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A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE? SHELL’S INVOLVEMENT IN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN NIGERIA IN THE 1990S Amnesty International is a global movement of more than 7 million people who campaign for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all. Our vision is for every person to enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards. We are independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion and are funded mainly by our membership and public donations. © Amnesty International 2017 Except where otherwise noted, content in this document is licensed under a Creative Commons (attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives, international 4.0) license. Cover photo: Collage over an image of a Shell gas flare at Bomu oil field, Ogoniland, 1994. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode © Tim Lambon / Greenpeace For more information please visit the permissions page on our website: www.amnesty.org Where material is attributed to a copyright owner other than Amnesty International this material is not subject to the Creative Commons lisence. First published in 2017 by Amnesty International Ltd Peter Benson House, 1 Easton Street London WC1X ODW, UK Index: AFR 44/7393/2017 Original language: English amnesty.org A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE? SHELL’S INVOLVEMENT IN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN NIGERIA IN THE 1990s 3 CONTENTS GLOSSARY 4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5 METHODOLOGY 14 PART ONE: THE OGONI CRISIS 17 1.1 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW 17 1.2 TIMELINE 35 PART TWO: SHELL'S ROLE IN THE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN OGONILAND 40 2.1 WHAT SHELL KNEW AND WHEN 41 2.2 SHELL IGNORED THE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS AND SAW OGONILAND AS AN ECONOMIC PROBLEM 46 2.3 SHELL SOLICITED THE INVOLVEMENT OF THE ARMED FORCES AND ENCOURAGED HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN OGONILAND 52 2.4 SHELL'S PAYMENTS AND ASSISTANCE TO THE SECURITY FORCES 61 2.5 COMPLICITY IN THE UNFAIR TRIAL AND EXECUTIONS 67 2.6 SHELL'S PARENT COMPANY DIRECTED ITS NIGERIA OPERATIONS 72 PART THREE: CORPORATE COMPLICITY 75 3.1 THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK 75 3.2 THE CASE AGAINST SHELL 82 CONCLUSION 86 ANNEX: SHELL RESPONSE 37 AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL NOVEMBER 2017, INDEX: AFR 44/7393/2017 4 A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE? SHELL’S INVOLVEMENT IN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN NIGERIA IN THE 1990s GLOSSARY ISTF Internal Security Task Force MOPOL Mobile Police, a paramilitary Nigeria police force MOSOP Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People NNPC Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation NYCOP National Youth Council of Ogoni People SIPC Shell International Petroleum Corporation (headquarters in London) SIPM Shell International Petroleum Maatchappij (headquarters in The Hague) SPDC Shell Petroleum Development Company (headquarters in Lagos) SPY Shell Supernumerary Police, the Nigerian police unit seconded to guard Shell property and personnel SSS State Security Service, Nigeria’s internal security and intelligence agency AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL NOVEMBER 2017, INDEX: AFR 44/7393/2017 A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE? SHELL’S INVOLVEMENT IN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN NIGERIA IN THE 1990s 5 Amnesty International torch lit vigil on Damsquare in Amsterdam, The Nether- lands on 11 1995 November, the day after the Ogoni Nine were executed © Amnesty International in Ogoniland. The military’s subsequent campaign directly led to widespread and serious human rights EXECUTIVE SUMMARY violations, including the unlawful killing of hundreds of Ogonis, as well as torture and other ill-treatment, including rape, and the destruction of homes and livelihoods. Many of these violations also amounted In November 1995, the Nigerian state arbitrarily to criminal offences. executed nine men after a blatantly unfair trial. The executions led to global condemnation. The United This report examines the role played by the UK- States and the European Union imposed sanctions Dutch multinational Shell in these human rights on Nigeria, and the Commonwealth group of nations violations and crimes. That the company was a central suspended the country’s membership. Officially player in the events in Ogoniland in the 1990s is accused of involvement in murder, the men had in fact undisputable: MOSOP was protesting against Shell’s been put on trial for confronting the Anglo-Dutch negative environmental and social impact on the oil giant, Shell, over its devastating impact on the Ogoni community and had told the company to leave Ogoniland region of Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta. the area. Shell stopped operations in Ogoniland in early 1993 citing security concerns, but subsequently The executions were the culmination of a brutal sought ways to re-enter the region and end the campaign by Nigeria’s military to silence the protests MOSOP protests. of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), led by author and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, Shell has always denied that the company played one of the men executed. MOSOP said that others any part in the violence and gross human rights had grown rich on the oil that was pumped from violations that took place in Ogoniland in the 1990s. under their soil, while pollution from oil spills and However, Amnesty International has undertaken a gas flaring had, “led to the complete degradation of detailed review of thousands of pages of internal the Ogoni environment, turning our homeland into company documents and witness statements which an ecological disaster.” In January 1993, MOSOP expose what Shell knew and how it engaged with declared that Shell was no longer welcome to operate the Nigerian security forces throughout this period. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL NOVEMBER 2017, INDEX: AFR 44/7393/2017 6 A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE? SHELL’S INVOLVEMENT IN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN NIGERIA IN THE 1990s Many of the company documents referenced in this also threatened to disrupt the flow of a pipeline report were released as part of legal proceedings in that carried oil from other regions across Ogoniland. the US and include accounts of meetings with the The government in Abuja was also worried that the Nigerian leadership, including the president General protests would spread throughout the oil-producing Sani Abacha, strategy papers, internal memos and region, where other communities had similar letters to officials. The report also draws on Amnesty grievances to the Ogonis. According to an internal International’s own archives and the organization’s Shell memo, General Sani Abacha, who seized power work in the Niger Delta at the time. This is the first in a coup in November 1993, “seemed to find it time any organization has brought all of this material unbelievable that such a small tribe could have the together and analysed it. In Amnesty International’s effrontery to cause such a lot of trouble.” view, the evidence raises serious questions about the extent of Shell’s involvement not just in gross violations but also in criminal conduct. SHELL KNEW MOSOP HAD A LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE SHELL AND THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT: While framing the Ogoni protests as a largely “INEXTRICABLY LINKED” economic problem, Shell downplayed the community’s concerns about the environment and other issues. In the 1990s Shell was the single most important In public statements Shell denied that its operations company in Nigeria and in 1995 pumped almost had caused environmental problems. This was one million barrels of crude oil a day, roughly half completely false. Internal documents reveal that senior of Nigeria’s total daily oil production. Nigeria’s oil staff were highly concerned about the poor state of exports made up 95.7% of the country’s foreign Shell’s ageing, inadequately maintained and earnings so were vital to the economy. leaky pipelines. In November 1994, the head of environmental studies for Shell Nigeria, Bopp Van The country and the company had a shared interest Dessel, resigned over the issue, saying that he felt in ensuring that the oil kept flowing. Shell and the unable to defend the company’s environmental government were business partners, running the record “without losing his personal integrity.” Van highly profitable Nigerian oil fields as a joint venture. Dessel went public with these allegations in a TV The two entities were in constant contact. As the interview in 1996 stating: chairperson of Shell Nigeria from 1994-7, Brian Anderson, conceded, “The government and the oil “(Shell managers) were not meeting their industry are inextricably entangled.” own standards; they were not meeting international standards. Any Shell site that Shell’s Nigerian operations were also of great I saw was polluted. Any terminal that I saw importance to the multinational's overall balance was polluted. It was clear to me that Shell sheet. A 1996 internal strategy document revealed was devastating the area.” that Nigeria was home to the single largest portion of Shell’s entire worldwide oil and gas reserves and While Van Dessel’s comments relate to all of the that Shell Nigeria had, “access to the biggest low Shell operations in the Niger Delta, other credible cost hydrocarbon resource base in the Group, with sources provide evidence of the specific situation enough oil to sustain production for almost 100 in Ogoniland. After taking up the case of Ogoniland years at current levels.” in 1996, the African Commission for Human and Peoples’ Rights found that pollution and environmental The Ogoni protests not only deprived Shell and the degradation in Ogoniland were at a level that was, government of access to wells in that area, they “humanly unacceptable and has made living in the AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL NOVEMBER 2017, INDEX: AFR 44/7393/2017 A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE? SHELL’S INVOLVEMENT IN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN NIGERIA IN THE 1990s 7 Ogoniland a nightmare”. A 2011 scientific study Despite announcing its withdrawal from Ogoniland, of the environment in Ogoniland conducted by the and knowing that the Ogoni people no longer wanted United Nations Environment Programme confirmed them to be there, Shell decided that its contractors that the land, air and water of Ogoniland were badly should continue to lay a new pipeline through the polluted and made clear that the oil pollution dated area.
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