Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 15:55:59 -0500 (EST)
From: Shashwati Talukdar <shash-AT-astro.ocis.temple.edu>
Subject: Shell to Wiwa: "Your press release or your life." (fwd)






January 26, 1996

IN AMERICA / By BOB HERBERT

Unholy Alliance in Nigeria

Dr. Owens Wiwa, a Nigerian physician, had nurtured the faint hope
that the Royal Dutch/Shell Group would use its powerful influence
with the Nigerian Government to help secure the release of his
brother, Ken Saro-Wiwa, a poet, playwright and environmental activist who
was in prison on trumped-up murder charges.

Mr. Saro-Wiwa's imprisonment was a miscarriage of justice. The
miscarriage became an atrocity last Nov. 10 when he and eight
co-defendants, after a trial by a court set up especially for them, were
sentenced to death and hanged.

Three times during the course of his brother's imprisonment, Dr. Wiwa met
with Brian Anderson, the managing director of the Shell Petroleum
Development Company of Nigeria. Dr. Wiwa wanted Mr. Anderson to
intervene on his brother's behalf with the strongman Government of Gen.
Sani Abacha.

It was an appeal borne of desperation. Ken Saro-Wiwa was one of the most
prominent critics of the nightmarish alliance between the oil companies and
Mr. Abacha's Government. He had led an international campaign that
focused on the environmental damage caused by the oil companies, the
brutality of the Abacha regime and the inequitable distribution of benefits
>from the industry. The riches from Nigeria's vast oil reserves are being
hijacked by the oil companies and the military dictatorship while the
Nigerian people suffer in an oppressive atmosphere of extreme
unemployment, extreme inflation and a per capita income comparable to that
of Haiti.

"I went to see Brian Anderson for only one reason," Dr. Wiwa told me in a
telephone conversation on Wednesday. "I asked him to use his influence to
see that the trial would not start, so that Ken and his co-defendants could be
free because they were innocent."

Dr. Wiwa understood the symbiotic relationship between Shell and the
Abacha regime. The essence of that relationship was captured in a classified
government memo regarding protests against Shell in Ogoniland, home of
the ethnic group to which Dr. Wiwa and his brother belonged. Dated Dec. 5,
1994, the memo said in part:

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

Dr. Wiwa said he had been told by Mr. Anderson that it would be difficult
to help his brother, but that something might be done if Ken Saro-Wiwa
would call off the protest campaign of his organization, the Movement for
the Survival of the Ogoni People, and if a press release were issued, on the
movement's letterhead, saying that there had been no environmental damage
in Ogoniland.

"I told him," said Dr. Wiwa, "that we could not do that."

Dr. Wiwa viewed his meetings with Mr. Anderson as critical discussions on
a matter of life or death. If his account is true, it means that Shell saw Ken
Saro-Wiwa and his co-defendants not as human beings unjustly accused and
facing possible doom, but simply as chips in a big-league game of public
relations. Your press release or your life.

Shell officials said yesterday that Dr. Wiwa's account was not true. Eric
Nickson, a spokesman, acknowledged that the meetings had taken place but
said that Dr. Wiwa's version was "misleading," and that Mr. Anderson had
never indicated he could be of assistance.

Mr. Nickson noted that Shell had pulled its operations out of Ogoniland in
1993 because of protests and acts of sabotage against Shell. "Whilst we
would like to go back," he said, "we are only prepared to go back if we have
the support of the communities in Ogoniland. So these meetings were
initiated by Mr. Owens Wiwa to find whether there were some middle
ground on which to try and resolve this situation."

And what, Mr. Nickson was asked, did Mr. Wiwa want? Under the
circumstances, why else would he seek out Mr. Anderson except to plead for
help in saving his brother?

Mr. Nickson said he didn't know. "I wasn't present at the meetings,
unfortunately."

The execution of Mr. Saro-Wiwa and his co-defendants has been widely
condemned by world leaders. But it has not shaken the bond between Shell
and the execrable Nigerian Government. They are going ahead with their
joint plans to build a $4 billion natural gas project.

They will not miss the chastizing voice of the silenced Ken Saro-Wiwa.


   Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kerim Friedman
        Department of Anthropology
        Temple University - Philadelphia, PA

        kerim-AT-voicenet.com
        http://www.voicenet.com/~kerim





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