You’re going to need to fasten your safety belt and have a cup of coffee before you read this Mother Jones article about a lawsuit that accuses ExxonMobil of running a security force that tortured and killed people in Indonesia. It’s 5,000 words long. The suit was filed in 2001 in federal district court in Washington, D.C., and alleges, among other things:
“A member of ExxonMobil’s security personnel” forced his way into the home of a pregnant female, wielded a rifle, “threatened to kill her and her unborn child with his gun, then beat and sexually assaulted her.”
“ExxonMobil security personnel” accosted a man traveling between villages, beat him, handcuffed him, accused him of membership in GAM, ignored his denial, and “took him to Post A-13 on ExxonMobil’s property,” where they threw him to the ground, wielded a knife, and “carved the letters ‘GAM’ into his back … regularly torturing him” for several more weeks.
“ExxonMobil security personnel” stopped a villager riding his motorcycle, beat him severely on his head and body, tied his hands, blindfolded him, took him to a military camp, kept the blindfold on him for three months, and tortured him regularly, “using electricity all over his body, including his genitals.”
The fate of the case will soon be determined by the Supreme Court, which will rule in another case whether such a suit can legally be brought by a foreigner against a U.S. company under something called the Alien Tort Claims Act. It’s a big deal. As Marco Simons, legal director for the advocacy group EarthRights International, put it: “[T]his matters to even big oil companies. They face a tremendous vulnerability to their reputation, not unjustifiably, but because the evidence shows complicity in series of abuses. Directors do not want to be associated at cocktail parties with mass graves in Indonesia.”
UPDATE (11:03) — A Belo-employed FrontBurnervian points out that the Morning News ran a shorter version of this same story on September 30. Project Word brought the story to the paper, which arranged to run it before Mother Jones. The original draft of the story came it at 8,500 words.
