From Wikileaks: Released September 13, 2009
Summary
Updated October 15, 2009: The ‘Minton report’ exposes a toxic waste dumping incident, which affected upto 108,000 people, according to a September 2009 United Nations report. The UK media has been suppressed from mention the report or its contents since a secret gag order was issued against the Guardian newspaper on September 11, 2009. The report was commissioned through Waterson & Hicks, a UK law firm, possibly to claim client-attorney privilege should it leak. The company concerned, Trafigura, is a giant multi-national oil and commodity trader. The Minton report assesses an incident involving Trafigura and the Ivory Coast town of Abidjan—possibly most culpable mass contamination incident since Bhopal.
The UK media is currently unable to mention the URL ‘http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Minton’ or anything else that would direct people towards the report.
An attempt by a member of parliament to subvert the gag order, by mentioning ‘Minton report’, the date of the secret gag, and ‘Trafigura’ in the House of Commons, lead to a major uproar on October 12 and 13, following an attempt by Trafigura to apply the gag order to parliamentary reporting (see this front page article in the Guardian newspaper).
The parliamentary quote concerned:
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) – To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.[1]
The UK press gag remains in effect. Incredibly, Trafigura’s lawyers, Carter Ruck, are now attempting again to prevent parliamentary debate over the gag, this time by claiming sub-judice.
Readers can help the victims and the press undermine this unconscionable gag order, by spreading the URL ‘http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Minton’.