Struggle continues after Ogoni leader is executed
By Norm Dixon On November 10, in defiance of international outrage, the Nigerian dictatorship executed Ken Saro-Wiwa a leading campaigner against the environmental devastation of his homeland by the Shell oil company and other multinationals. Eight other Ogoni activists, with framed-up murder charges, were also executed. Western governments' failure to take decisive action to save Saro-Wiwa emboldened the brutal military regime of General Sani Abacha to act. The hangings came as pressure was mounting for sanctions to be applied against the Nigerian regime, and for the country to be expelled from the Commonwealth until democracy is restored. Commonwealth leaders — significantly John Major and Nelson Mandela — refused to take any meaningful action against the regime. Saro-Wiwa was the president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. He led a long battle against Shell's vandalism in the Niger Delta region in southern Nigeria where 500,000 Ogoni people live together with 5.5 million other people from 20 ethnic groups. Nigeria's military rulers have conducted horrific massacres and repression to crush the popular movement for compensation and self-determination. The campaign to save Saro-Wiwa had been spearheaded by Ken Wiwa, the condemned leader's son. In Auckland, where the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting began on November 10, Wiwa told a press conference on November 8 that Commonwealth leaders would be guilty of "complicity with the Nigerian authorities in the human rights abuses in Nigeria", if they failed to take action. Nobel prize-winner and human rights campaigner Wole Soyinka, also in Auckland, demanded that CHOGM expel Nigeria from the Commonwealth. Both Wiwa and Soyinka cited the precedent of South Africa, where the Commonwealth played a leading role in isolating the apartheid regime. The British government — in a re-run of its blocking of decisive action against the apartheid regime — has opposed sanctions and isolation. The ANC-led government of South Africa seems to agree with this approach. "I find it astonishing that South Africa has not already taken a moral stand and condemned Nigeria", Wiwa said in a interview published by the
Australian on November 9. "The world gave them support. A statement from Mandela could change the whole equation. It would send out an enormous signal ... The human rights record of Nigeria is appalling." The reluctance of the major Western countries to take action can be summed up in three letters: oil. British, European and US companies have huge investments in Nigeria. The giant Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell produces 50% of Nigeria's oil production. It is estimated that Shell earns 15% of its total world oil revenue from Nigeria which has yielded an estimated US$30 billion since 1958. Meanwhile, the 6 million people who live in Niger Delta region remain desperately poor and their land has suffered massive environmental degradation. In a statement released on November 8, Amnesty International Australia (AIA) pointed to another reason for the Commonwealth's inaction: "The Commonwealth has betrayed the hopes of its 1.5 billion citizens by not living up to the rhetoric it continues to promote on human rights ... There are few countries in the Commonwealth that have escaped mention in Amnesty International's annual global survey of political imprisonment and killings, arbitrary arrest and illegal detention, torture and executions ... Commonwealth nations have taken little action to improve the status of human rights, either for their own countries or for the rest of the world." AIA spokesperson Judith Kingston urged Commonwealth leaders to intervene to save the life of Ken Saro-Wiwa. The Wilderness Society had also demanded that Shell intervene to save Saro-Wiwa. Other calls for action have come from human rights and environmental groups worldwide. Shell's management in Europe rejected the calls, claiming it does not interfere in the "national politics" of the countries it operates in. This is despite the admission by a company spokesperson to the
Wall Street Journal that it had appealed to the Nigerian regime for assistance in dealing with the disruption to its operations caused by the protests of the Ogoni people. Oil provides 80% of the Nigerian military regime's income and a majority of that comes from Shell. Shell's British boss John Jennings has endorsed the Commonwealth's softly softly approach telling the British
Today newspaper on November 4: "Many of those who know Africa best, like Nelson Mandela, are advocating 'quiet diplomacy' as the way forward. We think those who currently advocate public condemnation and pressure would do well to reflect on the possible result." The fruits of "quiet diplomacy" are now clear to everybody.