Text by Sarah Phelan
Shell has decided to pay $15.5 million to settle with the family of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the relations of other activists killed in Nigeria.
Brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Saro-Wiwa’s family and others in 1996, the New York-based lawsuit accused Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary of complicity in the writer’s 1995 hanging and the killings or persecution of other environmental activists in the Niger Delta.
Shell was fighting the lawsuit until last week, when a federal appellate court ruled that the plaintiffs could see the company’s Nigerian subsidiary in American courts. That ruling overturned a March decision in the company’s favor.
According to CNN, Shell said it had “no part in the violence that took place,” and called the $15.5 million settlement, “a humanitarian gesture to set up a trust fund to benefit the Ogoni people.”
Saro-Wiwa’s son, Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr. told CNN that, “It enables us to draw a line under the past and actually face the future with something tangible, some hope that this is the beginning of a better engagement between all the stakeholders in this issue.”
Shell’s settlement coincides with a California judge’s decision to throw out a key environmental report on Chevron Corp.’s contentious renovation of its Richmond refinery.
Judge Barbara Zuniga of the Contra Costa County Superior Court ruled that the report was too vague on the question of whether the project will allow the 107-year-old refinery to process heavier grades of crude oil than it currently does. Zuniga also faulted the report for not analyzing the project’s new hydrogen pipelines, and criticized Richmond for giving Chevron a permit before the company submitted a plan for limiting greenhouse gases after the upgrade.The judge’s ruling did not say whether work on the project, which Chevron began in September, after winning the City Council’s approval in July, must stop.
Will Shell’s decision to settle save it from the “Chevwrong” subvertisement campaign that Chevron has been bombarded with this summer—and the need to hire ex-reporters to make itself look good? Only time will tell.