The
first time I heard of Ken Saro-Wiwa was in the last week of his life, when
Peter Jennings announced that the Nigerian environmental activist, writer and
television producer had been hanged by his government for his protests against
the multinational petroleum corporations that were destroying the resources of
his homeland.
Saro-Wiwa was an articulate and
unflagging advocate for the basic human right to a safe environment, clean
water, the sharing of natural resources—which made him dangerous to the
conglomerates and the military dictatorship in Lagos they’d paid for. His voice
and his pen struck more terror than any firearm he might have wielded—had he
ever chosen to, which he did not.
Dictatorships and
multinationals—the bigger they grow, the more enraged they are by anyone not
falling into line.
Saro-Wiwa’s non-violent
campaign led to his arrest on trumped-up charges of murder; he was tortured and
executed in 1995 at age 54, along with eight other leaders of his Ogoni tribe.
Families of the nine filed
suit against Royal Dutch Shell the following year for human rights violations
in the matter of their deaths. In 2009, just as the case was about to go to
trial in Manhattan, Shell settled out of court, paying out $15.5M. The company
continues to deny any wrongdoing, issuing one of those statements you hear
every fucking time some guilty-as-hell politician, businessman or corporation settles
out of court solely “to put the matter behind all parties.”
In this case, one of Shell’s
mouthpieces intoned, “While we were prepared to go to court to clear our name,
we believe the right way forward is to focus on the future for Ogoni people.”
Man, these oleaginous scumbags
only seem to have one songbook to sing from, and it’s the same, sour tune every
time.
Saro-Wiwa wrote “The True
Prison” in 1993, when he’d already been imprisoned twice without trial. He was
arrested again in 1994 on charges of incitement to murder in the deaths of
Ogoni chiefs. He was in prison for more than a year before his execution in
1995. There was outrage around the world at his hanging, but it didn’t seem to
stop anyone from doing business there.
You remember about the oil,
right?
There are so many lines in
this poem that make me want to weep—for Saro-Wiwa and his people, and for me
and my people, both then and now. Do these not resonate with you—cowardice masking
as obedience, security agents running amok for such low wages, lies pounded
into a generation’s ears? He has cut to the heart of the tragedy with not a single
word too many.
“The True Prison”
It is not the leaking roof
Nor the singing mosquitoes
In the damp, wretched cell
It is not the clank of the key
As the warden locks you in
It is not the measly rations
Unfit for beast or man
Nor yet the emptiness of day
Dipping into the blankness of
night
It is not
It is not
It is not
It is the lies that have been
drummed
Into your ears for a
generation
It is the security agent
running amok
Executing callous calamitous
orders
In exchange for a wretched
meal a day
The magistrate writing into
her book
A punishment she knows is
undeserved
The moral decrepitude
The mental ineptitude
The meat of dictators
Cowardice masking as obedience
Lurking in our denigrated
souls
It is fear damping trousers
That we dare not wash
It is this
It is this
It is this
Dear friend, turns our free
world
Into a dreary prison
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