Testimony in the U.S. Senate
This week Ka Hsaw Wa from EarthRights International and Nnimmo Bassey from Environmental Rights Action gave testimony to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on how oil companies deploy military force against peaceful protesters in Burma and Nigeria, in a hearing on the human rights responsibilities of american oil companies.
Nnimmo's full testimony is excellent and very comprehensive. He showed how silencing peaceful protest with military means leads to violent insurgency
Oil companies, including Chevron and Shell, have repeatedly used the Nigerian military to violently repress Delta inhabitants’ peaceful protests, causing deaths and injuries, and creating an environment in which ordinary citizens are unable to exercise their rights to free expression.
And advocates dialogue
Extractive industries such as oil and gas companies must learn to listen to the complaints of the local people in whose territories they carry out their business. They need to understand that the environment is the life of the people and that continual degradation of the environment directly affects the means of livelihood of the people. The Ogoni, the Ilaje, and their fellow protesters chose the best route out of the mire that the Niger Delta has become: through nonviolent dialogue. This is what was demanded ten years ago. This demand still remains to be answered.
The senator who lead the hearing concluded by saying that he fails to understand why bribery by american companies can be prosecuted, while abuse of human rights through destorying people's livelihoods cannot. He regretted that Chevron had chosen not to show up.
Watch the video recording of the hearing, and download Nnimmo's full testimony from Earthrights International.
Интересно
Good site! especially I like the design! Driver Genius Pro v.9.0.0.186 Final [Multilingual - Full]
I am not here as John
I am not here as John Kerry.
I am here as one member of the group of 1,000 which is a small
representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this
country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table
they would be here and have the same kind of testimony.... internet phone service
I would like to talk, representing
all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit,
we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged
and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes
committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes
committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers
at all levels of command....internet access
They told the stories at times
they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped
wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up
the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians,
razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle
and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged
the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage
of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done
by the applied bombing power of this country.
We call this investigation the
"Winter Soldier Investigation." The term "Winter
Soldier" is a play on words of Thomas Paine in 1776 when
he spoke of the Sunshine Patriot and summertime soldiers who deserted
at Valley Forge because the going was rough. linux hosting
We who have come here to Washington
have come here because we f eel we have to be winter soldiers
now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we
could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam,
but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that
the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes
which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak
out. hosting reseller
BACK FROM VIETNAM
...In our opinion, and from our
experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could
happen that realistically threatens the United States of America.
And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam,
Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of
freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height
of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which
we feel has torn this country apart....