Chevron Texaco taken to court over Human Rights Abuses in Nigeria
When a group of protesters in Nigeria went out to the Chevron-Texaco Oil Platform in 1999, to protest about the lack of electricity and basic sanitation in their nearby village, they didn’t expect such an aggressive response. Chevron Texaco decided to hire local militia and police as crowd control. As a result, two protesters were killed. A couple of months later, in a scene reminiscent of Apocalypse Now, soldiers destroyed two villages. A non-government lobby group Earthrights took legal action claiming the American parent company should be held responsible. But Chevron Texaco claimed that it did not have responsibility over the behaviour and day to day running of its Nigerian subsidiary company, Chevron Nigerian Limited. But now the Federal District Court in San Francisco has ruled the matter should go to trial Director of Litigation for Earthrights, Rick Herz, discussed the case with Taya Fabijanic.