anti-shell protest at awards

9.11.11

9.11.11

tomor­row marks the six­teenth anniver­sary of the killing of ken saro-wiwa and eight oth­er activists in nige­ria. today, shell, com­plic­it in their exe­cu­tion, was pol­ish­ing its image by spon­sor­ing an awards event for young entre­peneurs at the cen­tre­point build­ing in cen­tral lon­don. ris­ing tide organ­ised a reminder of shel­l’s bloody his­to­ry out­side the event, involv­ing grim reapers, som­bre drums, and hun­dreds of leaflets.

after meet­ing and dress­ing just round the cor­ner, a dozen or so activists arrived out­side the cen­tre­point build­ing, cre­at­ing quite a stir with a mor­bid beat from two huge sur­do drums, sev­er­al ghost­ly shell logo skull-faced grim reapers, and an excel­lent ban­ner using the shell and livewire logos and the slo­gans “shell livewire — sup­port­ing bright young busi­ness, shell deathrope — hang­ing out­spo­ken young nige­ri­ans”.

cen­tre­point secu­ri­ty at first over­stepped the mark, push­ing peo­ple and try­ing to snatch the ban­ner, but they retreat­ed indoors and closed off the entrance when they realised they were being filmed, allow­ing the protest to con­tin­ue right out­side.

hun­dreds of leaflets were hand­ed out to inter­est­ed passers-by, and police, who arrived after around 40 min­utes, wait­ed for instruc­tion up the com­mand chain before decid­ing to leave the protest alone.

after about 90 min­utes, with leaflets run­ning out, and the young entre­peneurs appar­ent­ly led out of the build­ing via an under­ground car park, it was off to the pub for a well-deserved drink for the activists.

it was on the 10th novem­ber in 1995 that the niger­ian gov­ern­ment hanged ken saro-wiwa and eight oth­er young activists who were cam­paign­ers against the dev­as­ta­tion caused by shell and oth­er oil exploiters in their home­lands. shell was lat­er shown to have been com­plic­it in the mur­ders. to this day, shell still attacks com­mu­ni­ties (like ross­port in north­ern ire­land, as well as con­tin­u­ing abus­es in the niger delta) and destroys the plan­et through oil extrac­tion, and to off­set their destruc­tive image they put tiny amounts of their prof­its into high pro­file spon­sor­ship events like ‘livewire’, a youth busi­ness enter­prise.
 

VIDEO
Thanks too to ‘You and I Films’ for pro­duc­ing a video of our (S)Hell DeathROPE action, and to Kevin Smith of Plat­form for the infor­ma­tive interview/voiceover, which you can watch online at:

• ‘Shell Death Rope — In Mem­o­ry of Ken Saro-Wiwa’, at vimeo
» video, 2:29 – http://vimeo.com/31879898

BLOGS
Thanks to Ben Amunwa at Plat­form, there are also two blog post­ings about our (S)Hell DeathROPE action:

• ‘Protest Expos­es Shell’s Grim Record on Human Rights’
» http://blog.platformlondon.org/2011/11/10/protest-exposes-shells-grim-record-on-human-rights/
» http://remembersarowiwa.com/protest-exposes-shells-grim-record-on-human-rights/

FUTURE ACTIONS
If you are also inclined to acknowl­edg­ing that the cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate chaos caused by anthro­pogenic glob­al warm­ing is the most seri­ous social/economic/political issue humankind has ever faced, and want to join in tak­ing grass­roots direct action to influ­ence our civil­i­sa­tion toward cli­mate jus­tice, then do please con­sid­er join­ing Lon­don Ris­ing Tide (or your local Ris­ing Tide group).

• Ris­ing Tide, Lon­don
» http://www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
• Next action plan­ning gath­er­ing: Thu 17 Nov 2011, 19:30–21:00 (and after­wards (option­al­ly) down t’pub), at the Lon­don Action Resource Cen­tre, 62 Fieldgate Street, Whiechapel, Lon­don E1 1ES
» LARC – http://www.londonarc.org

• Ris­ing Tide, UK and around the world
» http://risingtide.org.uk
• see left hand col­umn for links to Ris­ing Tide groups all around the world