Today features jury instructions and closing arguments in the trail of Bowoto v. Chevron. In the accounts of the trial, I've noticed an interesting pattern of the perspective of what I know call "White Activist Guilt". From that perspective, Chevron is the rich, bad "white" company, and the Nigerian militant groups attacking that company's employees and facilities are all good, non-violent folks. This is the kind of view that has been presented by blogger Scott Gilmore, and others. But his blog's arguably the best one solely dedicated to the Bowoto trial, so I'll start there.
The story he tells of a peaceful demonstration by Bowoto is just not true. But the real story of this case is the poor Nigerian economic development and that government's neglect in making life better for Nigeria's poor, who've formed militant groups to take whatever wealth they can.
Hi Zennie, thanks for the post.
ReplyDeleteWhile I disagree that my perspective can be explained away with "white guilt", I do think we can find some common ground here. The Nigerian government--which was for decades a succession of kleptocratic and violent military dictatorships--is absolutely to blame here.
Yes the Niger Delta was underdeveloped by its own government. Yes Nigerian security forces were notoriously brutal against their own people. So we agree there.
In fact, this is central to the case: the Nigerian security forces were the primary agents of the alleged human rights violations. The Chevron entities are accused of secondary and tertiary indirect liability: in other words, they're accused of aiding and abetting the Nigerian security forces (and of using them as their agents). So that's the root of the argument--the oil companies formed a joint venture with these kleptocratic brutal regimes, employed their armed forces for security, and thus were complicit in the abuses committed by those regimes.
Since we both agree that the Nigerian government(s) were odious, I'm sure we can agree that collaborating with them was legally and morally problematic.
Now, I'm not saying that Chevron did this because they're evil or "white". They did this because the value of access to Nigerian oil outweighed human rights (or pro-democracy) considerations. This type of calculus is performed everyday by companies operating around the world. One aim of this type of litigation is to "raise the cost" of doing business with dictators, so that companies rethink that calculus.
One final point: I don't think it requires white guilt to know there's something morally abject in collaborating closely with brutal anti-democratic regimes, but I'll let you stand by your position.
Thanks.
Thanks for the reply, Scott. I will add to this in more depth later. But my central question is that given the vast oil resources there, one can say that with this incident, and the pipeline bombing in June, Chevron is already paying the "price of doing business" in the Niger Delta. But some level of reasonable behavior must be set, and I argue that the Ilaje and other militant organizations have gone too far in their actions.
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