The Portuguese-language media is reporting that a rebellion took place last week against a number of diamond mining companies in the Curango municipality in north-east Angola. The rebellion, by mine workers was started after some unlicensed diamond miners were expelled, was brutally repressed by security forces working for the mining multinationals. The police report one person has been killed and over 120 people have been arrested. However human rights defenders are saying that there are at least five deaths and over 400 people have been detained.

One of the companies involved in the brutality is Luminas, which is owned partly by Israeli billionaire and settlement magnate, Lev Leviev. This is not the first time that security forces working for Leviev’s have been involved in violence against mine workers in Angola.

Africa: Leviev’s alliance with Angola’s central government, which won the country’s civil war, led to his gaining primary control of the country’s rough-diamond supply in 2000. A security company contracted by Leviev was accused this year by a local human-rights monitor of participating in practices of “humiliation, whipping, torture, sexual abuse, and, in some cases, assassinations.” Leviev’s formal response to the report did not directly address the abuses but touted his charitable activities in Angola.

In another connected story, members of the French government and businessmen are presently on trial in France for supplying illegal arms to Angola during the country’s civil war which was largely financed by diamonds. The monies involved in the diamond mines controlled by Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA, were huge for example in a six year period $3.7billion as were the number of people killed, wounded, raped and displaced - putting an added meaning to Blood Diamonds.

Tags:
Blood Diamonds
Angola
Palestine
Leviev

Mr Ayodeji Omotade has been charged with threatening, abusive, insulting, disorderly behavior towards British Airways (BA) crew, as a result of intervening in the violent deportation of a fellow Nigerian.

The man, who was thought to be about 30, was being held down in his seat by four or five police officers as the other passengers filed on board, and was crying out in broken English that he was afraid he would die if he were sent back to Nigeria……………….The officers took him off the plane, then returned and arrested Ayodeji Omotade, one of the passengers who had complained vociferously about his treatment. When others on board protested noisily about Mr Omotade’s detention, the captain ordered them all off the flight.

British Airways need to answer to the question why they are prepared to collaborate with the violent removal of a distraught asylum seeker? Why has the peaceful protest by passengers against the inhumane treatment of a deportee been treated as a criminal act? Other airlines, including Virgin Nigeria have refused to fly victims of ill-treatment from escorts, and those who fear for their lives. .

Mr Omotade is being punished for acting humanely towards someone in distress. This is not an extraordinary act. It is something most of us would do when witnessing brutality. It is a situation that any one of us could find ourselves at any time.

“What would you do if someone on your flight was distressed and crying out for help? Would you stay silent or would you speak? I spoke and BA didn’t like it. This type of corporate tyranny must be challenged and stopped.” Ayo Omotode

PRESS RELEASE

September 14th, 2008RESPECT NIGERIANS COALITION (RNC) TO HOLD A PEACEFUL PROTEST AT THE BRITISH AIRWAYS CORPORATE HEADQUATERS, HARMONDSWORTH ON WEDNESDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER, 2008

Fellow Nigerians and well-wishers of Nigeria, This is to inform you of our intention to hold a peaceful demonstration at the Waterside Corporate Headquarters of British Airway Plc at Harmondsworth, London following the airlines persistent refusal to do what is right by Ayodeji Omotade and the Nigerian passengers whom its officials treated in a disrespectful, discriminatory, dehumanizing and racist manner on March 27, 2008 aboard Flight BA 075 from London Heathrow to Lagos, Nigeria [Full details here]

Despite repeated attempts to engage with BA - holding a peaceful protest at their Lagos HQ; discussing with their executives in Nigeria; writing to shareholders and meeting with some of them at the AGM, the company has persistently ignored our demands. Even several attempts by the Nigerian President, Umaru YarAdua and government ministers have been stonewalled.

We are now taking our protest to BA headquarters in London with the hope that the BA Board and senior management will address our demands.

ACTIONS
We are now calling on all those who believe in justice to join us in supporting Mr Ayodeji Omotade at the following two events in London:

[Read more…]

Biofuels multinationals are rushing to invest in Eastern and Southern Africa. It all sounds wonderful as the companies pay in kind for use of farm land with the creation of jobs, investment in schools, health clinics and roads…….

The Tanzanian government has granted the British firm the use of 9,000 hectares (22,230 acres) of sparsely populated farmland, or enough land to cover about 12,000 soccer fields, for a period of 99 years — free of charge. In return, the company will invest about $20 million (€13 million) to build roads and schools, bringing a modicum of prosperity to the region.

Sun Biofuels is not alone. In fact, half a dozen other companies from the Netherlands, the United States, Sweden, Japan, Canada and Germany have already sent their scouts to Tanzania. Prokon, a German company known primarily for its wind turbines, has already begun growing jatropha curcas on a large scale. It expects to have 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) — an area about the size of Luxembourg — under cultivation throughout Tanzania soon.

The jatropha plant is an efficient producer of oil, which can be turned into biodiesel. But the plant is inedible, and displaces food crops.

But the reality is quite different apart from access to potential farmlands gone for the next 99 years, local farming communities are not being consulted, no compensation is being given for lands. As to the promise of jobs and building of infrastructure and services, we’ve all heard this before ………….

With similarly enticing promises, small farmers were talked out of their land several decades ago to make way for coffee plantations. In the 1990s, foreign mining companies arrived in Tanzania to dig for gold. “They promised us jobs, new roads, new wells and schools,” says journalist Joseph Shayo. “And what happened? No schools, no wells and few jobs, which were low-paying jobs, to boot.” To make matters worse, large mining zones were fenced off and became inaccessible to the original residents.

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Biofuels
Tanzania
Nambia

Multinational oil companies operating in the Niger Delta have time and time again colluded with the Nigerian government in police and military action against local communities including women and children. In Etche Ogoni Egi and Ijaw, Shell Elf and Chevron have all paid for and employed the services of the para military police locally known as MoPo as well as the Nigerian army to attack local communities protesting against the environmental destruction of their lands. Shell and Chevron have particularly been guilty of pursing and directing acts of violence such as rape, beatings, destruction of land and property through their proxy army of Nigerian government militia.

The relationship between the oil companies and the Nigerian state is a complex and shifting one which goes back to the colonial period and the beginnings of the militarization of commerce in the Niger Delta. Initially the oil companies had complete control and through legislation such as the 1959 Petroleum Profit Tax Ordinance where able to keep a disproportionately large share of the profits from oil. As the Nigerian state became more and more dependent on oil it sought ways to strengthen it’s relationship with the oil companies and increase it’s control over the Niger Delta. The oil companies who in turn sought the protection of their profits along with the freedom to operate outside of international standards and environmental laws.

Now finally after years of trying to prosecute oil companies for these crimes, a landmark case is due to take place against Chevron…The law…….

suit is based on a 1998 incident in which Nigerian soldiers shot nonviolent protesters at Chevron’s Parabe offshore platform. The soldiers, who were paid by Chevron, were ferried to the platform in Chevron-leased helicopters and supervised by Chevron personnel. Two protesters were killed in the brutal attack and others were injured. Another protester brings claims based on the subsequent torture inflicted on him by the Nigerian authorities after Chevron claimed that he was a pirate.

In a recent ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston found evidence that Chevron’s personnel “were directly involved” in this attack, transporting the soldiers despite knowing that they were “prone to use excessive force,” and concluded that the evidence would allow a jury to find not only that Chevron assisted the soldiers knowing that they would attack the protestors, but also that Chevron actually agreed to the militarys plan.

But having got this far in a show of solidarity with the multinationals (success against Chevron would set a precedent in a series of prosecutions against multinational which would include huge sums in compensation to local communities) the United States government is refusing to give visas to the many villagers who could testify against the brutal attacks in 1998 against women by Chevron…………

The lead plaintiff in the case, Larry Bowoto, has visited the United States three times without encountering visa problems. “But now that the trial is going forward, women and children whose husbands and fathers were tortured and killed, and individuals who witnessed the killings, are being blocked,” added plaintiffs’ counsel Marco Simons, Legal Director of Earthrights International (ERI). “The U.S. government should be facilitating justice for human rights victims, not hindering it.” Chevron has not answered questions about whether it has had any role in the denial of the visas.

Tags:
Nigeria
Niger Delta Chevron

Photos from “Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta

The lure of oil is its cheapness. What we mean is that oil is a cheap source of energy. It is cheap partly because oil’s costs of extraction—in the Niger Delta and much of the tropical world—are not reflected in the price at the pump, and what Calvino called the “puny power of paper money,” .

One consequence of the unfettered and wreckless exploration and exploitation of oil in the delta is that the poor people continue to subsidize the costs of crude oil through the losses they suffer in environmental services, quality of life, and extreme environmental degradation. In turn, opportunistic groups— oil bunkerers, gangs, militants—find space to extract (and extort) financial gains from the system.

Rather than getting better, the crisis in the Niger Delta appears to be getting more intractable. Meetings, programs, projects, and commissions multiply—yet the many-headed hydra that is mass poverty in the Delta simply grows more appendages. The path of crude oil development is strewn with skeletons and soaked in human blood across the world.

Tags:
Nigeria
Niger Delta
Oil
Shell + Nigeria