Lawyers Gag BBC over Trafigura Toxic Dump

Lawyers for the multi-national firm Trafigura have gagged the BBC from reporting about the dumping of Toxic waste in the West African state of Ivory Coast. The problem for the firm is that once things are out on the Internet they are very difficult to control and in response to the ban many people are posting about this issue and posting links to the video. Here is a BBC Newsnight report on Trafigura's attempts to suppress media reporting of their Toxic Waste dumping;



And here is the original Newsnight report on the Toxic Dumping Affair



As you will see on the first report the firm even went so far as to try to gag Members of parliament from asking questions about the matter. Trafigura now appears to have been successfull in imposing injunctions on the media to prevent reporting of an investigation into the toxic dumping affair.

It's important that we all resist attempts by companies or governments to control the reporting of public interest stories such as this. This is a real strength of the Internet - it's use by ordinary citizens to keep watch on those who have power over us.