A Writer’s Violent End, and His Activist Legacy

[groovedaddy]

“I had a surprising call this week,” the author Richard North Patterson told the audience that had gathered last weekend as part of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. It was former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Patterson’s new novel, “Eclipse,” is based on the case of the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, and Mr. Clinton spoke of a phone call he had made 14 years ago to Gen. Sani Abacha of Nigeria, asking him to spare Mr. Saro-Wiwa from the hangman.

Mr. Clinton said General Abacha “was very polite,” but “he was cold,” Mr. Patterson related. “Clinton took away from that, among other things, that oil and the need for oil on behalf of the West and other places made Abacha, in his mind, impervious.”

The event’s moderator, the Nigerian novelist Okey Ndibe, added an unexpected epilogue. A friend in the Abacha cabinet said the general later boasted: “All these pro-democracy activists run to America and expect America to save them. But the U.S. president himself is calling me ‘sir.’ He is scared of me.”

Mr. Saro-Wiwa, a popular author who helped create a peaceful mass movement on behalf of the Ogoni people, was executed in November 1995 along with eight other environmental and human rights activists on what many contended were trumped-up murder charges. His body was burned with acid and thrown in an unmarked grave.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/books/05wiwa.html?th&emc=th

[villager]

1. I still remember it well... I was active in PEN in those days...

...and Abacha ordered the state murder, it seemed, just to show that he could. I still hate buying Shell gas to this day, and only do so if I'm on empty, and it's the only station around...

(Sorry if that seemes disjointed, but Shell was the main corporate player in Nigeria, and doubtless Abacha was serving their interests...)

[sabrina 1]

2. I had never heard of this brave man

So thanks for this post. I just clicked the very interesting ad that popped up as a result of your post and found some more information:

http://www.shellguilty.com/late-nigerian-activists-son-to-see-shell-in-court/

LATE NIGERIAN ACTIVIST'S SON TO SEE SHELL IN COURT

NEW YORK — Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr. has been fighting for more than 13 years to make his late father’s prediction come true.

It will happen this month when relatives of victims of the Nigerian government’s violent crackdown on residents of the oil-rich region, where Royal Dutch Shell had drilling operations, will get to challenge the deaths and injuries in a U.S. court.

>The trial that starts May 26 in U.S. District Court in New York stems from two lawsuits accusing Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. and the former managing director of its Nigerian subsidary, Shell Transport and Trading PLC, of being complicit in decisions by Nigeria’s then-military government to hang oil industry opponents, including playwright and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.

I hope he gets some justice for his father's death, but sadly the most that ever happens in these cases even if they are found guilty, is a fine, which they probably already calculate into their business expenses.

“When your father … is executed for a crime he did not commit, very publicly like that, it’s painful,” Saro-Wiwa said. “And to live for 12 years without justice, without getting a sense of relief, seeing the perpetrators of the crimes continuing to benefit from their crimes, these are difficult things for any human being to live with.”

There are so many brave people fighting multi-corps and their devastating and deadly effects on their societies around the world.