INSIDE: Foreign news 2 ● Home news 6 ● TV and Radio 10 ● Sport 11&12 daily
paper of the left
Morning Star incorporating the Daily Worker — for peace and socialism
Wednesday May 27 2009
60p
Parliamentary power games JEREMY CORBYN looks at the latest attacks on our democracy: p7 ALSO INSIDE John Wight uncovers the truth about Gurkhas • Gregor Gall on cutbacks
Shell in court over activists’ execution GLOBAL oil giant Shell will face a US court today charged with complicity in the state murder and torture of Nigerian activists who protested against the firm’s exploitation of the country’s gas reserves. Campaigners have hailed the trial as a landmark achievement merely for dragging a multinational into the dock.
The case has been brought by the family of Ken SaroWiwa, a writer and activist who was a committed opponent of Shell and the Nigerian regime. In 1994, Mr Saro-Wiwa and eight other activists from the Ogoni tribe were accused of causing the murder of four tribal chiefs and were subjected to a military tribunal without representation or right to appeal. They were found guilty and were hanged on November 10 1995. So great was the international outcry following the executions that British premier John Major described it as “judicial murder.” The trial, which begins in New York today, stems from two lawsuits accusing Royal Dutch Shell and Brian Anderson, the former managing director of its Nigerian subsidiary Shell Transport and Trading, of being complicit in the executions. The case is seen as having unprecedented repercussions for Shell and other multinationals which stand accused of human rights abuses across the world.
by PADDY McGUFFIN Shell has been active in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, which contains most of the country’s mineral resources, since 1958. The indigenous tribes of the region, including the Ogonis, have mounted resistance to what they see as the wholesale rape of their land. Farmlands and fishing waters have been destroyed and polluted to a horrific extent and deforestation, oil leaks and gas flares blight the landscape. A founder member of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, Mr Saro-Wiwa was a thorn in the side of a government which was increasingly reliant on the income generated by oil revenues. As the peaceful opposition grew, so too did the brutality of the military clampdown — with, campaigners argue, the tacit approval if not the active encouragement of Shell. The company denies the allegations. Mr Saro-Wiwa’s son Ken Wiwa said: “In a sense we already have a victory, because one of the things my father said was that Shell would one day have its day in court.” Turn to p4
Oil giant accused of complicity in Nigeria’s ‘Ogoni nine’ hangings
CLEAR MESSAGE: Campaigners protesting outside Shell’s AGM in London last week.
INSIDE: Rallies demand EU backing for farms 3 ● Liberalisation ‘has hurt postal service’ 6 ● TV & Radio 10 ● Sport 11&12