Black Looks

Human Rights Watch publishes the results of a qualitative survey of 100 sexual rights activists from 50 countries on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation. From an African perspective the findings of “Together Apart”are predictable but it is helpful and supportive to know that activists face similar challenges across the world. For example the lack of funding needed to challenge the legal and social status quo, the violence faced by activists, state sponsored homophobia and the constant struggle against cultural and religious fundamentalism which is growing rapidly across Africa.

South African AIDS and human rights activist Zackie Achmat offered one explanation for how state-sponsored homophobia began. “Many African politicians,” he said in 1998, “want to blame the West for everything, homosexuality included”:

“And so these governments are precarious and terrified. The people are roused up against them, and there is no one to support them. Their only real hope is that people die of AIDS or hunger before they are angry enough to rebel. And what do [the governments] find? They say “homosexual” and two sorts come running to them: the Christian churches and the African traditionalists, two groups who usually won’t even speak to one another, come flocking behind the government’s banner. Suddenly they have support. It’s a magic word.”
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The following article is published in Pambazuka News and is written by Sokari Ekine and Firoze Manji

“And as I was going, I was just thinking how the war have spoiled my town Dukana, uselessed many people, killed many others, killed my mama and my wife, Agnes, my beautiful young wife with J.J.C and now it have made me like porson wey get leprosy because I have no town again.
And I was thinking how I was prouding before to go to soza and call myself Sozaboy. But now if anybody say anything about war or even fight, I will just run and run and run and run and run. Believe me yours sincerely” Ken Saro Wiwa, Sozaboy

Thirteen years ago, Ken Saro Wiwa Jr and the families of the 8 other Ogoni men who had been murdered by the Nigerian state in 1995 , together with two other Ogonis, began three separate law suits against Royal Dutch Petroleum, Shell Petroleum Development Corporation and Brian Anderson former CEO of the SPDC. The plaintiffs accused Shell of human rights abuses against the Ogoni people, arming the Nigerian army and of being complicit in the extrajudicial killing of the Ogoni 9 in 1995. The trial against Shell was due to start on the 26th of May but was then delayed indefinitely. On Tuesday 9 June 2009, we learned that Shell had settled the case out of court for a sum of $15.5 million which included a $5 million contribution to a trust for the Ogoni people. The settlement was offered with no admission of liability from the defendant. While the settlement is being seen as a victory for human rights, it does raise a number of worrying issues in law suits by local indigenous communities against multinationals who are committing human rights violations and environmental crimes.

It is impossible to separate the actions of the oil multinationals operating across the Niger Delta from the actions of the Nigerian government in the region. The relationship between the two, though complex, is based on profit over and above any other consideration. In exchange for the oil that is removed from the Niger Delta, the oil companies with the support of the Nigerian state, have left behind an ecological disaster, whole towns and villages reduced to rubble, death by fire, pollution and the guns of the Nigerian military. Shell and the other oil companies in the region have one of the worst environmental records in the world. This includes pollution of the air and drinking water, degradation of farm land, damage to aquatic life, disruption of drainage systems, oil fires which have left people dead and with horrific burn injuries and no medical care. The causes of the damage to the environment are oil spills from pipelines and flow stations, many of the former running through villages and in front of peoples homes; gas flaring which produces toxic gases and poisons into the atmosphere.
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Flashpoints Radio : Haitian community leader and fighter for justice Father Gerard Jean-Juste passes away, we’ll hear from friends and colleagues who remember his life and legacy; also, how influential are the pro-Israel lobby groups in Obama’s White House? We’ll speak to an expert on the lobbies; plus, JR and the Block Report talk about the fight against Shell Oil in Nigeria; and the Knight Report.Remembering Father Gerard Jean Juste

“They bombed everywhere and everything. They don’t have feelings at all. I was lucky to have my children and husband alive. My neighbour lost his pregnant wife in the incidence. She was my friend too.” – Evelyn Emmanuel”

On May 14, 2009 at about noon, Gbaramatu Kingdom,Delta State, was in a festive mood. There had been an influx of guests into the community from far and near. They all came to witness the presentation of the Staff of Office to the Pere of Gbaramatu Kingdom, His Royal Majesty Ogie the third. The palace located in Oporoza was filled with well- wishers as the day also marked the King’s one year anniversary. Suddenly, three low flying helicopters were seen approaching the Kindgom. The community people initially thought they were flying dignitaries to the ceremony or that they were part of the glamour for the ceremony. They were wrong. Dead wrong!

The three choppers were actually gunships of the Joint Military Task Force, on a mission to mow down the Gbaramatu Kingdom. Suddenly the gunships started bombing everywhere, the King’s palace inclusive. The JTF, ostensibly on a mission of searching for militants and rescuing hostages, embarked on massive military assault on Gbaramatu Kingdom made up of 163 communities, villages and hamlets. The military deployed its most sophisticated weaponry against the hapless residents of the community The military machines unleashed on the communities include four helicopter gunboats for aerial bombing, two Naval Ships; NNS Obula and NNS Nwanba and large troop of soldiers.
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Ken Saro Wiwa Jr writes in London Observer “Now at last it’s time for Shell to atone for my father’s death”

Ken Saro-Wiwa’s real “crime” was his audacity to sensitise local and global public opinion to the ecological and human rights abuses perpetrated by Shell and a ruthless military dictatorship against the Ogoni people. The success of his campaign had mobilised our community to say “No to Shell” and to demand compensation for years of oil spills that had polluted our farms, streams and water sources. My father called the world’s attention to the gas flares that had been pumping toxic fumes into the Earth’s atmosphere for up to 24 hours a day since oil was discovered on our lands in 1958. He accused Shell of double standards, of racism and asked why a company that was rightly proud of its efforts to preserve the environment in the west would deny the Ogoni the same. Continue Reading ./blockquote>

Patrick Bond and Khadija Sharife “Shell on trial while Nigerians are slaughtered”

But at a time of worsening state massacres of environmental justice activists in the Delta, a moment of reckoning nears. In New York’s Southern District Court this Wednesday before Judge Kimba Wood, Shell goes on trial for crimes against the Niger Delta people and environment, which could lead to substantive reparations payments.
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When I set out to write a review of this weeks Nigerian blogs for Nigerians Talk, I had it in my mind that I would write on the invasion and bombing of towns and villages in Warri region of the Niger Delta. To be frank I expected to read that were Nigerians outraged by this attack on their fellow citizens by the Nigerian military especially since the Nigerian mainstream media has been uncritical. Unfortunately there wasn’t as much as I had hoped and hope is all too important in the struggle against tyranny.

chidi opara reports has the most posts on the Niger Delta generally but one in particular stands out in which the writer claims that the PDP tried to recruit one of the top militant leaders Mr. Government Ekpumupolo aka Tom Polo. The whole story sounds very sinister with former disgraced Bayelsa State Governor of transvestite fame, Diepriye Alamesigha as the contact man. What the story does suggest is that there are communication channels between the militants, the oil companies and the Nigerian military which on some levels seems rather too friendly for purported enemies.

More sinister than the “chidi opara reports” story, is what we do know is happening in Delta State. Waffarian points out the truth that many of us have always known – “Nigerian is not one” and certainly the Niger Delta has always been at the extremities of Nigerian consciousness. Waffarian also points out that there are now refugees in Nigerian. Hmm excuse me but this is not new. There were / are refugees from various inter religious and ethnic clashes, attacks by the Nigerian military on other Niger Delta communities – Ogoni, Isoko, Ijaw to name a few. And of course Biafra which leads me to a post by Max Siollun’s Website on the Biafran war, a subject which I think needs to be discussed far more than it is. He describes it as a “no victor no vanquished where Biafran disabled soldiers still remain the forgotten victims of Nigeria’s gruesome past.
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We all stand before history. I am a man of peace, of ideas. Appalled by the denigrating poverty of my people who live on a richly endowed land, distressed by their political marginalization and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and to a decent living, and determined to usher to this country as a whole a fair and just democratic system which protects everyone and every ethnic group and gives us all a valid claim to human civilization, I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated. I have no doubt at all about the ultimate success of my cause, no matter the trials and tribulations which I and those who believe with me may encounter on our journey. Nor imprisonment nor death can stop our ultimate victory.

I repeat that we all stand before history. I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial.

Shell is here on trial and it is as well that it is represented by counsel said to be holding a watching brief. The Company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come and the lessons learnt here may prove useful to it for there is no doubt in my mind that the ecological war that the Company has waged in the Delta will be called to question sooner than later and the crimes of that war be duly punished. The crime of the Company’s dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished.
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As at yesterday, Okerenkoko and Oporoaza communities were completely razed down. The JTF also started attacking Miller waterside in Warri destroying cars and killing 4 persons including a woman. The fight is still on. about 30,000 persns are trapped in the swamps humanitarian groups are not allowed to have access to them.

It is terrible and it is terror

Statement issued by Ijaw leaders on the unprovoked attack on Ijaw communities in Warri South West, Delta State.

At the aftermath of the unprovoked attack on Ijaw communities in Gbaramatu kingdom of Warri South West Local Government Area of Delta State the Ijaw nation wishes to state with emphatic unequivocation the following:

a) That the deployment of highly supplicated military weaponry and arsenal to engage hapless villages and towns in aerial and amphibious bombardment in a scale never ever witnessed in even the Nigerian civil war is callous, inhuman, dastardly, barbaric and insensitive. We condemn this unprovoked attack in the strongest term possible.

b) The burning, destruction, complete razing of Okerenkoko, Oporoza, Kunukunuma, Peretorukorigbene, Kurutie and many other communities and the killing and maiming of innocent people including women and children amount to systemic annihilation of an ethnic race and this is simply genocide. It therefore deserves international condemnation.

c) Nigeria, in the comity of nations, is a highly respected country in International Peace Keeping operations where its proficiency even in the most challenging circumstances restrained it from the deployment of such supplicated weaponry in the weight and scale as was deployed to attack the Ijaw communities. It is therefore a travesty of justice and totally incomprehensible that the Joint Military Task Force (JTF) which primary task is to restore hope and bring peace to the troubled Niger Delta region decided to employ such highly sophisticated weaponry to kill and maim innocent fellow citizens. This, in our estimation is a clearly premeditated attack, conceived, planned and executed with the light of speed not even enforced in normal war situation.
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