EXXON MOBIL COLLUSION IN TORTURE

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Audrey Gillan in Washington Friday June 22, 2001 The Guardian

ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company, has been accused of complicity in human rights abuses committed by security forces in Indonesia, it emerged yesterday.

A Washington-based organisation, the International Labour Rights Fund - which represents workers abroad - lodged a complaint against the company in a court in Washington DC on Wednesday.

The lawsuit - brought on behalf of 11 villagers - alleges that ExxonMobil was complicit in murders, rape, torture and kidnapping during the recent campaign by the Indonesian military to quash insurgency by separatists in the impoverished Aceh region of western Indonesia.

The company had shut down its Arun natural gas operation in Aceh in March this year amid fears for the lives of its employees, but the lawsuit contends that it had employed security from among the same men who were perpetrating civil rights abuses.

It alleges that ExxonMobil provided barracks where the military tortured detainees, and lent machinery such as excavators - which were then used to dig mass graves.

An ExxonMobil spokesman said that the company had not been served with the lawsuit and did not have confirmation that it had been filed.

He denied any complicity in human rights abuses.

"We have visited this organisation's website where this lawsuit is posted," he said.

"Based on what we see on the website, we would say that ExxonMobil condemns the violation of human rights in any form. As such, our company rejects and categorically denies any suggestion or implication that it or its affiliate companies were in any way involved with alleged human rights abuses by security forces in Aceh."

The case filings claim that the first plaintiff, John Doe I, anonymous because of fears for his life, was riding his bicycle cart to the local market to sell his vegetables when he "was accosted by soldiers who were assigned to ExxonMobil's TNI Unit 113. The solders shot him in the wrist, threw a hand grenade at him and then left him for dead".

Another man, John Doe II, is alleged to have been stopped by soldiers working for ExxonMobil while riding his motorbike. The filings say: "The soldiers put his motorbike in their truck and then beat him severely on his head and body.

"The soldiers then tied his hands behind his back, put a blindfold on him, and threw him in their truck and took him to what he later learned was Rancong Camp.

"The soldiers detained and tortured him there for a period of three months, all the while keeping him blindfolded."

ExxonMobil - which trades in Britain as Esso - has been the focus of criticism for its expensive public relations programme challenging the Kyoto protocol to reduce potentially harmful emissions, and even the existence of global warming itself.

The group gave $1.2m to the election coffers of the Republican party, and now has the ear of President George Bush and the rest of his administration, influenced to a considerable degree by the oil lobby.

B O Y C O T T E X X O N M O B I L

-- Bush's Torturing Buddies (gas@torture.com), June 22, 2001

Answers

How much did they give to the Democratic party?

-- libs are geniuses (moreinflation@muy.feo), June 22, 2001.

"How much did they give to the Democratic party?"

Liberalism is not "whatever the Democrats do". As if the Democratic Party was the sine qua non of liberalism, unwilling to accept money from multi-national corporations engaged in shady dealings. Sheee-it! You got a lot to learn, fella. A lot.

So, while we're on the question, how much do you figure the Republicans raked in from Exxon-Mobil? 2 million? 3? 4?

This is what real liberals are fighting. Where are you in this fight?

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), June 22, 2001.


is anyone suprised????? check out what's being done in mexico and so.-america. when the big boy's want your land-you gotta go. read the=ANTIPAS PAPERS.

-- al-d. (dogs@zianet.com), June 23, 2001.

Who said anything about liberals? I asked about the Democratic Party. True liberals would be the Green party or the Socialist Party. Now how much do you suppose they gave to the Democratic Party?

-- libs are geniuses (moreinflation@muy.feo), June 23, 2001.

"True liberals would be the Green party or the Socialist Party".

Baloney. True liberals would be libertarians.

-- (Son@of.liberty), June 23, 2001.



I reiterate: Where are you in this fight?

My overall impression is that corporations have been given the rights of human beings, but the most egregious problem with this approach is that a corporation is not punishable in the way a human being is.

It is time to re-institute the death penalty for corporations. If a corporation aids and abets killing and torture, yank its charter and dissolve it. Seize its assets and sell them to competitors without compensation to the stockholders. Use some of the proceeds to benefit the victims families. Distribute the rest to charities. This is the only way I know of to get the corporations back in line. Kill the bad ones.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), June 23, 2001.


Thought provoking idea Nipper. Certainly the US would lose quite a few under your mandate. Makes one wonder if there'd be an industry left in, say, Indonesia or Mexico. Assuming here that your proposal isn't the Kyoto type it would be interesting indeed to see who's left worldwide.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), June 23, 2001.

Good Lord Mr. Nipper, have you taken leave of your sanity? Where will all of the money come from for the liberal waste programs you so passionately covet? Where, pray tell, will the few democrats still willing to work for a living go to each morning? With the world’s transportation systems litigated into oblivion, how will Al Sharpton and Ms. Jackson find passage to Puerto Rico? With nobody able to generate an income, thus eliminating their disposable income for entertainment, how will Barbara, Alex, and Sharon be able to afford their junkets to D.C.?

THE HORROR OF IT ALL!!!!

-- Ted Kennedy ("drink@up.boys"), June 23, 2001.


Let us get a little folksy here. Driving into work the last few days I have passed this spot in the road. A turn a few miles south of the house. The smell was awful. This morning I pulled off of the road and looked. Yep, in the high grass, was a dead skunk.

Brings back a saying [was either from Sam or Will; I don't remember] that I recall. If something smells bad, look around. You will eventually find a dead skunk. *<)))

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), June 23, 2001.


See there, if you were driving a Mercedes it is doubtful that the pungent odors would have been noticed.

-- Out (of@focus.com), June 23, 2001.


Out:

I was driving the Mercedes [It is a bitch to move off of a rural road]. Don't like it but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.

With your Mercedes experience, would you like to discuss their devolution into Camrey handling. *<)))

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), June 23, 2001.


While the handling characteristics of Mercedes and the olfactory characteristics of skunks may be of some interest, I would much rather that future posters answer this question:

When a corporation, multinational or miniature, furthers its interests in making a higher profit by engaging in conduct that might merit a death sentence if it were engaged in by an individual, is it appropriate to "kill" that corporation, or is a mere fine sufficient?

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), June 23, 2001.


And yet, on the other hand, though not in Indonesia, an alternate view of some oil companies:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/africa/A38443- 2001Jun23.html

Activists in Sudan Fear Loss of Western Oil Firms' Influence By Karl Vick Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, June 24, 2001; Page A15

NAIROBI -- The overwhelming vote in the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this month to punish oil companies doing business in Sudan did not exactly overwhelm human rights activists in that country.

The activists acknowledge that oil fuels Sudan's civil war: Export revenue supplies the fundamentalist Muslim government with weapons to use against rebellious, marginalized southern Sudan.

But the activists emphasize that as long as the companies involved are Western, their concerns about corporate citizenship provide valuable leverage to the war's many critics. Talisman Energy, the Canadian firm targeted by the House bill, has quietly pressed human rights concerns on a Sudanese government over which the West has little other influence, the opposition figures say.

"We sometimes have to be pragmatic," said Ghazi Suleiman, a prominent human rights lawyer in Sudan who recently spent two months in jail. "If Talisman were to pull out of Sudan, this doesn't mean the oil business will come to an end. Talisman will be replaced by some company" less interested in the Sudanese people, he said.

U.S. companies have been barred from doing business in Sudan since 1997, under a presidential order designed to isolate the fundamentalist regime that once gave refuge to suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden. Sudan's government has also been widely condemned for bombing civilians and encouraging enslavement during the 18-year civil war, in which 2 million people have been killed.

The House bill, which passed 422 to 2 on June 13, barred foreign oil firms from selling stock or other securities in the United States unless they fully disclose their dealings with the turbulent African country. Talisman, which is based in Calgary but whose stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, promptly announced it would unload its 25 percent stake in Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Co., which pumps 220,000 barrels a day. Rumored buyers include its consortium partners, the Malaysian state oil company Petronas and China National Petroleum Corp., which recently announced plans to triple overseas production by concentrating on Sudan.

"Human rights and the issue of the suffering of the southern Sudanese will be of very little concern to them," Alfred Taban, who publishes the capital's only independent newspaper, the Khartoum Monitor, said of Talisman's potential buyers. Talisman has established an office of "corporate social responsibility" and gradually acknowledged the link between oil and the war, which in recent years has concentrated on areas designated for future drilling. "The way forward is not to take away companies that admit some of this is going on and have been working to try to end some of that abuse," said Taban, who is from southern Sudan.

Suleiman, the lawyer, even credited Talisman's presence with the marginal freedoms Sudan's government has accorded opposition parties, which were banned for most of the 1990s.

Rifaat Makkawi, another human rights lawyer in Khartoum, also endorsed constructive engagement with the governing National Islamic Front. "This isolation by the international community for nine years did not work," Makkawi said.

Fair use purposes cited.

-- Nottellingnow (not@this.time.pls), June 24, 2001.


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