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As President Bush Meets with the CEO of Chevron Texaco in
Nigeria, a Look at Chevron's Role in the Killing of Two Nigerian
Villagers
INTRO: National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice is with
Bush on his African tour. Rice was a board member of Chevron
when the villagers were killed in 1998. Today, we spend the
hour with the documentary "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and
Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship.
8:01-8:20 As President Bush Meets with Top Oil Industry
Execs in Nigeria, a Look at Chevron's Role in the Killing
of Two Nigerian Activists
President Bush arrives in Nigeria today.
As wraps up his five-day Africa tour, he is accompanied
by a large entourage of corporate executives. Front and center
are the oil executives. Bush is set to meet with Chevron Texaco
CEO and chairman Dave O'Reilly. Other transnational corporations
attending include Exxon-Mobil and Shell Petroleum.
Bush is joined by his National Security Advisor, Condoleeza
Rice. Rice is a former board member of Chevron. The company
named an oil tanker after her, the Condoleeza Rice.
Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer, cranking out more
than 2 million barrels a day. Nearly 750,000 barrels of Nigeria's
oil go to the United States every day. That is 8 percent of
total U.S. crude oil imports.
A former U.S. diplomat in Africa, Vincent Farley told Cox
News Service: "If the U.S. intervention in Iraq does
not bring peace in the Middle East, then the U.S. may have
to look to other sources of oil." He said, "And
Africa is at the top of the list."
On the ground in Nigeria, there is an oil war raging. Villagers
in the oil-rich Niger Delta are rising up, demanding an end
to a system that keeps them in poverty as their government
pumps Nigeria's natural resources to Western nations, enriching
itself and oil executives. In unprecedented acts of resistance,
villagers have seized oil rigs, barges and helicopters belonging
to transnational oil corporations.
The oil companies are fighting back. Today, we're going
to take an in-depth look at one of these cases.
In 1998, Democracy Now! revealed for the first time that
Chevron played a role in the killing of two Nigerian villagers.
The San Francisco-based oil company helped facilitate an
attack by the feared Nigerian Navy and notorious Mobile Police
(MOPOL).
In an interview with Democracy Now!, a Chevron official
acknowledged that on May 28, 1998, the company transported
Nigerian soldiers to their Parabe oil platform and barge in
the Niger Delta, which dozens of community activists had occupied.
The protestors were demanding that Chevron contribute more
to the development of the impoverished oil region where they
live. In the interview, Chevron spokesperson Sola Omole was
asked:
Q: Who took them in, on Thursday morning, the Mobile Police,
the Navy? A: We did. We did. Chevron did. We took them there.
Q: By how? A: Helicopters, yes, we took them in. Q: Who authorized
the call for the military to come in? A: That's Chevron's
management.
Soon after landing in Chevron-leased helicopters, the Nigerian
military shot to death two protesters, Jola Ogungbeje and
Aroleka Irowaninu, and wounded several others. The eleven
activists were detained for three weeks.
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.
Nigerian activists charge that Chevron's oil operations
pollute their land, severely hampering fishing and farming,
their only means of livelihood. The U.S. multinational Chevron
Texaco is the third largest oil producer in Nigeria. Oil money
provides roughly 80 percent of the dictatorship's revenue.
"It is very clear that Chevron, just like Shell, uses
the military to protect its oil activities. They drill and
they kill," Nigerian environmental attorney Oronto Douglas
told Democracy Now!.
In May 1999, family members of those killed in the attack,
along with one of those injured, filed a landmark lawsuit
against Chevron Texaco. The lawsuit was filed in a U.S. court
using the Alien Tort Claims Settlement Act. Chevron Texaco
has repeatedly attempted to have the suit thrown out, without
success.
Just two months ago, a court in San Francisco heard oral
arguments to decide whether the victims can sue the parent
company, Chevron Texaco, rather its Nigerian subsidiary, Chevron
Texaco Nigeria Limited. According to the Center for Constitutional
Rights, if the court backs the victims it will greatly aid
several other human rights cases currently pending in U.S.
courts that seek to hold multinational corporations responsible
for their involvement in human rights abuses abroad.
Today, as Bush arrives in Nigeria with oil at the top of
his agenda, we play an excerpt of an interview with Ogoni
activist Ken Sarowiwa,, and the Democracy Now! expose, is
"Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship.
- Interview with Ogoni activist Ken Sarowiwa, who led the
movement against Shell Oil in Ogoniland. This interview
was conducted months before he was executed by the Nigerian
military on November 10th, 1995.
- "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship,"
produced by Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill in 1998 and engineered
by Dredd Scott Keys.
8:208:21 One Minute Music Break
8:21-8:40 "Drilling and Killing," Cont'd
8:40-8:41 One Minute Music Break
8:41-8:58 "Drilling and Killing," Cont'd
8:58-8:59 Outro and Credits
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Kris Abrams, Mike Burke, Angie
Karran, Sharif Abdul Kouddous, Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press,
Noah Reibel and Vilka Tzouras. Mike Di Filippo is our music
maestro and engineer. Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston,
Orlando Richards, Simba Rousseau, Rafael delaUz, Gabriel Weiss,
Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis
Moynihan, Jenny Filipazzo and Ionnis Mookas.
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