Drilling and Killing: Landmark Trial Against Chevron Begins Over its Role in the Niger Delta

Amy Goodman: A landmark trial has begun against the oil giant Chevron. A San Francisco district court is hearing a case brought by Nigerian plaintiffs who accuse Chevron of recruiting and supplying Nigerian military forces involved in a May 1998 shooting and killing of protesters in the oil-rich Niger Delta. The protesters were occupying a Chevron-owned oil platform called the Parabe platform, demanding jobs and compensation for environmental damage to their communities.

Soon after landing in Chevron-leased helicopters, the Nigerian military shot to death two protesters and wounded several others. The eleven activists were detained for three weeks, thrown into the notorious Nigerian jails. During their imprisonment, one activist said he was handcuffed and hung from a ceiling fan hook for hours for refusing to sign a statement written by Nigerian federal authorities. Chevron claims force was used to defend the platform from a violent assault and hostage-taking by the protesters.

Chevron is being sued under the Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows foreign nationals to take legal action over crimes against them overseas.

In a moment, we'll be joined by two human rights activists involved in the case, but first I want to turn to an excerpt of the documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship. Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill and I traveled to the Niger Delta to investigate Chevron's role in the killings in 1998. In the documentary, a Chevron official acknowledged to us that on May 28, 1998, the company transported Nigerian soldiers to the Parabe oil platform. This is an excerpt of Drilling & Killing.

Amy Goodman: Until now, Chevron has claimed that its only action against the occupation was to call the federal authorities and tell them what was happening. But in a startling admission in a three-hour interview with Democracy Now!, Chevron spokesperson Sola Omole acknowledged that Chevron did much more. He admitted that Chevron actually flew in the soldiers who did the killing. And he further admitted that those men were from the notorious Nigerian navy.

Sola Omole: I guess --

AG: Who took them in?

SO: What's that?

AG: Who took them in?

SO: Who took them in?

AG: On Thursday morning, the Mobile Police, the navy?

SO: We did. We did. We did. We, Chevron, did. We took them there.

AG: By how?

SO: Helicopters. Yes, we took them in.

AG: Who authorized the call for the military to come in?

SO: Chevron's management.

Jeremy Scahill: Chevron's management. So, Chevron authorized the call for the military and transported the navy to the barge. On top of that, Chevron's acting head of security, James Neku, flew in with the military the day of the attack.

AG: Were you on that helicopter?

James Neku: Yes, I was in the helicopter.

AG: And how many people were there in that helicopter?

JN: That helicopter had seven -- six of us. There were six of us, six officers.

AG: Including the Chevron pilot or not including?

JN: I think excluding the pilot. Including the pilot would be seven.

AG: And then, was it a mix of navy and --

JN: A mix of navy and the police. The police were armed with tear smokes.

AG: Was it the regular police or the Mobile Police?

JN: Mobile Police.

AG: The Mobile Police, also known as the kill 'n' go. That's the kill and go. Shell Oil, the largest producer of oil in Nigeria, came under heavy international condemnation in recent years for their use of the Mobile Police, forcing them to publicly renounce the use of the kill and go because of their brutal record in Ogoniland.

Oronto Douglas: They shoot without question. They kill. They maim. They rape. They destroy.

AG: Environmental lawyer Oronto Douglas was one of the lawyers on Ken Saro-Wiwa's defense team.

OD: The kill and go are a murderous band of undisciplined paramilitary Mobile Police force. Their order is to kill. When they go to a community, it's not to maintain peace, it is not to maintain order.

AG: It was for exposing the relationship between the Mobile Police, the Nigerian regime's henchmen, and a multinational oil giant that Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was ultimately executed.

Ogoni Man: Great Ogoni people!

Crowd: Great!

Ogoni Man: Great Ogoni people!

Crowd: Great!

Ogoni Man: I have devoted all my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be intimidated or blackmailed.

JS: An Ogoni man reciting the last speech of Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Ogoni Man: I have no doubt at all about the ultimate success of my cause, no matter the trials and tribulations which I and those who believe with me may encounter on our journey. Neither imprisonment nor death can stop our ultimate victory. I repeat that we all stand before history. I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial, and it is as well that …

JS: When we visited the parents of Ken Saro-Wiwa a few days before coming to Ilajeland, this man stood up and recited Saro-Wiwa's closing statement before the military tribunal that would ultimately hang him.

Ogoni Man: In my innocence of the false charge I face here, in my utter conviction, I call upon the Ogoni people, the peoples of the Niger Delta and the oppressed ethnic minorities of Nigeria to stand up now and fight fearlessly and peacefully for their rights. History is on their side. God is on their side. Bene Ogoni!

AG: Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa's final words of resistance continue to echo throughout the Niger Delta, but so does the fierce response from the Nigerian regime and its multinational partners.

This is a Democracy Now! special, Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship.

JS: And so, here we have, on May 28, 1998, Chevron flying in the Nigerian navy and the Mobile Police to confront a group of villagers who thought they were in the midst of a negotiation with the oil giant, which brings us to another admission by Chevron spokesperson Sola Omole. Again, listen carefully.

AG: Were any of the youths armed?

SO: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So I cannot say that they came armed with--there was talk about local charms and all that, but that's neither here nor there.

AG: So, you don't think that they came onto the boat armed, you're saying?

SO: No. No.

AG: The youths.

SO: Mm-hmm.

OD: It is very clear that Chevron, just like Shell, uses the military to protect its oil activities. They drill, and they kill.

JS: Again, environmentalist Oronto Douglas.

OD: They are shooting our people for just demanding for their right.

AG: Chevron contends that when the helicopters landed on the barge, the soldiers got out and issued a warning that if the villagers calmly dispersed, they would not be hurt. Villagers say there was no such warning, that the soldiers simply started shooting. Either way, where could those who had occupied the barge disperse to? The barge was surrounded by water in the Atlantic Ocean, miles from shore.

JS: They were then tear-gassed and shot. While Chevron security chief James Neku says that two of the villagers tried to disarm a soldier, which is why they were shot dead, Chevron contractor Bill Spencer says one of the men who was killed was actually trying to mediate the situation.

The final tally: two dead, one shot and seriously wounded, and reports of other injuries. And what of the eleven activists locked in the shipping container? They say they were held there for hours in what they described as suffocating heat. They were then transported to several jails in the dreaded Nigerian prison system. After three weeks, they were released.

AG: Bola Oyinbo was one of the eleven activists imprisoned after the barge occupation. He says the prison authorities tried to extract a confession of piracy and destruction of property from him by torturing him. They began with handcuffs.

Bola Oyinbo: They used the handcuff to hang me on a fan for almost five hours.

AG: Wait a second. They put you in handcuffs and hung you?

BO: Hung me. And there's a hook they use for ceiling fans. So they put me there for almost five hours.

AG: They hung you from a ceiling fan hook?

BO: Hook, yes.

AG: For five hours.

BO: Five good hours.

AG: Your feet weren't on the floor?

BO: My feet were not on the floor. I was hung, suspended in the air.

JS: We asked Bill Spencer what he thinks of the torture Bola Oyinbo says he endured.

Bill Spencer: I don't think anybody here is under the impression that when you go to jail in Nigeria, it's pleasant.

AG: Was their concern about the young people who were held in detention? Was there any follow-up?

BS: By me? Not at all. No.

AG: Were you concerned about them in detention?

BS: I was more concerned about the 200 people who work for me. I could care less about the people from the village, quite frankly.

AG: But once your people were safe?

BS: Did I personally have any concern for them? Not one little bit.

OD: Two people dead, several people injured, and there is now still a threat of clampdown on the local people.

JS: Again, environmentalist Oronto Douglas.

OD: What have they done? They have simply asked for: take care on our environment; give us a cup of water to drink, because you have polluted our water; give us the means of livelihood so that we can survive as a people. Is that too much?

Amy Goodman: An excerpt of Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, my documentary with Jeremy Scahill, based on our trip to the Niger Delta in 1998.

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