Amnesty International has been pressing Shell oil to clean up its act in the Niger Delta for many years, but the human rights group today decided to take concrete action.
 

Listen to a report on the clean up campaign:

Clean up operation
Marlijn van Ruijven, AI’s senior policy adviser in Amsterdam, is one of several people who have donned white chemical suits and brooms to “clean”  a Shell petrol station in Utrecht. She told Radio Netherlands: “We hope to inspire Shell to do the same in Nigeria.”
 
“What we see is that Shell is not informing local people in a systemic way of the effects that its oil operation will have on the environment and human rights of the local communities.

“I was in the Niger Delta last year and we spoke with many people who lost their means of living because the land they were working on was polluted, the water they were fishing in was polluted, even the air was polluted.”

Heavy criticism
Shell has been operating in the Niger Delta for 50 years and has come in for heavy criticism for both its treatment of the Ogoni people - one of the many communities living there - and its failure to stop regular oil leaks from its pipes. In June AI asked Shell’s new director Peter Voser, to pledge to put an end to pollution within his first 100 days on the job – when he ignored their request, the group decided to take a different approach.

Amnesty International’s clean up team will target nine Shell tanking stations across the country and the operation follows similar action in Canada, the UK, Italy, Sweden and Belgium.

Wake up call
Ms van Ruiven says she hopes it will be a wake up call for the company:

“What we see is that 50 years of operations in the Delta has not led so far to significant improvement in the situation for local people. We are of the opinion that change is not really happening in daily life so we now try another means by using action at Shell stations, in order to raise attention.”

Shell told Radio Netherlands: “We do not agree with the findings of the report carried out by Amnesty International, it ignores the complexities of the situation in the Niger Delta.

“The majority of oil pollution is caused by sabotage and vandalism, violence and criminality. This makes it very difficult to access the area and operate there.”

Leave Nigeria
So what do the drivers at Utrecht’s Shell station think?  Most of them support the protestors, but say they won’t stop filling their cars up with Shell Oil. David, who refuses to give his surname, says: “I think it’s a better idea for Shell to leave Nigeria or arrange something with the government over there. As we say in Dutch, it’s a wasp nest – you can’t operate there safely.”