Big news this week is the forking out by Shell Oil of US$15 million as an out of court settlement to the long oppressed Ogani people in Nigeria.
Scrubba will not forget Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other 8 environmental activists who were hung by the Nigerian military regime for standing up for their community and against Shell's devastating environmental practices in November 1995
As many commentators are suggesting - this decision opens the door for environmental, human rights and community activists to stand up against the appalling behaviour of corporations like Shell in this example.
Sure the money is not everything, and is a drop in the ocean for a big multinational like Shell, but a powerful principle remains. Through this settlement Shell may well claim they weren't to blame for the actions of the Nigerian government, and this is the pattern of mining companies around the world, where they hide behind brutal oppressive regimes, take the resources and pretend any management of the "local problem" is out of their hands.
Hey Shell - you did the drilling, you caused the mess, you didn't fairly deal directly with the local Ogani people when you knew the Nigerian Regime was oppressive and couldn't care less about the locals so long as they could get their hands on royalties from you. There is no excuse and the blood is on your hands and those that invest in you.
Check out a good article from the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/jun/09/saro-wiwa-shell
And the same goes for Australian companies like Newcrest. Check out their record at the Indonesian Toguraci gold mine in Halmahera, North Maluku province. In January 2004 local community rights and environmental protesters were shot at and beaten up, one protester was shot dead. But Newcrest argued it wasn't their fault, just an internal Indonesian problem. Invest and be damned.
And lets not forget Rio Tinto's foray into Indonesia's most oppressed province of West Papua.
Not certain if they are still directly involved in the Freeport debacle but the brutality certainly lives on. http://www.survival-international.org/news/3700
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