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Shell pays off the Ogoni, but must still settle with history

Jeff Sparrow [of Overland] writing on Crikey on Shell's settlement with the Ogoni people of Africa:

“If you call off the campaign, maybe we can do something for your brother.”

That was what Brian Anderson, the then managing director of Shell, was said to have told Ken Saro-Wiwa’s relatives, shortly before the Ogoni activist was executed by the Nigerian dictatorship in November 1995.

The claims of complicity by the oil company in the deaths of Saro-Wiwa and his companions were to be tested in a New York court. Instead, Shell has offered a settlement of $US15.5 million: “a humanitarian gesture”, it says.

Now, you do not often hear “multinational oil company” and “humantarianism” in the same sentence, and in that respect the payout represents a triumph for Saro-Wiwa’s family. His son, Ken Wiwa, explained: “It will provide some kind of psychological relief to have those who they feel were responsible for the violations of human rights, being held accountable for their roles in those human rights violations.”

Of course, the settlement, which explicitly avoids any acknowledgment of guilt, means that the allegations against Shell won’t be ventilated. The lawsuit claimed that company officials provided Nigerian police with weapons, boats and other equipment, took part in their operations and even encouraged them to shoot at protestors demonstrating at pipeline constructions. None of that will be investigated.

Further, the payout goes only to the families of the executed men, not to the Ogoni people more generally. The sum involved is, in any case, a pittance, especially given the huge revenues generated by the Nigerian oil fields and the gross devastation Shell’s operations have caused."

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