"U.S. Oil From Nigeria Tainted With Blood"

[GreenPartyVoter]

Oil corporations have operated for decades in Nigeria, the world’s fifth-leading oil producer, with no fear of penalties for trashing the environment or violating the human rights of nine ethnic groups in the Niger Delta. The Ogoni, fishers and farmers like other peoples of the nine Niger Delta states, lived off the land until 1958 when Shell Nigeria began drilling oil. Gas flaring and river dredging for pipelines began almost immediately, transforming the fertile delta into a wasteland of oil, chemicals, and pollutants.

The resultant destruction of land and contamination of rivers has made it impossible for Niger Delta citizens to continue to fish and farm. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s leaders have grown rich from corporate oil, and gladly assign security forces to counter, and sometimes silence, citizen protests. In 1995 the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha deemed hanging to be the necessary means to quell the articulate voice of poet Ken Saro-Wiwa and his eight fellow Ogoni activists.

These nine Ogoni environmentalists were hanged in Nigeria following a sham trial that attempted to end protests against the government and Shell. Saro-Wiwa, who founded the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, had led these peaceful protests for almost two decades. One would have hoped that these activists' sacrifice, and the accompanying international outrage, would have led to an era of corporate responsibility and respect for human rights. Instead, a decade later, Niger Delta communities still struggle to survive as oil companies protect their own single-minded interests.

Case in point: According to a recent Amnesty International report, Chevron has failed to pursue an independent inquiry into Nigerian soldiers' use of force against more than 200 protesters at its Escravos oil terminal in Ugborodo, which resulted in 30 serious injuries and one death earlier this year. Similarly, an alleged security arrangement between a Shell Nigeria subcontractor and a criminal group in Odioma led to the murders of 17 people, the rape of two women, and the razing of 80 percent of the homes in the area. Neither the company nor the Nigerian government has investigated the incident.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1214-30.htm