OILWATCH tribute to Ken Saro Wiwa

Today, the Oilwatch network pays tribute to all those who fight against the disasters of oil activities, defending the territories, defending the rights of the people, defending the right to the future.

It happened on November 10, 10 years ago, that in spite of international protests, the dictatorship of Nigeria, in complicity with the Anglo-Dutch company Shell, assassinated the poet Ken Saro Wiwa and other leaders of the MOSOP movement. Their crime was to defend the human rights of the people of the Niger Delta and to oppose the activities of that company in their territory.

His death caused horror among environmentalists and defenders of human rights. By criminalizing this form of protest in Nigeria, the power of the transnational companies and the shameless alliance of military dictatorships with the oil corporations became evident. Besides that, the insensitivity to the international protests was a warning to those who tried to oppose to these activities in other places of the world.

Those deaths in the Niger Delta are repeated year after year, ever more frequently, caused by cruel invasions, by crude violence and by atrocious hurricanes. Behind this are petroleum and companies like Shell, Repsol, Texaco and others, which are turning Earth into a place that resembles hell.

However, after the death of the poet and his companions, resistance germinated in many corners of the world. Simultaneously to this event, 10 years ago, the Oilwatch network was born. A network of the South, that fights against the abuse of the companies in a frontal an direct way, against the contamination, against the displacement of communities, against the division, against the corruption, and against all forms of abuse and systematic violation of the collective rights of the peoples that undergo the presence of the companies on their land.

The past 10 years have been years of impunity of the homicide of Ken Saro Wiwa, but also 10 years of resistance and hope. Everything has changed since then: now there are more movements around the world fighting for their rights, their culture, their territory and their resources.

The most faithful defenders of Capitalism have adopted beliefs like "a pessimist is a well-informed optimist” and that we have arrived at "the end of history", therefore everything is lost and it is not worthwhile to continue the fight against what is inevitably approaching.
They claim that the only option is to individually fight for their own and only benefit and survival, without concerning about the death of millions who cannot do it.

As opposed to this message of neo-liberal tragedy, the power of ancient knowledge tells us that when a loved and respected one dies, a part of us dies with them, but also, a part of this person continues to live within us when we remember them. This it is the outcry of the community as opposed to the individualism, the outcry of solidarity as opposed to egoism.

For that reason, it is so important to remember all those who have died in the name of others, because they are the ones who give us hope, from their deaths they speak to us because they are examples and because they are the ones who talk to us about resistance.
From America, today more than ever, Sandino, Martí, el Che, Maria'tegui speak to us; from Asia beats the heart of Gandhi; from Africa, the cradle of the humanity, the blood flows of Mandela, Lumumba and, with them, the voices of the ancestors, communitarian voices, tired of so much outrage during so many centuries.

Ken Saro Wiwa and his brothers of fight are today, ten years after their deaths, more alive than ever. Each year of death is a year of life for Oilwatch and from here, we animate this life, which moves and summons us.

Meanwhile, the name of Shell will always be associated with his death and with the deaths of others that it leaves in its tracks.

OILWATCH