Saro-Wiwa, a martyr for minorities

Saro-Wiwa, a martyr for minorities

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria (Reuter): Ken Saro-Wiwa, one of nine
activist hanged by Nigerian authorities last Friday, touched a
raw nerve by focusing his minority rights campaign on Nigeria's
lifeblood oil industry.

In his crusade against oil pollution in the Niger delta, Saro-
Wiwa, a prominent playwright and satirist, also took on the might
of the Anglo-Dutch Shell, the leading oil company operating in
the area and throughout Nigeria.

A tribunal sentenced Saro-Wiwa and eight fellow activists to
death recently on murder charges stemming from disturbances
linked to the campaign for the Ogoni people's rights.

"I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial," Saro-
Wiwa said in a prepared statement issued after his conviction.
"Shell is here on trial and it is well that it is represented by
counsel to be holding a watching brief."

Echoing the statement made by South Africa's Nelson Mandela
when he was sentenced to life for his anti-apartheid campaign,
Saro-Wiwa added:

"I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my
very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which
I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated."

The sentence was swiftly ratified by the Nigerian military
rulers who said the issue was that of murder and not his minority
rights activities.

Fourteen members of Saro-Wiwa's Movement for the Survival of
Ogoni Peoples (MOSOP) were tried for the murder of four moderate
Ogoni leaders in May 1994. Five were acquitted.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reporting the hangings from
the southeastern Nigerian oil center of Port Harcourt, said
hundreds of Ogonis who lined the route to the prison in
anticipation of Saro-Wiwa's execution wept uncontrollably.

The region inhabited by the 500,000 Ogonis produces some of
OPEC-member Nigeria's oil wealth.

Shell denies causing undue pollution but Saro-Wiwa, backed by
international pressure groups like Greenpeace, had campaigned
relentlessly for compensation for local people.

"The Ogoni case has exposed simmering hatreds that could tear
Nigeria apart," Saro-Wiwa said in a public speech to a 1992
Geneva conference on indigenous populations.

"Oil exploration has turned Ogoni into a wasteland. In return
we have received nothing and in the circumstance, the interest of
the few like the Ogonis was bound to suffer," he said.

Nigeria fought a bitter 30-month civil war from mid-1967 over
breakaway Biafra, in which oil, notably in the area of the
Ogonis, was a major bone of contention.

During the civil war Saro-Wiwa was an administrator for Bonny,
the hub of the oil industry in the Niger delta. He later served
in military administrations in the area after.

Born Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa on October, 1941 at Bori, Rivers
State, he grew up in a large family where self-responsibility was
vital from an early age.

He was educated at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria's premier
college. He graduated in 1965 and went to teach at his old high
school in Umuahia, southeastern Nigeria. He later taught at
universities in Lagos and in eastern Nigeria.

But it was through writing of humorous and satirical stories
and novels that Saro-Wiwa achieved fame. His soap opera "Basi and
Company" was very popular on state television.

"I believe in using satire as my weapon to fight and what does
a satirist do? The satirist holds up a distorting mirror before
the people who get scared when they see their reflection. There
are many scared people in Nigeria," Saro-Wiwa once said.

Saro-Wiwa was married with children, including a son, Ken
Wiwa.