Where is the God of justice? (Mal 2:17)
Biblical justice
The Old Testament contains many laws that are not upheld by Christians; some because they are superseded by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross; others because they are thought to only apply to Jews.
Yet there are laws that are ignored by many Christians for reasons that are harder to explain, not least the Bible’s many commands to ensure justice for the victims of oppression. For example, Psalm 82:3 clear instructs us to:
Provide justice for the needy and the fatherless;
uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute.
Christians are not alone in their tendency to ignore the plight of the downtrodden and marginalised. Modern society selectively applies justice to covertly or overtly benefit its more privileged members, which gives an illusion of law and order while doing little for those who have no voice. It is therefore remarkable when an elite is prosecuted on behalf of the poor and powerless.
Landmark criminal trial
Yet this is exactly what occurred in the case of a landmark criminal trial that opened earlier this month (5th Sept) in Stockholm against two top executives of Sweden’s largest oil company, Lundin Petroleum/Oil (now Orron Energy AB, but referred to hereafter simply as Lundin).
Lundin’s Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer are indicted for complicity in war crimes 
that were perpetrated in the conflict zone of the civil war that raged in Sudan during 1983 to 2005. The company had signed an agreement with the Government of Sudan in 1997 to explore for oil in a licence area that the government committed to secure, i.e., by seizing it by military force as it was under rebel control.
The resultant scorched earth campaign caused the forced displacement of some 160,000 Sudanese civilians and the deaths of an estimated 12,000 others. Tens of thousands of homes were burned while half a million cattle were stolen from a farming people who were chased away from their fields, leaving them destitute and exposed to disease and famine. Many were forced to seek refuge with their opponents where they were subjected to further violence and abuse.
News about attacks on civilians in Lundin’s oilfield reached Sweden soon after exploration activities commenced in 1998 – but they were rebuffed by company executives who claimed not to see anything amiss in their licence area.
Many were forced to seek refuge with their opponents where they were subjected to further violence and abuse.
A former Swedish prime minister, Carl Bildt, was brought onto Lundin's Board to reassure the Swedish people that oil was good for Sudan’s development, as it would create jobs and inject cash into the local economy. The reports about atrocities in Lundin’s licence area were therefore dismissed in Sweden as false or grossly exaggerated.
Pax Christi report
After discovering oil and quantifying the size of the deposit, Lundin sold its concession in 2003 to a Malaysian oil company for a profit of $93 million, which it re-invested into Norwegian oilfields. Here it made a huge discovery in 2010 that extended the expected lifetime of Norway’s oil production by some fifty years. It was now a very wealthy company with an estimated resource of nearly three billion barrels of oil – which it was pumping out and selling for $100 per barrel in 2013 against combined production, development 
and exploration costs of just $11 per barrel.
But in 2010 another event took place that would have a profound impact on the fortunes of Lundin. An umbrella group of NGOs called ECOS (European Coalition on Oil in Sudan) led by the Dutch Catholic peace organisation Pax Christi released a report which used satellite images to demonstrate the scale of human misery that had been brought about to secure Lundin’s financial success.
Lundin was already aware of this report, for an earlier draft had been sent to them in November 2008 for their comment. Their lawyers immediately threatened legal action against ECOS and its associated organisations if the report was made public. But not only were their threats ignored with the release of an updated version of the report, but two weeks afterwards, the Swedish State Prosecutor for International War Crimes opened a criminal investigation into Lundin’s activities in Sudan.
such a criminal prosecution should truly be the norm when a company is complicit in war crimes.
Now, 13 years later, the Swedish police have amassed over 80,000 pages of evidence against Lundin, while repeated attempts by the company to block the trial have been rejected by Sweden’s High Court. Sweden is thus making legal history for being the first country since the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in 1947-48 to bring a major company to court for complicity in war crimes.
Impressive though this result may be, such a criminal prosecution should truly be the norm when a company is complicit in war crimes. Lundin is not the only business entity that profited from the misery in Sudan’s war zone, (others include Talisman and Petronas (See this Amnesty report). Further, multiple other companies have contributed to other wars in recent times (see Patrick Alley, ‘Very Bad People’).
Prophetic cries
Why then is this court case so unique in a world filled with millions upon millions of victims of violence, oppression, and injustice? For the downtrodden of the planet — who include many Christians — the lamentation of Habakkuk (1:2-4) is as relevant today as it was when written ca. 600 BC:
How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.
From a Judaeo-Christian perspective, a partial answer to explain God’s apparent inaction that Habakkuk complains about lies in our own failure to act in obedience to God’s laws, for God commands us in Isaiah 1:17 to:
Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.
the lamentation of Habakkuk (1:2-4) is as relevant today as it was when written ca. 600 BC
Sadly, inaction by God’s people is not new, as Ezekiel 22:29-31 describes:
The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice. “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one. So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done,” declares the Sovereign Lord.
Pertinent questions
Why, in spite of such warnings, do so few Christians and believing Jews speak out on behalf of the downtrodden? Why do even fewer react and take action to mitigate and/or rectify the wrongs committed by our fellow humans against each other? Why is the prophetic voice against injustice almost silent today? And what precisely should that prophetic voice be saying?
These questions have troubled me over the quarter of a century that I have worked to expose war crimes, during which time I joined the campaign against the oil companies after visiting Sudan in December 2000, when I first learned of the involvement of Lundin.
Why, in spite of such warnings, do so few Christians and believing Jews speak out on behalf of the downtrodden?
The same questions still perplex me as I have noted what I believe to be the intervention of God to bring CEO Ian Lundin and COO Alexandre Schneiter to a human trial, where the scale of their complicity will be exposed over the coming two and a half years that the court case will run.
One might go on to ask why God appears to be intervening in this situation but apparently not in others? To answer this and questions, I will examine what the Bible tells us about prophecy and the application of human justice in the next part in the series.
Phil Clarke is a former aid worker and executive director of the Danish branch of Medecins Sans Frontieres, and is currently the director of the independent war crimes investigation agency Bloodhound that he co-founded in 2006. He has been closely involved with efforts to bring Lundin to justice since 2001, and produced the report Justifying Blood Money in 2013 to expose Lundin’s lies to shareholders while it explored for oil in Sudan. His debut novel Falling Night was published in 2023, based on the experiences that led him from humanitarian aid to documenting war crimes.
