The action has collected over 14,900 signatures since Wednesday 19 October. Let’s see if we can hit 20,000 by the end of the week! Please sign the petition now.

Ofehe was arrested on 22 February 2011, originally on “suspicion of people smuggling and forgery” and has been in detention since then. The Dutch authorities later altered the charges and accused Ofehe of plotting to blow up Shell pipelines in the oil-rich Niger Delta. His arrest follows what appears to be an elaborate year-long surveillance operation during which

his phones and computers were allegedly tapped and a camera placed in front of his office for three weeks.

Friends of the Earth Nigeria have raised concerns about the process of Ofehe’s arrest and the charges against him. A Dutch media channel reported:

Ofehe’s lawyers are sceptical about the motives in the case against their client. They are convinced that the Dutch authorities are complicit in a campaign to silence a vocal critic of the multinational oil companies and alleged misappropriation of oil revenues by the Nigerian government. “There’s something funny going on, that’s all I can say for now,” says Ed Manders.

Ofehe has played a central role in recent campaigning against the oil giant in Holland. In January 2011, Ofehe took Dutch parliamentarians on a tour of the Niger Delta on 26 January he appeared to give testimony before the Dutch Parliament’s inquiry into Shell’s environmental and social impact in Nigeria.

PLATFORM is concerned that the timing of Ofehe’s arrest and the charges against him could be politically motivated, and we urge the Dutch authorities to guarantee due process and a fair hearing. Follow the live blog at Radio Netherlands Worldwide here.

Perhaps it was only a matter of time. As interest in the story waned at The Guardian and other media outlets, Wikileaks engaged a wider range of partners, including 234NEXT.comin Nigeria, to leak country specific material. But the sheer number and size of documents would put any media organisation under strain, and within a few weeks 234NEXT had moved on like its predecessors. The task of editing and redacting the material presented a substantial burden which nobody seemed able to bear for too long.

Over the year, PLATFORM was able to provide timely analysis of cables that exposedShell’s infiltration of the government of Nigeria, BP’s cover up of a major offshore gas leak in Azerbaijan, ENI’s corruption in Uganda and UK firm Heritage offers to bribe officials in Congo. Now, 9 months after the first cables were released, we will be able to look deeper into the cables and expose the oil industry’s hidden channels of power, influence and abuse and the role of our governments have played.

Internal memos written in the aftermath of the executions of Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogonis in November 1995 reveal that Shell was anxious to maintain a “stable relationship” with The Times to counteract the critical edge to its coverage. Foreshadowing the Murdoch scandal of today, Shell’s media strategy in the late 1990s included “a programme of social contact between senior editorial figures and [Shell Chairman and Managing Director].”  By the tone of its recent articles, Shell’s engagement strategies with The Times appear to have paid off.

We weren’t the only ones disappointed with The Times’ special series. In a letter of protest, Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International UK, said:

Your two articles on Shell’s operations in Nigeria illustrate why the company has become so widely vilified for its impacts in the Niger Delta.

Overall the articles were (surprise, surprise) skewed in favor of the oil multinational. I identified 7 separate points in the articles which were either factually inaccurate, unbalanced or misleading.  I will deal with 3 points below.

1. “There are few police and soldiers to protect [Shell’s] pipelines” – July 11th

This is clearly inaccurate. Independent security studies in 2005 and 2009 confirm that Shell uses over 1,000 armed guards in Nigeria. These troops, some of whom are known locally as the “kill and go” police, are notorious for human rights violations.

I can only imagine that Shell were delighted by media coverage that downplays the extent to which company operations are linked to abusive government forces. When I asked energy editor of The Times and author of the article, Tim Webb, to provide a source to back up this statement, he was unable to.

2. “[Shell] employs 9,000 local youths to look for spills” – July 11th

This gives the impression that Shell is employing locals to monitor the environment for oil spills. What it doesn’t say is that many of these youth are the recipients of “security contracts”, Shell’s way of shifting the burden of security onto the community. This practice has had disasterous impacts, fuelling conflict between armed gangs who compete over lucrative contracts.

3. The  July 12^th article focused on Shell’s successful CSR projects in Nigeria, but ignored the failures.

While the article gave colourful descriptions of the Shell branded bed-sheets and “pink tiles” in Obio Cottage Hospital, Port Harcourt, it failed to mention that the rural Delta is littered with non-functioning white elephant projects by oil firms like Shell, ranging from empty hospitals and un-staffed schools to dried-up water tanks (see p 121 – 122 in Frynas, 2009).

A substantial percentage of Shell’s CSR projects (70% in 2001) were failing or non-existent. Much of Shell’s $600m “community development” funds have gone as ‘stay-at-home’ payments for local gangs, further exacerbating conflict. (see Watts, (2008) and Groves, Adam, (2009)).

The Times’ far glossier portrayal of Shell’s CSR may actually re-enforce the problem. According to professor George Frynas “If PR priorities precede development priorities, this is likely to affect the planning. … There is a real danger that PR priorities may constrain development efforts.”

Tim did not respond to points 2 & 3 (and 4, 5 and 7), but he said:

its unfortunately impossible to include everything one would like on such a complex issue in such short space.

I appreciate the challenges of journalists in the Delta. But what goes unsaid often speaks volumes about the real agenda. With Shell’s vast legacy of social and environmental devastation in the Niger Delta, responsible journalism requires a higher degree of accountability, better research and a willingness to ask harder questions in the face of those who act with impunity.

Basil Omiyi, Director of Shell Nigeria, says the settlement was ‘a way of drawing a line under the past’. Yet the only lines being drawn are battle lines in the struggle to hold corporations to account for human rights abuses, and Shell has been losing ground. This is only the beginning, and Shell faces another suit in the New York Southern District court for human rights abuses, and a legal action in The Hague for its repeated oil spills. Both involve Ogoni plaintiffs.

In an ideal world, the thousands ‘who suffered during the violence and turmoil in the 1990s’ that Brinded refers to in sympathy, would all have their day in court charging his company with aiding and abetting the military violence. Today, roughly 1,000 people are killed in the Niger Delta conflict annually. Shell, the largest operator in the region, continues to depend on military protection much like it did in the 1990s.

It is inconceivable that on the eve of a trial, a company would settle out of court for $15.5 million if it were innocent of any crime or wrongdoing. According to attorneys the payout is a much higher settlement than similar cases. Rather than being ready to ‘go to court to clear our name’, Shell has spent the last 12 years, and millions of dollars in legal fees, fighting to keep the evidence from going to a trial jury. Shell settled because of the damning evidence that exposes their complicity in human rights abuses.

Shell’s denials are already wearing thin from the corrosive drip of documentary evidence, which show regular payments between Shell and Nigerian soldiers, meetings with state security services requesting re-enforcements, and a myriad of testimonies in which the Shell logo appears on the sides of helicopters and trucks used to transport the police, known locally as the ‘kill & go’. The unsettling question is when will Shell come clean about their role in the murder of Ogonis? All the evidence has been published by the ShellGuilty coalition online, available for the court of public opinion to decide who is guilty.

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.

The response from Ogoni was noted on the Nigerian news site, NEXT:

Supporters of further legal actions against Shell were delighted with a story carried by a United Kingdom weekly, Independent on Sunday. The weekly, in a story entitled “Secret papers show how Shell targeted Nigeria oil protesters,” quoted copiously from internal Shell documents it claimed to have seen. The paper said the documents “revealed how the energy giant enlisted the help of the country’s brutal former military government to deal with protesters.”

Questions sent to Shell about this and other issues, including next week’s case against it by an Asaba court, were not responded to at press time.

Continue reading this article.

The long-standing efforts of the plaintiff’s legal team has established a damning body of evidence against Shell, much of it from formerly confidential company memos.  The evidence remains largely unpublished, but is accessible via public court records.

Research conducted by PLATFORM and Channel 4 into this documentary evidence exposes Shell’s intimate relationship with the military and shows how the alliance of the Nigerian regime and Shell used force to keep the Ogoni ‘under control’. For the first time, we bring you the documents that Shell does not want you knowing about.

PART ONE:

PART TWO:

For 14 years, Shell has denied responsibility for the violence and to this day, the company only admits to having paid field allowances to the military on two occaisions. According to Shell, neither of these occaisions resulted in human rights abuses.

These documents reveal that Shell lied to its staff, its shareholders, the general public and even the then Prime Minister, John Major over the nature of their partnership with and support of the Nigerian military.

How much longer can the company deny its critical role in the murder, torture and repression of Ogoni people? The research into the case against Shell will continue to shed new light on Shell’s complicity, reenforcing global efforts to hold Shell accountable in the court of public opinion.

Damning Evidence Reveals Shell’s Complicity In Crimes Against Humanity;

Landmark Case Resolved in Favor of Ogoni Plaintiffs After 14 Year Legal Battle

New York– After legal battles lasting nearly fourteen years, oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has been forced to pay a $15.5 million out-of-court settlement. Plaintiffs from the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta have successfully held Shell accountable for complicity in human rights atrocities committed against the Ogoni people in the 1990s, including the execution of writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. The legal action is one of the few cases brought under the U.S. Alien Tort Statute that have been resolved in favor of the plaintiffs. The settlement includes establishment of a $5 million trust to benefit local communities in Ogoni.

“We congratulate the plaintiffs on their victory. Let there be no doubt that Shell has emerged guilty. With this settlement, Shell is seeking to keep the overwhelming evidence of its crimes away from the scrutiny of a jury trial,” said Ben Amunwa from the UK-based remember saro-wiwa project. “Shell could not stand the damage of bad publicity around this human rights case. Global campaigners have helped to highlight Shell’s abuses and we share in this historic victory.”

“Shell is guilty. Despite this victory, justice will not be served in Ogoni and throughout the Delta until the gas flares are put out, the spills cleaned up, and the military stops protecting the oil companies and starts serving the people,” said Steve Kretzmann, Executive Director of Oil Change International. “This issue will not be solved until these legitimate grievances of the community are addressed.”

“This case should be a wake up call to multinational corporations that they will be held accountable for violations of international law, no matter where they occur,” said Han Shan, ShellGuilty Campaign Coordinator for Oil Change International.

The next phase of the struggle continues with another case involving an Ogoni plaintiff pending in the New York District Court, and a further legal action in The Hague, Netherlands, where Royal Dutch Shell is headquartered. The company faces a legal action in the Netherlands for repeated oil spills, brought by residents of the Niger Delta, with support from Friends of the Earth Netherlands and Friends of the Earth Nigeria.

“Shell will be dragged from the boardroom to the courthouse, time and again, until the company addresses the injustices at the root of the Niger Delta crisis and puts an end to its environmental devastation,” said Elizabeth Bast, International Program Director for Friends of the Earth U.S. “Communities, human rights lawyers and activists will continue to demand justice with the same determination and hope shown by Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni people.”

CONTACT:
U.K. (London): Ben Amunwa, PLATFORM/Remember Saro-Wiwa, +44-207-357-0055, +44-7891-454-714, ben@remembersarowiwa.com
U.S. (DC): Steve Kretzmann, Oil Change International, +1-202-497-1033; steve@priceofoil.org
U.S. (NY): Han Shan, Oil Change International, +1-917-418-4133, han@priceofoil.org
U.S. (DC): Elizabeth Bast, Friends of the Earth U.S., +1-202-222-0719, ebast@foe.org

The ShellGuilty campaign is a coalition effort of Friends of the Earth (www.foe.org), Oil Change International (www.priceofoil.org), and PLATFORM’s Remember Saro-Wiwa project (www.remembersarowiwa.com), with support from environmental and human rights groups in Nigeria, North America, and Europe. Visit www.ShellGuilty.com for more information.