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28 October, 2005
In ten days, the world will remember the tenth anniversary of the hanging of Nigerian human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa by that country’s then military dictatorship.
Ken Wiwa, son of Ken Saro-Wiwa, London Mayor Ken Livingstone, and Anita Roddick, environmental campaigner and head of Bodyshop Company
(photo: Sion Touhig)
On 10 November 1995, Saro-Wiwa, a writer, environmentalist and leader of the Ogoni people of Nigeria’s delta who sought to free his people from the bonds of Shell Oil, was sent to the gallows along with eight other activists. He stood for the reality—current today as it was then—that social and environmental justice and the rights of citizens residing in oil producing regions must be protected in a world dominated by oil politics.
One of several memorials to Saro-Wiwa will be erected in the UK at Jubilee Gardens, which lies across the road from Shell’s London headquarters.