Financial Times newspaper (FT) decided at the last minute to pull this Amnesty International ad targeting oil giant Shell this month. Amnesty is asking you to share the ad that FT wouldn’t publish and make sure as many people as possible see it.

The ad, which was due to appear on 18 May, the day that Shell was holding its London AGM, focuses on the poor human rights record of Shell in Nigeria. It compares the company’s US$9.8 billion profits with the consequences of pollution caused by Shell for the people of the Niger Delta in the past decades.

Amnesty says that in Nigeria “numerous oil spills, which have not been adequately cleaned up, have left local communities with little option but to drink polluted water, eat contaminated fish, farm on spoiled land, and breathe in air that stinks of oil and gas.”

Amnesty received an email from “FT” the night before saying the paper was not going to run the ad. Yet, Amnesty said, “We gave them written reassurances that we would take full responsibility for the comments and opinions stated in the advertisement.”

The Amnesty ad ran in two other London-based newspapers the day of the meeting. The funds to pay for the advertisements came from more than 2,000 individuals online.

To take action, share the ad on Facebook, Twitter and on your blogs.

This entry was posted on June 1st, 2010 at 2:52 pm by Amanda Atwood and is filed under Activism, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.