Estar and the law is less than fifteen minutes busy when the Dutch court issues an interim judgment in the case of Esther Kiobel and three other women against Shell. According to the four, the oil company is complicit in the 1995 execution of nine Ogoni leaders in Nigeria, after a mock trial. Among them were their husbands and the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa. But the court in the Netherlands dismisses most of the alleged facts as irrelevant.
The four widows do get the chance to prove one accusation against Shell: that Shell officials bribed people to falsely state that the so-called Ogoni 9 had planned the murder of four moderate Ogoni leaders. However, Shell’s liability can only arise, the judge warns, if it is also shown that the false testimonies “played a role in the arrest, detention or conviction” of the Ogoni 9.
That assignment of evidence will be “extremely difficult for us,” explains Esther’s lawyer Channa Samkalden to her. Esther waves it off. “No, not difficult,” she tells Samkalden. “We have the evidence,” she later replies to a question from NOS reporter Eva Wiessing.
It characterizes the optimism of the Nigerian, of whom the Dutch documentary maker Tatiana Scheltema made a loving portrait. It will premiere on March 26 at the Movies that Matter festival in The Hague. The film is simultaneously a tribute to Esther’s husband Barinem Kiobel and to the struggle of the Ogoni against Shell and pollution in Ogoniland, where the impoverished population did not benefit from the petrodollars. He also shows how complicated it is to hold a multinational accountable for close ties with dictators.
Amnesty International
After the executions, Esther Kiobel fled to Benin, where she spent two years in a refugee camp. Then she gets asylum in the US. In 2002 she started a first trial against Shell, which ended in 2013 at the Supreme Court. Four years later, she litigates with three other widows of the Ogoni 9 in the Netherlands, where Shell still has a head office at that time. Amnesty International pays the costs.
The 140-page summons filed by its lawyers is intended to demonstrate Shell’s interdependence with the dictatorial regime in Nigeria in the 1990s. With well-chosen fragments, the documentary shows how much influence the oil company had on the authorities at the time. For example, you hear a Nigerian ex-serviceman tell by telephone how Shell supplied pick-up trucks “and even a helicopter” to the army, which sowed death and destruction among the rebellious Ogoni.
The film also largely revolves around the attempts to prove the bribery by Shell. Four witnesses come to The Hague for this. Two of them tell in court how they were instructed to make false statements in the mock trial, in the presence of ‘Shell officials’ who promised them a contract with Shell and paid 30,000 naira, then about 2,500 euros. However, none of them can give a name or function of the Shell officials.
In its final judgment, the court rejected all claims of the four widows last year. Esther reacts combatively, as the film shows. But the poetic final image suggests that she has now resumed her life as a nurse.
Settlement
Scheltema has been following Esther Kiobel since 2017, and shot atmospheric images in the US, Nigeria and the Netherlands, without talking heads from knowledgeable outsiders. Due to this choice, some aspects remain unmentioned. Such as the $ 15.5 million settlement that Shell reached in 2009 with the relatives of Ken Saro-Wiwa and four other executed Ogoni leaders. That was a “purely humanitarian” gesture, according to Shell – but the group only came up with it just before a trial was due to start in the US for complicity in the executions. In the film Esther only briefly refers to it, when she says that she has ‘700,000 [dollar]’ was offered, but declined, because she then had to promise ‘to shut up” about the “evil” of Shell.
Shell’s position is only discussed through lawyer Wemmeke Wismans. Although she states that the group is ‘not blind’ to the ‘horrible loss’ of the women, she further rejects all ‘allegations’ on behalf of Shell ‘far from her’.
Frustrating decision
The fact that Esther and the other widows decided not to pursue the appeal last year did not make it into the film either. When asked, lawyer Samkalden says that “additional evidence” was still being sought in Nigeria, but that some potentially important witnesses, who were “closer to Shell” at the time, could not be convinced to cooperate. “It was a difficult and frustrating decision, although I support it. But an appeal procedure demands a lot from the women and would take at least another year and a half, with an uncertain outcome.”
Two out of four widows live in poverty in Nigeria. Samkalden asked Shell to make a ‘humanitarian gesture’, but the group did not respond. “Apparently the humanitarian compassion had run out,” she says with a laugh. For the widows is one fundraiser started.
Esther Kiobel has always said that she mainly wanted to clear her husband’s name with the lawsuit. If that has not succeeded in court, then the film can fulfill that function. Because Shell’s complicity may not be proven, no one who has seen Esther and the Law will doubt the innocence of Dr. Barinem Kiobel.