Today is the 15th anniversary of the execution of Ken Saro Wiwa, a political activist who campaigned against the insidious activities of Shell Oil in his native Nigeria, specifically the Niger Delta region, but you wouldn't know it by reading or watching the major US news media. When it happened in 1995, Saro Wiwa's murder at the hands of his own government, ordered by Shell, was a huge international story that got loads of coverage in the American media, but today passed without so much as a mention of it.
I did find this article by the
AFP, which gives some good historical context as well as how Saro Wiwa is being commemorated in Nigeria today. And yesterday, the
Guardian published an article about Shell's efforts to control negative PR after the execution.
The suffering and injustice that Saro Wiwa fought against so many years ago persists; the lives and livelihoods of the Ogoni people continue to be sacrificed at the alter of corporate greed and western petrol-lust. And no one is listening.
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