12-2-08 by dugan
It’s no surprise that a federal jury in San Francisco acquitted Chevron in the shooting of Nigerian protestors aboard a Chevron rig a decade ago. As I noted earlier, conditions 10 years ago in Nigeria were a lot different than today. The rise of armed rebel gangs that terrorized the Niger Delta made Chevron’s argument that the protesters were potentially violent more believable, even though at the time of the protest no organized violence was occurring against oil companies. Attorneys for the wounded protestors said they planned to appeal.
Here, from the Planetsave.com blog, are the arguments the court heard in a nutshell:
Accounts of the incident vary drastically: Chevron says the protesters were
violent, armed, and had taken workers hostage, while the protesters and
their lawyers claim they had been entirely peaceful and engaged in
civil disobedience.
The shooting, which killed one protester and wounded others, was at the hands of Nigerian government troops that were fed, housed and paid by Chevron. And there lies the problem. The rebel groups have effectively put the Nigerian military and
Chevron’s oil facilities in the same basket, seeing attacks on one as
attacks on the other. When an oil company controls its own military, what does that mean to global stability, and the reputation of the U.S. in the world?
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