oil companies....? At least one of their protests were successful, at least temporarily.
Please post on facebook, myspace, twitter - get the word out and try to support the Nigerian people! It's not just Shell.

I was active with PEN back in the 90's, while we worked -- futilely - to bring pressure on both corporation and dictator alike.

Of course, the pressure assumed the possibility of human-like responses....

our heroes, or heroes unusual people, is a very important point. We don't have to be Ken Saro-Wiwa, or Helen Keller, to work to make the world a dramatically better place.

For others that are interested in PEN's work, here's a link to a great blog post on PENs website about Ken Saro-Wiwa.

I'll try again:
http://www.pen.org/ViewBlogPost.php?prmBlogID=1084&prmProfileID=48664

people don't like us?

here's a clue: might have something to do with stuff like this.

How many more examples do we need?

based partly on this travesty of justice. If you haven't read his novels, please try them; he is a former attorney who definitely writes with a liberal slant. His novel Conviction, for example, envisions a man convicted of murder, who is found innocent while on death row, but who due to legal technicalities was unable to be exonerated. Something similar is happening right now in Georgia (I think it is Georgia.)

if you had spent your life here in West Texas surrounded by Big Oil, you'd have to conclude that sometimes they're involved in death just for the entertainment value. These companies (in my lifetime) told injured workers they were fired just before being injured, their families were told they were fired just before they died, and if they sent flowers to the hospital or funerals, what great guys they were.

I can assure you that whatever comes out here, the truth is even worse....

Been browsing (lurking) here a while now.

At first I wasn't sure if you were really mostly North Americans <sarcasm .. that I might live to regret;)> with such progressive opinions/views.

I'm indebted to this forum (and contributors) for the wake up call.

I hope dearly that this case comes to a satisfactory conclusion. If I understand correctly civil suit excludes the possibility of a custodial sentence!? SHAME!

3>

:kick:

I think it was on the show "Living on Earth".

Thanks for keeping us apprised.

Business as usual.

There's a management team that knew how to deliver the goods.

Their responsibility to the stockholders fulfilled as promised. But what is the responsibility of the stockholders?

And in parts of the "civilized" world where their stockholders, company officials and board members live?

I wish the mainstream press would cover this more.