In this guest blog post, Professor Anna Zalik of York University Canada explores how governments and multinationals criminalise protest and gloss over the environmental injustices of oil extraction.

Q: What does the Canadian Government’s fury at opponents of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline have to do with the Nigerian ‘legaloil’ campaign?

A: Both positions are about justifying private profits and criminalizing protest.

The Nigerian government raised fuel prices on 1 January 2012, an act that led to a national strike and widespread protest among a mass movement, at times identifying as Occupy Nigeria. For about a decade the oil multinationals in Nigeria have tacitly endorsed a campaign, supported through industry consultants, to describe their production as “legal”. This use of the term ‘legal’ aimed  to counter the call for ‘resource control’ among a youth insurgency movement which partly supported itself off the trade in contraband oil. Like a range of social and environmental rights organizations in Nigeria and internationally, the youth insurgency in the Delta rose from opposition to the social and ecological  injustices that secured private-industry contracts to lift Nigerian oil.  During the height of the Ogoni movement and following Ken Saro Wiwa’s judicial murder in 1995, there was widespread consensus that the partnership between the Nigerian State and the multinational oil industry was ‘unjust’ regardless of whether or not it was ‘legal’.

In the aftermath of the Saro Wiwa’s execution, the Niger Deltan movements became increasingly militant. Escalations in the ‘oil war’ in the Niger Delta from 2004 onward were accompanied by a campaign by the oil industry operating in Nigeria to reframe their activities as socially-responsible and to label resistance movements criminal. In contrast to the sympathetic portrayal of the Ogoni uprising in the 1990s, or the 2002 “Women’s sit-in” against Chevron (in which a group of women threatened to disrobe on a platform), armed militia activity in the Delta came to be depicted internationally as a kind of ‘competitive thuggery’.

Part of the strategy for criminalizing protest involved the transnational oil companies pathologizing Niger Deltan unarmed protest not only externally and internationally, but also in the minds of those most subject to the ravages of oil extraction. Some residents of the Delta’s riverine region would refer to any facility takeover or shutdown as ‘violence’, a view promoted by industry in its emphasis on avoiding work stoppages and outlawing demonstrations. Mainstream media and policy analysts played a role in this criminalization, through the use of terms like terrorism to describe the deepening ungovernability of the region. Ultimately, if a key tactic of unarmed resistance movements – like blockades – became known as ‘violent’ protest, civil disobedience – which garnered international sympathy -would become an ineffective strategy: it is unsurprising that the Niger Deltan resistance movements became increasingly radicalised.

The web site Legaloil.com promotes the discursive and material criminalization of the oil bunkering trade in the Nigerian context – equating it with conflict diamonds. The legaloil website was established in 2002-3 when control of the contraband trade was said to have slipped increasingly out of the hands of the military and oil industry employees that previously directed it, into those of the armed youth that formerly served as their henchmen. Legaloil.com functions as a directly ‘global’ intervention that presents data concerning bunkered shipments (the source of which is hard to verify or monitor, but becomes ‘real’ once presented as graphs and tables), tracks threats and attacks on installations, and endorses chemical fingerprinting as means to distinguish between licit and ‘illicit’ oil. The site also seeks to present its data, and its proposals, as legitimated by Nigerian sources. Indeed, to be successful internationally, the ‘legal oil’ label requires reshaping the way exploitation in the Niger Delta is understood locally and globally so that ‘abusive’ relations of extraction come to be associated with bunkering activities, rather than the (state-sanctioned) operations of multinational oil companies so criticized in the 1990s.

Yet despite such efforts, the armed strategy of the Niger Deltan insurgency was partially successful in transferring resources to its leadership, although not to the average Niger Deltan or Nigerian.  The Deltan insurgency has been subdued since the  rise to the presidency of a Niger Deltan, Goodluck Jonathan, an outcome that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier. But as international attention to resistance in the Delta waned, so has international attention to corporate malpractice there. In the past month, Shell and Chevron operations in Nigeria have seen two major ‘accidents’, neither of which have received much attention in the global media.  Unfortunately, despite such business-as-usual in terms of the oil industry’s effects, some former insurgent leaders in fact supported Jonathan in critiquing the mass protests against the removal of fuel subsidies. Key Niger Deltan activists have endorsed Occupy Nigeria, however.

The Canadian government has endorsed a parallel campaign to Legaloil.com so as to whitewash the tar sands, in reaction to a transnational movement opposing its social and ecological impacts. The Harper government has relied on Ezra Levant (Canada’s answer to Rush Limbaugh) and his poorly informed, orientalist book to try to rebrand the tar sands as Ethical Oil. This campaign persists despite serious accidents whose costs are absorbed by Canada’s Indigenous people. A recent example is the oil spill on Lubicon territory in Alberta last May which was hushed up in the national media just days before the federal election.

Opposition to Canadian tar sands expansion, as in the case of support for Niger Deltan environmental rights groups in the 1990s, is both domestic and international. Western Canadian aboriginal groups, social justice and environmental movements have come out in droves to speak against the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline in hearings, acts that Canada’s government has labeled tainted by ‘foreign money’.  This week, a staff person of a far-from-radical Canadian environmental NGO signed a sworn affidavit concerning how the Canadian Prime Minister’s Office had described them as an ‘enemy of the people’ to their main funder. Opponents to tar sands expansion, it would seem, are increasingly “illegal”, according to Harper’s government.

Ultimately the protesters in Canada, like the Nigerian mass movement calling for a repeal of the fuel price hikes, call for a combination of resource and ecological sovereignty. They demand that restrictions on, and distribution of, oil and gas industry profits are made in the name of the public justice. They protest the ‘legally’ mandated extractive profiteering, of private industry-state partnerships in oil, gas and mining – profiteering which is increasingly understood as corporate theft of common property.

Watch the video by you and i films here:

The protest coincides with the 16th anniversary of the execution of writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists for their campaign against the environmental and social devastation caused by Shell and the Nigerian military regime. In response to peaceful protests by the minority Ogoni people in Nigeria, Shell collaborated with the military in a series of brutal crackdowns in the 1990s that claimed the lives of thousands. In October 2011, Platform released a new report on Shell’s role in recent human rights abuses perpetrated by the Nigerian military. The report also reveals how Shell has fuelled conflict through payments to armed gangs in the Delta region.

Events like the Shell Live Wire are used by the company to dissociate itself from human rights abuses and environmental devastation that results from its activities in Nigeria and elsewhere. The protest in London seeks to challenge Shell’s “social licence to operate”, thereby weakening its ability to commit abuses with impunity. The protest was organised by London Rising Tide and according to Indymedia encountered limited resistance from security:

Centrepoint security at first overstepped the mark, pushing people and trying to snatch the banner, but they retreated indoors and closed off the entrance when they realised they were being filmed, allowing the protest to continue right outside.

Hundreds of leaflets were handed out to interested passers-by, and police, who arrived after around 40 minutes, waited for instruction up the command chain before deciding to leave the protest alone.

Last night, CBC Radio, a national station in Canada broadcast an interview with Ben Amunwa, author of Platform’s new report, Counting the Cost, on Shell’s human rights abuses in Nigeria.

Listen to more Platform podcasts here.

Counting the Cost implicates Shell in cases of serious violence in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region from 2000 to 2010. The report uncovers how Shell’s routine payments to armed militants exacerbated conflicts, in one case leading to the destruction of Rumuekpe town where it is estimated that at least 60 people were killed. According to Platform’s report, Shell continues to rely on Nigerian government forces who have perpetrated systematic human rights abuses against local residents, including unlawful killings, torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. A summary of the report is available here.

Taken together, the [UNEP] report and admission of responsibility by Shell are powerful reminders of the crippling effect the oil industry continues to have on the Delta’s economy and environment, particularly on local communities that rely on the land and water for their survival.

The impoverished people from these Delta communities have borne the brunt of devastating, toxic pollution since drilling began there in the 1950s. Many Ogoni have never lived without contaminated soil and water, and although Shell stopped producing oil from Ogoni as a result of popular opposition in 1993, they still pump oil across Ogoniland through the Trans-Niger pipeline.

Other suits have been brought against Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary SPDC in Nigeria, the Netherlands, and the United States for environmental harms and human rights abuses related to the company’s oil operations in the Niger Delta. These claims have covered issues ranging from continued gas flaring (a leading emitter of greenhouse gases that contributes to acid rain and a practice that is illegal under Nigerian law), to the destruction of the delicate ecology of the Delta, to complicity in murder, torture and other serious harms. ERI was involved in a case in U.S. federal court over Shell’s complicity in the killings, torture and severe abuses committed by the Nigerian military against individual Ogoni in the early 1990s. That case was only settled in 2009 when Shell agreed to pay $15.5 million, which allowed for the creation of a trust for the Ogoni people and compensation for the victims in the case and their surviving relatives.

For more background on the Wiwa v Shell case, check out this report by Al-Jazeera, New York.

Shell has admitted liability but has a long way to go to make amends

Oil spills destroyed my village in Nigeria and decades of environmental and social injustice are still to be addressed.

By Patrick Naagbanton

Shell’s admission of liability for two massive oil spills in 2008-09 in my village of Bodo in the Niger Delta is a step forward in the long struggle for corporate accountability. An impoverished village that yesterday lay in ruins has today felt a welcome glimmer of hope and justice.

We are happy with the news that Shell could be forced to clean up the environmental devastation it has caused and to pay more than $400m in compensation. But our jubilation is overshadowed by more than five decades of environmental and social injustice yet to be addressed.

Bodo village is a fishing community in the minority Ogoni region of the Niger Delta. Shell was forced out of Ogoni in 1993, following mass protests led by writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed on 10 November 1995 alongside eight other campaigners. Shell’s vast network of oil wells, pipelines, flow-stations and gas flares remained in Ogoni and are an everyday reminder of what we have suffered.

Many of Shell’s rusty, leaky pipelines date back to the 1970s and have been poorly maintained ever since (see pages 31-36 and 43 of Friends of the Earth Netherlands report). It was equipment failure that caused Shell’s high-pressure Trans-Niger pipeline to rupture on 28 August 2008, gushing an estimated 2,000 barrels of oil per day into Bodo for weeks. The land and water was covered in thick layers of crude. Shell was also responsible for a second spill from the same pipeline on 2 February 2009.

Oil spills have effectively destroyed my community. Local farmers and fishers were forced to abandon their traditional ways of life. Bodo Creek is, ecologically speaking, dead. The fish that were not killed by the heavy pollution now reek of petroleum and cannot sustain a village population of 69,000 people. Shell has violated our basic human rights to food, water and livelihood. The compensation Shell offered us – £3,500 plus bags of rice and sugar – was insulting and wholly inadequate.

Oil spills are a daily occurrence in the Niger Delta. According to United Nations Development Programme, more than 6,800 spills were recorded between 1976 and 2001, but many more have gone unreported (see page 21 of UNDP report). Independent estimates put the total volume of oil spilled in the Delta over the last 50 years at 9m to 13m barrels, twice that of BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster. This estimate does not include the wider forms of oil pollution for which there is no data.

I helped the Bodo community file a case against Shell in the high court in London because it is easy for Shell to abuse the judicial system in Nigeria. The oil giant spent decades fighting lengthy appeals that bled the victims dry in legal costs. Shell is appealing against a 2006 order to pay $1.5bn in damages to the Ijaw communities of Bayelsa State. Since 2005, Shell has refused to comply with a court order to end gas flaring in the Iwherekan community. The The Ejama Ebubu community has waited more than 40 years for Shell to clean an oil spill from 1970. Life expectancy in the Delta is around 43 years (see page 24 of UNDP report). Rural communities impacted by pollution in the Niger Delta are routinely denied access to justice.

Taking the Bodo case to London, the seat of Shell’s global headquarters and a European oil capital, was a last resort. On this occasion, it has proved harder for Shell to evade responsibility. Our hope is that this case will force Shell to compensate more victims in a timely and adequate manner and to clean up its widespread pollution in the Delta. We note with dismay that Shell is refusing to compensate victims in alegal case brought by Nigerian farmers and Friends of the Earth in The Hague.

Across the Delta, we still face a number of challenges. Shell and the Nigerian authorities must take immediately action to clean up and remediate more than 2,000 oil spill sites (see page 16 of Friends of the Earth Netherlands report). Every day that Shell delays clean up, the ecological damage worsens. Oil is spreading across the creeks and mangrove forests and seeping deeper into the water table. The cumulative impact on the environment will take decades to remedy. A new UNEP report is expected to confirm the depths of the environmental damage the Ogoni region.

Nigerian laws must also change. Currently, victims of oil spills have highly limited statutory rights to compensation. A single payment of $7,000 (see page 52 of Amnesty report) can discharge oil companies from having to clean up oil spills no matter how big. Such token fines must be replaced with meaningful penalties that are stringently enforced. Companies like Shell cannot be allowed to exploit lax regulations abroad, and no company should be above the law.

How long will Bodo village have to wait before it will be restored by Shell? Ejama-Ebubu is still waiting more than 40 years on. In cases like Oruma, Shell’s clean up efforts have done more harm than good. Shell has scooped and dumped the oil inside pits and set them ablaze, incinerating local farmland. The past 50 years shows us that Shell will only take action under intense public pressure from investors, governments, and the international community. We won’t be holding our breath.

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A spectacular life-size steel bus, created as a memorial to Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, will be officially welcomed to its new home in Tottenham as part of Civic Day celebrations on Saturday 25 June.

The event, to be held at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre from 12noon, will feature poetry and speeches from local campaigners as well as live music, dance and drumming, film screenings, a barbecue and stalls from local artists. It is being organised by the Centre in collaboration with Platform, a group of environmentalists, artists, human rights campaigners, educationalists and community activists, who commissioned the Bus as part of their campaigning on human rights and oil in Nigeria. The striking steel vehicle will be at the centre of the celebrations, with drummers performing from its roof and its inside used to screen short films. Musicians from all parts of the community will contribute to the day.

Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed by the Nigerian government in 1995, together with 8 other activists who had campaigned against the environmental and social damage caused by Shell’s oil drilling activities in the Niger Delta. In 2005, on the Tenth anniversary of his execution, London-based acclaimed artist Sokari Douglas Camp CBE won the commission to create a spectacular steel Bus sculpture. Completed in 2006, the bus has toured the UK ever since, and will now be resident at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre, Town Hall Approach Road, where it will be the focus of a year of planned artistic and educational activities.

John Baraldi, Chief Executive of the Bernie Grant Arts Centre, said:

We are extremely happy that we will be the new home for Sokari Douglas Camp’s incredible sculpture – and that we can use Tottenham Civic Day to officially welcome the artwork to the Centre and the community. Bernie Grant worked tirelessly to defend the rights of all sections of our society, and was a passionate advocate for social justice, so the fit between artwork and space could not be better. We hope to see the bus become the focus for a sculpture park here.

Jane Trowell, Platform’s Education Coordinator, said:

The Bus is a people’s vehicle – it draws people in to thinking about social and environmental justice in a unique way. It has local, national and international significance, and we hope it will provoke debate and inspire the people of Tottenham. Bernie Grant, like Ken Saro-Wiwa, would have approved of it.

Maria Saro-Wiwa (widow of Ken Saro-Wiwa) will be a special guest  at the launch event, and a statement from artist Sokari Douglas Camp written for the occasion will be read out.Visitors will also be able to take a tour behind the scenes at the Arts Centre and even watch films screened inside the bus itself. The event is free to all, and the official launch event will start at 1pm.
ENDS
Notes for Editors
This artwork and event presents a spectacular photo opportunity. If you would like to discuss photography on the day or in advance, or for any other information, please contact Dan Lines.

Confirmed speakers on the day will include:
John Baraldi, Chief Executive, BGAC

Jane Trowell, Platform

Zena Edwards – Poet with strong Tottenham connections, who has performed at WOMAD, The London Jazz Festival, Poetry International at the Royal Festival Hall, Glastonbury and many others.

Ben Amunwa, campaigner on oil and human rights in Nigeria, Platform
Other speakers tbc

About the Bernie Grant Arts Centre
The Bernie Grant Arts Centre is named for Bernie Grant MP (1944-200), one of Britain’s first black MPs and a tireless campaigner for equality and cross-cultural understanding. Designed by award winning architect David Adjaye, and opened in 2007, the centre includes a a 274-seat auditorium, studio/rehearsal space, café/bar, multimedia workspaces and open spaces. The centre is committed to programming work that reflects and engages the full diversity of its community, and is home to award-winning dance company Tavaziva.

About Platform

Platform campaigns on issues of social and environmental justice, bringing together the skills of researchers, activists and artists. For the past 15 years the focus has been on oil and coal, climate change, and the financial systems that underpin it. Platform works in solidarity with affected communities abroad but looks at how to reduce London and the UK’s negative impacts on those communities. In 2004, the project Remember Saro-Wiwa was initiated, funded by Arts Council England and Roddick Foundation, to create a Living Memorial to Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Press contacts:

Jane Trowell, Education Coordinator/Ben Amunwa, Nigeria oil and human rights campaigner (020 7403 3738)

The Black Gold Injustice: A Permanent Condition?

*Race * Poverty * Environment * Justice * Action*

Join a new series of events to explore how our daily lives connect to climate change in Africa, the Caribbean and beyond
A global economy based on fossil fuels will lead to more natural disasters, resource wars and scorched frontiers of oil & gas exploration. Across the world, it is our Black and indigenous communities who are hit hardest by climate change and pollution. But why should these groups be denied the right to livelihood, or to clean and healthy environments? Social justice movements can challenge the ‘environmental racism’ embedded in our dependence on fossil fuels.

Reserve tickets ASAP on Email: gcampbell@acnglasgow.org and tel: 07758253823.

16^th April – 6pm African, Caribbean Network Office, 6pm, 30 Bell Street, Glasgow - Ben Amunwa of the remember saro-wiwa  project leads ”No Condition is Permanent: oil politics and resistance” – a discussion-based workshop on strategies to address environmental injustice, it’s race, class and gender impacts, in Africa and beyond.

19^th April – Edinburgh University, Balcony Room, 12-2pm Ben Amunwa of Remember Saro-Wiwa Project leads ”No Condition is Permanent: oil politics and resistance” – a discussion-based workshop on strategies to address environmental injustice, it’s race, class and gender impacts, in Africa and beyond.

19^th April Aberdeen 6-8pm – University of Aberdeen (MacRobert Building near the intersection between King Street and St Machar Drive) MacRobert Building King’s College, Aberdeen, AB24 5U -Debate: ‘”Exploitation or Development? Oil, Politics and Human Rights in Nigeria” - Ben Amunwa of Remember SaroWiwa Project and other speakers. With a discussion on “how women’s experiences of our local environments are significant in understanding the power structures that determine the global conditions of our struggles.”

3^rd May – Edinburgh University, Teviot Dining Room 1-3pm - Maria Adebowale – Director Capacity Global – Living in a clean and health environment is everyone’s right

3^rd May – 6pm Glasgow, African, Caribbean Network Office, 30 Bell Street, Glasgow -Maria Adebowale – Director Capacity Global – Living in a clean and health environment is everyone’s right.

Black Gold Injustice organisers are from all over the UK. We recognise the integral links between anti-racist struggle, social justice and environmental injustices. We are committed to integrating an anti-oppression framework and analysis into all of our work. This means addressing whose voices are heard, which priorities are chosen, what actions are taken, who does the work, and who gets the credit.

Our aim is to connect our communities fighting for basic human and environmental rights whom refuse to let ourselves or those close to us, live in uninhabitable conditions. We will continue to provide tools and perspectives for developing multiracial perspectives and inclusive strategies for action to defend our communities for dignity and justice in the face of growing inequality.

Supported and Organised by:

The African and Caribbean Network Ltd (A&CN) is a voluntary sector umbrella organisation and coordination body providing surgery, advice and support services in housing, anti-poverty work, employment, group capacity building and community development for 40+ African and Caribbean community groups representing 10,000 people in Glasgow and the surrounding region.

So We Stand is a peoples movement for empowering social change building self defence strategies to better our lives and communities.We provide training, support, and solidarity to grassroots struggles for environmental, social and multi-racial justice. We engage with popular education to build a culture of creative action and self-determination connecting different local experiences of injustice to protect life.

AfroGossip are an inspirational medium for African & Caribbean communities based in Scotland? We promote and encourage greater awareness and appreciation of the African culture through media. We showcase and create opportunities for fresh talent and already established entertainers/ performers of all backgrounds while developing Black pride to challenge wrongful stereotypical views associated with people of black origin.

AMINA – The Muslim Women’s Resource Centre is a Scotland-wide Charity works with mainstream agencies and policy makers to enhance their understanding of muslim community and of barriers preventing muslim women from accessing services and participating in the society. MWRC also provides direct helping services, community development and a listening ear to muslim women.

Remember Saro-Wiwa is a coalition of UK-based organisations and individuals encompassing the arts and literature, human rights and environmental and development issues.

Platform London works across disciplines for social and ecological justice. It combines the transformatory power of art with the tangible goals of campaigning, the rigour of in-depth research with the vision to promote alternative futures.

Capacity Global believes that everyone has the right to live in a clean and healthy environmen. Any action, item or process infringing on this right can be described as environmental injustice. We work specifically with people and communities in urban areas, who suffer most from environmental injustice, to ensure their voices get heard and fight environmental injustice to create opportunities for environmental justice.

Scottish Ecological Design Association (SEDA)(http://www.seda.uk.net/) aims to promote the design of communities, environments, projects, systems, services, materials and products which enhance the quality of life of and are not harmful to living species and planetary ecology.

Gratefully Supported by:

Artists Project Earth (APE) (www.apeuk.org/) aims to create a better world through the power of music and the arts.

SHAKE! reflects the distinctive approach of PLATFORM, which attracted me to them in the first place: challenging the misdeeds of the largest centres of power in the world – corporations and banks as vast as Shell, BP and RBS – using, in part, the resources of creativity and art. One example is standing outside the Stephen Lawrence Centre right now – the Living Memorial to Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight of his fellow activists, executed for their role in the non-violent resistance to Shell’s abuse of the land and people of Ogoniland in the Niger Delta. A sculpture in the form of a Nigerian bus, it’s just one of the many creative interventions made by PLATFORM in pursuit of social and environmental justice.

So I was naturally excited about the opportunity to get involved with bringing these elements to the sorts of people – indeed, as mentioned, some of the very people – that I work with on a daily basis. And, of course, I was excited about doing it in the Stephen Lawrence Centre, another memorial, this one to the British teenager whose murder was subject to an investigation that led to the Metropolitan Police being condemned as ‘institutionally racist’. The SLC is certainly a living memorial, and I see it as an act of hopeful defiance in the face of hatred, injustice and cynicism.

The bulk of the work done at SHAKE! has been creative. Having been introduced to the stories of Ken Saro-Wiwa and Stephen Lawrence, and having been fortunate enough to meet in person Doreen Lawrence, Stephen’s mother, the participants have responded both personally and analytically, and used these responses to form the basis of what they have produced. There have been three groups – music, video and spoken word, which are beginning to work together. Poems have been spoken over African beats; a roving film-crew is interviewing hopeful DJs. We haven’t reached the end of the course yet, where things will all tie together, but I just spoke to one of the participants. He told me that he didn’t know what to expect, but he’s found an outlet to express himself where there are no holds barred. He has other outlets – sometimes he boxes – but he’s enjoyed a different kind of outlet, one that ‘feels gentle’. The discussions about ways people have challenged injustice led him to tell me that ‘knowing that there are ways of making a difference inspires you’.

I’ve also been touched. Seeing young people feel moved by injustice, and feel grasped by a commitment to act against it, is affecting. We are already talking amongst ourselves about how to continue our connection with the participants, to create an ongoing exploration of all that’s been raised here. I guess this is another way of saying – it’s been a good week so far! But there isn’t a lot more time for all this reflection – there’s work to be done…