David Cameron helps Shell polluters of Nigeria

This 2010 Amnesty International video says about itself:

Shell Oil: Human rights go up in flames

Gas flaring happens when oil is pumped out of the ground, producing gas. The gas is separated out and, in Nigeria, is usually burnt as waste. This practice, combined with numerous oil spills, has left communities in the Niger Delta with little option but to drink polluted water, eat contaminated fish, farm on spoiled land and breathe in air that smells of oil and gas. It also makes a mockery of Shell’s much-flaunted business principles.

By Paddy McGuffin in Britain:

Amnesty hits out at Britain’s intervention in Shell case

Thursday 18 April 2013

Amnesty International condemned today the British government’s intervention in a US Supreme Court case brought against oil giant Shell over alleged human rights abuses in Nigeria.

The charity said that the dismissal of the case of Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co on Wednesday was a severe blow for victims of human rights abuses in the Niger Delta and severely limits access to justice.

Amnesty accused the British government of contradicting its pledge to tackle corporate human rights abuses after the government intervened on Shell’s behalf arguing that the US was not the correct jurisdiction for such cases to be pursued.

The case was brought by members of the Ogoni community in the Niger Delta region in relation to alleged human rights violations committed against them and their families in the mid-1990s by the military government in power in Nigeria at the time.

The plaintiffs allege that Shell was complicit in these abuses, which include extrajudicial killings, torture, rape and crimes against humanity.

They had hoped to secure justice by taking a civil action against Shell under the alien tort statute, which allows courts in the US to hear cases brought by non-US citizens about human rights abuses committed elsewhere.

However the Supreme Court ruled that the statute does not apply to conduct that occurs outside the US.

Amnesty law and policy director Michael Bochenek said: “Today’s court decision dashed the hopes not only of the Ogoni survivors, but of the countless others who might have benefited from a law that enabled people to challenge human rights abuses which had gone unpunished elsewhere.”

Shell spill reported in Nigeria: here.

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• David Cameron eyes Human Rights Act repeal (theguardian.com)
• Murder Incorporated: Big Oil Pleads Immunity from Prosecution for Human Rights Crimes (sierraclub.typepad.com)