Murder in Nigeria

[nyms1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Bill Koehnlein)]

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[The following article was written by Mitchel Cohen of the Red
Balloon Collective, 2652 Cropsey Avenue, Brooklyn, New York
11214, and was distributed as a broadside by Red Balloon. It
may be freely reproduced in either print or electronic form
provided that credit to Mitchel Cohen and the Red Balloon
Collective be given, and that credit to The Brecht Forum, as a
distributor, also be given, and that the address of the Red
Balloon Collective and the address, phone number, and e-mail
address of The Brecht Forum be retained on all reproductions.
Further, NY Transfer News Collective must be credited as a
distributor on all reproductions, whether print or electronic,
and its signature logo, where it appears in any electronic
posting or reproduction must be retained. The text and/or
content of this article may not be altered in any way, except
for incidental formatting necessary to conform to style and
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system.]

                         *****

Murder in Nigeria:
Ordered by Shell and the IMF, Paid for by the U.S. Government


By Mitchel Cohen
Red Balloon Collective


In the old days, when the state hanged somebody and the
braided rope broke or the gallows came crashing to the ground
it was taken by God-fearing men as a sign that a mistake had
been made and the condemned soul was no longer their's to
take; the prisoner was reprieved. Today's wisdom, however,
will abide no such mythology. Steeped in the profane religion
of the New World Order whose merchants of death trade
haughtily in the machinery of holocausts, the only spirits
that count are those that, indeed, _count_. Justice resides in
the counting of profits, in preventing even for a moment the
removal of pump from soil, head from noose.

The poet Diane DiPrima summarizes the new religion best. With
its icy winter blade ransacking the globe and, ultimately,
finding our throats, international capital--self-righteous in
its indignation, in its meticulous counting upon the force of
its justice--commands: "Get your cut throat off my knife!"

And so it shall be, for as long as we allow the "morally
challenged" to rule. It took the Shell Oil Company, that holy
spirit acting through the guise of General Abacha of Nigeria,
five attempts--count them, five!, according to _The New York
Times_--to successfully hang playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa and
eight of his companions, before the sun was up early on
November 10, 1995, for not even the gallows mechanism complied
willingly with the evil afoot that morning. The old gods must
have been angry, indeed! Between the fourth and fifth attempt,
the noose around his neck, the _Times_ reported that Saro-Wiwa
was still able to utter: "The struggle continues." And from
such stuff legends are born.

And when finally Ken Saro-Wiwa, Dr. Barinem Kiobel, Saturday
Dobee, Paul Levura, Nordu Eawo, Felix Nuate, Daniel Gbokoo,
John Kpuinen, and Varibor Beraand--environmental and
indigenous rights activists of the Movement for the Survival
of the Ogoni People (MOSOP)--were successfully lynched despite
worldwide protests and the temerity of even the gallows in
resisting the execution, the cover-up began. The men were
murderers, "cannibals," we were told. They "stood in the way
of progress." They were "anarchists," because they had dared
to organize the Ogoni people in southern Nigeria against the
Royal Dutch Shell Company's (Shell Oil) and Chevron's
destruction of their environment, because they dared to remove
their throats from the blade, their heads from capital's
noose.

Eighteen more are facing execution in Nigeria for the crime of
standing up to the New World Order and protecting their land.
To save them, the land and the ideas for which Ken Saro-Wiwa
and his comrades gave their lives, a grassroots boycott of
Shell Oil is gathering steam from all corners of the globe,
calling for a worldwide embargo of Nigerian oil and upon the
United States government to freeze Nigeria's assets in U.S.
banks.

[For information on the boycott, call Greenpeace, at (202)
462-1177.]



Shell Oil and the Ogoni People

Since 1958, when Shell first struck oil on Ogoni lands in
southeastern Nigeria, it has destroyed the land, fish and
wildlife resources on which the 500,000 Ogoni people depend
for their survival. Hundreds of spills have left the landscape
puddled with oil the size of football fields.

Ken Saro-Wiwa founded MOSOP in 1990 to unite the Ogoni in a
campaign for basic human rights, political autonomy, economic
compensation for damages, a clean-up of the spills, and an end
to toxic wastes and the poisoning of the air through decades
of gas flaring--demands that are similar to those made by the
Zapatistas in Mexico, the Cree and Inuit in Quebec, various
groups in Somalia, the MOVE organization in Philadelphia and
the rebel street organizations during the Los Angeles
rebellion.

The reaction of the Nigerian military-led dictatorship was
deadly. It sent troops into Ogoniland to crush every semblance
of opposition to the practices of Shell, Mobil, Chevron,
Texaco and other oil companies. After all, 80 percent of
Nigeria's annual revenue comes from its sale of oil to the
United States. Shell Oil, whose oil and natural gas production
generates 50 percent of Nigeria's annual revenue, minced no
words in "encouraging" the Nigerian regime to crack down on
Saro-Wiwa. As recorded in an internal Nigerian military memo
(May 1994), Shell was pressuring the government to repress the
growing environmental movement:

"Shell operations [are] still impossible unless ruthless
military operations are undertaken for smooth economic
activities to commence."

The document advised that 400 soldiers should begin "wasting
operations," "wasting" Ogoni leaders who are "especially vocal
individuals." Twelve days later, Ken Saro-Wiwa was arrested,
charges against him fabricated. Two key prosecution witnesses
later stated that they were bribed by Shell to give phony evi-
dence against Saro-Wiwa. [Michael Birnbaum, UK Criminal Bar
Association Human Rights Committee report.]

A few days after the executions, Shell announced plans to go
ahead with a $4 billion liquified natural gas plant and
pipeline project in the Niger Delta (through Ogoniland),
funded, to start, with a $180 million grant from the World
Bank. The Bank's International Finance Corporation is waffling
on whether or not to continue to fund the project.

The relationship of international agencies to the murder of
Ken Saro-Wiwa and the overall Nigerian situation is the first
of four facets that have been omitted from most accounts of
the hangings. At issue is not just the role of a particular
corporation or a particularly evil government, but the more
general system of global capitalist domination, spearheaded by
the IMF/World Bank/USAID "Structural Adjustment Programs"
(SAPs) which set the stage for the current wave of repression,
ecocide and murder.

In Nigeria, as in the rest of the world, structural adjustment
programs have destroyed the environment, busted unions,
privatized resources, immiserated huge numbers of people and
systematically denied human rights. And in Nigeria, as
everywhere, people have resisted, which has led the state to
intensify its repression. Two years ago, a military coup
overthrew the democratically elected government, the better to
rein-in environmental activists and re-establish tight rule
over the oil-producing region. Since 1993, 27 Ogoni villages
have been completely destroyed, 2,000 Ogoni killed, and 80,000
displaced--the price exacted for resisting structural
adjustment and global capital.



1. Brave New World Bank

The IMF/World Bank/USAID axis adds a new dimension to "old
fashioned colonialism" and imperialism; it strives not only to
rip off resources and labor from whole regions of the world as
in the past, but uses its economic muscle to bring about
specified political changes by attaching _political_
requirements which recipient countries have to meet in order
to receive desperately-needed funds. The "axis" then uses
inability to repay the debt as political blackmail, extorting
ever more favorable conditions for the indiscriminate looting
of resources and labor. In most countries, the debt escalates
dramatically with their acceptance of IMF/World Bank economic
recovery measures. The Nigerian debt, for example, rose from
$20 to $30 billion in the 1980s after a Structural Adjustment
Program was introduced.

As Hofstra professor Silvia Federici explains, the debt crisis
is determined not by the larger or smaller amount of the debt
due or paid up, but by the processes activated through it:
wage freezes, the collapse of any local industry not connected
to foreign capital (which provides the hard currency needed
for technology and capital investment), the banning of unions,
the end of free education even at the primary level, the
imposition of draconian laws making labor and other social
struggles an act of economic sabotage, the banning of militant
students' organizations, and especially the privatization of
land.

Resistance to "Structural Adjustment" among the people of
Nigeria has been strong, and has been met by the government's
violent crackdown of protesters, which set the stage for the
repression of the Ogoni people. From the earliest phase of the
government's negotiations with the IMF, Federici points out,
students, women and workers have protested the end of free
education, tax-certificate requirements for school children
enrolled in primary schools, wage freezes, new levies, and the
removal of subsidies for domestically sold petroleum.

All over Africa students have been at the forefront of the
anti-SAP protest. Despite the fact that they are a privileged
minority, often being ready after graduation to compromise
their political convictions for a government job, students in
many African countries are now forced, by the objective
conditions of IMF-education planning for Africa, to take a
more radical stand. (The IMF prescribes a drastic reduction in
the number of high-school and college graduates in order to
contain wages and reduce expectations.) It is not an accident
that every step in the escalation of IMF-imposed economic au-
sterity measures has been accompanied by an attack on students
and their organizations.

An example of this sort of violent confrontation occurred on
May 26, 1986. "In the wake of a peaceful demonstration at
Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria, and one week prior
to the arrival of IMF-World Bank officers in Lagos, who were
to check Nigeria's books and economic plans," Silvia tells us,
"truckloads of police invaded the campus, shooting students
and visitors at sight. The machine-gun firing police chased
the students into the dorms and into the surrounding village
houses. More than 40 students were killed and many more were
wounded.

"The massacre did not stop the protests however. In the
following days, riots exploded all over the country. Students
in Lagos, Ibadan and other campuses blocked the streets,
attacked government buildings and prisons (excarcerating
hundreds of prisoners, including some from death row), and
vandalized the premises of those newspapers which had ignored
the protest.

"Since then, anti-SAP riots have become endemic in Nigeria,
culminating in May and June of 1989 with new uprisings in the
main southern cities, Lagos, Bendel, Port-Harcourt. (Port
Harcourt was at one time a center of the slave trade, and of
slave revolts.) Once again, crowds of students, women and the
unemployed jointly confronted the police and burned many
government buildings to the ground. In Bendel, the prison was
ransacked, hundreds of prisoners were set free, and food was
confiscated in the prison pantry and later distributed to the
hospitals, where patients notoriously starve unless they can
provide their own food. More than 400 people reportedly were
killed in Nigeria in the days of China's Tiananmen Square up-
rising, though barely a word about the Nigerian riots and
massacres could be found in the U.S. media."

_The Committee for the Defense of Human Rights Newsletter_
(September 1994) updates the horrendous tale. "While the
nation is watching helplessly the ongoing ethnic cleansing in
Ogoniland under the supervision of Major Paul Okutiimo, Gen.
Abacha's angel of death, another gory incident, whose details
are yet to be told, took place in the Plateau area of Edo
State, in the quiet university town called Ekuma, anglicized
as Ekpoma. The student community, perhaps the most enlightened
in terms of appreciation of national issues, protested against
the ongoing rape of the country.

"The protest began at the University of Benin on August 17,
1994 and spread to Friday, August 19....A team of regular
policemen in an ambush opened fire on the defenseless
students, who were being conveyed in a convoy of buses and
trailer lorries. Four students died on the spot. In the
ensuing stampede, the same team of policemen went wild,
firing. Those who sought refuge in the thickets of the
surrounding bush did not live to tell the story. Hot lead was
pumped into them and they died....The foregoing account is
only a small part of the entire scenario. More killings took
place. Subsequently, killer squads of mobile policemen,
non-indigenes from the far North, were deployed and the real
carnage, cold blooded and blood curdling, began in earnest.

"As they invaded Ekpoma, they opened fire on students who were
standing by the sidewalks of the major roads waiting to board
public transports home. They fell in tens and their bodies
were taken and deposited just like that in the morgue. After
this, the mobile policemen laid siege to houses where students
were lodging outside the campus. The students were shoved out
of their houses and shot, while some were taken to nearby
buses and shot and dumped in shallow graves. These killings
continued for the most part of the weekend.

"In one instance, a woman of about fifty-two who was said to
have opened her back-door for students to run into for safety
was stripped naked and given several strokes of the cane,
while another was raped....By August 21, those who had the
guts to visit the Otibhor Hospital counted no less than 20
bodies at the Mortuary; while local farmers are still
discovering by the day decomposing bodies of students in their
farmland as far as Uhiele." The report goes on to document
similar waves of atrocities and murder at other campuses in
August and September 1994.

But Silvia Federici points out that "massive uprisings and
insurrections are but one part of the resistance against
austerity and SAP plans. A daily warfare is fought at the
motor parks against the hike of transport prices, at the
'bukas' where people insist on a piece of meat in their soup
without having to pay the extra price, and at the markets
where people defy government attempts to ban 'illegal'
(non-taxpaying) vendors. Along with this quasi-legal micro-
struggle against IMF policies and their results, armed
robbery, smuggling, and land-wars have exploded in response to
diminishing access to land due to SAP-inspired enclosures.
These struggles have not been in vain. The decision at the
Paris summit of the OECD (held during the bicentennial of the
storming of the Bastille) to cancel a part of the African debt
for those countries that implemented SAPs (up to 50 percent
for the 'poorest' of them) is a recognition of their power."

Nigeria has not been alone. Anti-IMF protests have occurred in
Zaire, where in December 1988 a crowd of women was machine
gunned by government troops. In May 1990, at the University in
Lubumbashi, scores of students and teachers were killed or
wounded following protests on campuses around the country
against the IMF-inspired policies leading to the deterioration
of already-abysmal physical conditions, budgetary crises,
repression and corruption. In Ghana, too, student/government
confrontation has been the order of the day since the imple-
mentation of the IMF deal. [From _Africa, the IMF & the New
Enclosures_, by Silvia Federici, available from the Red
Balloon Collective.]

When seen through the prism of IMF/World Bank structural
adjustment policies, U.S. "intervention" in Somalia--where
opposition to structural adjustment also erupted into strong
resistance over the years--takes on new significance as well.
Much of the country's income came from relatives working the
oil fields in Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Following the
Gulf War, in the name of structural adjustment hundreds of
thousands of Palestinian, Arab and Somali oil workers were
sent back to their countries of origin and replaced with less
organized workers from Southeast Asia, costing Somalia around
$300 million a year, plus the additional burden of reabsorbing
thousands of returning and now unemployed workers into the
already-strained Somali economy, fueling the famine and adding
further leverage to the "structural adjustment" pressures
exerted by the IMF. The starvation in Somalia, it turns out,
was most severe in those regions where the IMF was able to
implement its structural adjustment program. In areas that
successfully resisted it, there was little starvation. One of
the behind-the-scenes reasons for U.S. troops in Somalia was
to force compliance throughout Somalia with the IMF's
structural adjustment, just as we are seeing in Haiti, today.
Thanks to the IMF, the United Nations and the United States
government, Somalia--which is slightly smaller than Texas in
geographic area--now owes $2 billion to Western banks.



2. Shell Oil's Involvement in Haiti

Shell Oil's despicable support for totalitarian regimes and
the suppression of popular movements is not limited to
Nigeria. It had done the same in Haiti, even though that
country is of far lesser significance to its profits.

Prior to the return of President Aristide--whose government
has, unfortunately, been promoting an IMF structural
adjustment program for Haiti, under pressure from the U.S.
government--Shell was a major player (along with Texaco and
Exxon) in propping up the military dictatorship there and in
breaking the (non-existent) embargo.

In mid-November 1993, popular movement forces in Haiti
intercepted the following communique from Lynn Garrison, a CIA
operative guiding Raoul Cedras (the former coup leader in
Haiti), outlining a plan to "force" the Shell Oil Company to
do what it really wanted to do anyway--run the virtually
non-existent U.S./U.N. embargo of Haiti and release its oil
reserves. Here is what Garrison wrote:

"I have just received this information from a high-level
American source.

"With regard to the fuel situation, SHELL's lawyers in London
have indicated that they must demonstrate some resistance to
the Haitian effort to get the fuel released. These lawyers
have also indicated that they must be 'pressured' so that they
can release the fuel without being criticized.

"In other words, they have resisted and the Haitian legal
system has generated a Court Order demanding the release of
fuel by SHELL.

"What must now be done is simple.

"One policeman, with whatever court official is necessary,
must take a copy of the Court Order to the Director of SHELL
and ask him whether or not he is going to recognize it...and
release the fuel.

"If he refuses, you simply arrest him.

"He would be guilty of 'contempt' and, as such, would be
subject to immediate jailing in the United States...or
elsewhere.

"There is no need to take this to a higher court or stage more
manifestations.

"This action will be accepted by the international community."

Shortly afterwards, following a court order issued by a
Haitian judge appointed by the regime, the Shell Oil Company
"caved-in" to this pressure from the Haitian military, as it
had planned. It released its oil reserves in Haiti despite the
U.N. oil embargo ostensibly aimed at forcing the military to
comply with the Governors Island Accord. Texaco and Exxon
quickly followed suit. Numerous Texaco oil trucks regularly
crossed the Haitian border with the Dominican Republic,
carting oil to the junta. [From _Haiti, Somalia & the
International Trade in Toxic Waste_, by Mitchel Cohen.]



3. U.S. Government Hypocrisy

The hypocrisy of the U.S. government, pretending now to be
"concerned" over the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa, is the third
point generally neglected by the movement for justice in
Nigeria, which may lead to false expectations and fruitless
strategies. For years Ken Saro-Wiwa and others had petitioned
the U.S. government to rein-in Shell and the Nigerian
government, and support the right to autonomy of the Ogoni and
other indigenous people. And for years their pleas went
unheeded, even scorned.

In fact, the U.S. government is complicit in the murder of Ken
Saro-Wiwa and the vast destruction in the Niger Delta of both
the environment and the Ogoni people, just as it has supported
and financed the Mexican government's crackdown on indigenous
movements in Mexico and resistance to NAFTA, GATT and the
structural adjustment programs there. The fight of the Ogoni
people is the same as the struggle of the Zapatistas in
Mexico--same demands, same struggle for autonomy and
self-determination, and the same enemies: Domestic governments
financed and backed politically by the U.S., the IMF/World
Bank/USAID, the oil companies and the banks.



4. Free All Political Prisoners

The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa is directly linked to the
continued incarceration of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal,
on death row in Pennsylvania, and to hundreds of other
political prisoners in U.S. jails. The U.S. tries to get away
with the same horrible things going on in other countries by
pretending that political prisoners are not imprisoned for
"political" reasons but criminal ones--that is, they broke a
law. The U.S. now incarcerates a larger percentage of its
population than any other country in the world. Prison
construction is one of the few "growth industries," and the
cells are needed to warehouse those populations considered
"expendable" by the New World Order. Hundreds are in jail for
refusing to testify before grand juries in political cases,
others for "disorderly conduct," "trespass," and other forms
of free speech. Some, like Mumia, have been framed up on
murder charges--while the ones who do all the murder, such as
the bombing of the MOVE house in Philadelphia, or the Branch
Davidians at Waco, or hundreds of thousands of civilians in
Iraq not only go uncharged, but run the government. As Bob
Dylan put it: "Patriotism is the last refuge / to which a
scoundrel clings / Steal a little and they throw you in jail /
Steal a lot and they make you king." Free Mumia!



What You Can Do

1) Boycott Shell Oil, and demand that the U.S. (and other
countries) embargo all oil from Nigeria. Call them and let
them know what you think about their role in Nigeria and
Haiti: (212) 261-5640 or (212) 581-0380. Also, fax CEO Philip
Carroll, Shell Oil Corporation, Houston, Texas; fax number:
(713) 241-4044.

2) Demand that the U.S. government freeze the assets of
Nigerian dictator Abacha and the rest of his cabal of
murderers and thieves.

3) Call the Nigerian Mission to the United Nations, (212) 297-
9300 or (212) 953-9130; 828 Second Avenue, New York, New York
10017 and the Nigerian Consulate General, (212) 850-2200; 828
Second Avenue, New York, New York 10017. Demand the release of
the remaining 18 Ogoni political prisoners facing execution by
the Nigerian government. Also, contact the Nigerian Embassy in
Washington, 1333 16 Street NW, Washington D.C. 20036; fax:
(202) 775-1385.

4) Demand the removal of all Nigerian troops from the Ogoni
region, including the 2,000 additional troops sent in
following the executions.

5) Write to Clinton and Congress to support a Nigerian oil
embargo. Contact Anthony Lake, Assistant to the President for
National Security Affairs, National Security Council; (202)
395-3000; fax: (202) 456-2883.

6) Try to get hold of the great film produced by the British
Channel 4, "Drilling Fields," about the oil companies'
devastation and murder, and show it everywhere.

7 Smash the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (1
United Nations Plaza, New York, New York 10017, (212)
963-6009) and U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID); cancel the debt, stop their Structural Adjustment
Programs, privatization, around the world--and here at home as
well.

8) Stop the execution and demand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal,
political activist in the U.S., framed up and on death row in
Pennsylvania for a crime he didn't do, in a blatant attempt--
as with Ken Saro-Wiwa--to silence his powerful voice. Free all
political prisoners & prisoners of war.

9) And, support the Ogoni 10-point course of action, as
expressed by Ken Saro-Wiwa:

--Prevail on the American government to stop buying Nigerian
oil. It is stolen property.

--Prevail on Shell and Chevron to stop flaring gas in Ogoni
and other oil-producing regions.

--Prevail on the Federal Government of Nigeria to honor the
rights of the Ogoni people to self-determination and AUTONOMY.

--Prevail on the Federal Government of Nigeria to pay to the
Ogoni people all royalties and mining rents collected on oil
mined from Ogoni since 1958, according to the revenue
allocation formula agreed before independence.

--Prevail on the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund to stop giving all loans whose repayment depends on the
exploitation of Ogoni oil resources to the Federal Government
of Nigeria.

--Send urgent medical and other aid to the Ogoni people.

--Prevail on the United Nations, the Organization of African
Unity and the Commonwealth of Nations to either get to the
Federal Government of Nigeria to implement the human rights
declarations of these organizations, face sanctions or be
expelled from them.

--Prevail on European and American Governments to stop
giving aid and credit to the Federal Government of Nigeria as
aid and credit only go to encourage the further dehumanization
of the Ogoni people and other minorities.

--Prevail on European and American Governments to grant
political refugee status to all Ogoni people seeking
protection from political persecution and genocide at the
hands of the Federal Government of Nigeria.

--Prevail on Shell and Chevron to pay compensation to the
Ogoni people for ruining the Ogoni environment and the health
of Ogoni men, women and children.

"This matter," wrote Ken, "is urgent. I live in the hope that
somewhere in this world, good still exists and that it will
prevail over evil. If nothing is done now, the Ogoni people
will be extinct within ten years."

                          *****

Issued by the Red Balloon Collective, 2652 Cropsey Avenue,
#7H, Brooklyn, New York 11214

                          *****


Recommended Resources and Contacts

Greenpeace, 1436 U St. NW, Washington DC 20009, (202)
462-1177.

Haiti Anti-Intervention Committee, PO Box 755 Fort Washington
Station, NYC 10040; (212) 592-3612 (meets on alternate
Wednesdays).

Coalition to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal: (212) 330-8029.

_Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa Newsletter_: Silvia
Federici, c/o New College, 130 Hofstra University, Hempstead
NY 11550-1090; (516) 463-5838; or George Caffentzis,
Department of Philosophy, University of Southern Maine, 96
Falmouth Street, PO Box 9300, Portland, Maine 04104-9300;
(207) 780-4332.

_Genocide in Nigeria: The Ogoni Tragedy_, by Ken Saro-Wiwa.
Published by Saros Star Series, UK.

Steve Kretzmann, "Nigeria's 'Drilling Fields': Shell Oil's
Role in Repression," _Multinational Monitor_, January/February
1995.

_Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War, 1973-1992_, by the Midnight
Notes Collective, PO Box 204, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts
02130; Publisher: Autonomedia, PO Box 568 Williamsburg
Station, Brooklyn, New York 11211.

Wetlands Rainforest Action Group, c/o Wetlands Preserve, 161
Hudson Street, New York, New York 10013; (212) 966-5244 or
966-4225 (meets every Tuesday night).

The Learning Alliance, 324 Lafayette Street, New York, New
York 10012; (212) 226-7171.

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