There is an alarming record of human rights abuses by governments and corporations associated with fossil fuel operations, resulting in forced relocation, and the brutal and sometimes deadly suppression of critics.
Oil Change International has a long history of working with many of these front line communities - particularly those in Nigeria.
Scholars have examined the relationship between corruption, authoritarian governments, governance, conflict, and extractive industries, and have found strong evidence for a ‘repression effect’, which holds that resource wealth retards democratisation by enabling the government to better fund the apparatus of repression.
Citizens in Chad and Cameroon voiced loud concerns to the World Bank that the financing and revenues for the Chad-Cameroon oil project would fuel an ongoing civil war and intimidation of citizens in affected communities. These fears were justified when it was revealed that the President of Chad spent millions of dollars of the first instalment of project funds on weapons - and more recently as the Government of Chad is attempting to divert more oil money away from its people.
Dependence on oil is also associated with a higher risk of civil war. World Bank analyst Paul Collier has demonstrated that countries that depend on resource exports run a risk of civil war that is forty times greater than countries with no resource exports. This is attributable to a variety of factors, including struggles among various factions for control of the resources and the grievances of groups impacted by poorly managed resource extraction.
A well-documented instance of corporate collusion in human rights abuses is Burma. The Yadana and Yetagun pipelines built by Unocal and Halliburton (US), Premier Oil (UK) and TotalFinaElf (France/Belgium) are the largest foreign investment projects in Burma. In response to a lawsuit initiated in 2000 by local villagers, with the support of EarthRights International and the Center for Constitutional Rights, a US federal judge found that there was:
“evidence demonstrating that before joining the Project, Unocal knew that the military had a record of committing human rights abuses; that the Project hired the military to provide security for the Project, a military that forced villagers to work and entire villages to relocate for the benefit of the Project; that the military, while forcing villagers to work and relocate, committed numerous acts of violence; and that Unocal knew or should have known that the military did commit, was committing, and would continue to commit these [abuses].”
In April 2005 Unocal agreed to compensate Burmese villagers in a landmark case.
Nigeria, the Delta, and Ken Saro-Wiwa
“This is it – they are going to arrest us all and execute us. All for Shell.”
– Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10 days before he was last arrested, May 12, 1994.
Ten years ago the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa dramatically and tragically illustrated the price of oil. Nine men - Baribor Bera, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbokoo, Barinem Kiobel, John Kpuinen, Paul Levura, Felix Nuate and Ken Saro-Wiwa - died on the morning of November 10, 1995, in the yard of Nigeria’s Port Harcourt prison. Witnesses reported that Saro-Wiwa’s last words were “Lord take my soul, but the struggle continues”.
It has. A coalition of environmental and human rights organizations has mounted a national tour on the occasion of the Tenth Anniversary of the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa. What began in 1990 as a call for the environmental and social rights of an ethnic minority group against a brutal military regime and the oil companies that fueled it, has grown to be a catalyst for global movements for Nigerian democracy, minority rights, corporate accountability, and reduced dependence on oil.
Yet ten years on unrelieved environmental devastation, poverty, and growing instability plague Delta communities. Gas flares still burn around the clock throughout the Delta, revealing the pipelines that still criss-cross the land, and the spills that still foul it. Shell has made no move to accept responsibility for or clean up Ogoni’s polluted environment. And the nascent Nigerian democracy has made no move to review the case–Ken Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues remain convicted of a crime they did not commit.
Meanwhile, oil continues to make headlines: climate change is well underway, oil prices are spiking, and several wars, driven at least in part by oil interests, are being waged. Around the world minorities, indigenous peoples and local communities struggle, under increasingly difficult odds, to protect their lands from oil and gas extraction. Anger and marginalization, as well as poverty, air, land, and water pollution, and militarization are rising in oil producing communities.
November 10, 2005 marks the Tenth Anniversary of the deaths of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues. It is the time to publicly commemorate the lives of the Ogoni Nine, and all Ogoni who have lost lives in their non-violent struggle. It is a unique, powerful moment to galvanize public attention and action for the Ogoni People, the Delta, and the price of oil.
