DW Finds Saro-Wiwa's Fight Lives On, Forgets Who Killed Him Too
DW's piece laudably highlights Ken Saro-Wiwa's crucial environmental activism against Shell's devastation of the Niger Delta. What's omitted, however, is the inconvenient reminder that Saro-Wiwa wasn't just fighting 'oil pollution'; he was executed by the Nigerian military regime in 1995 on trumped-up charges, a regime heavily supported and armed by Western governments keen on maintaining oil
access. Shell, the primary polluter, was alleged to have actively collaborated with the regime that ultimately hanged him. This isn't just about 'pollution'; it's about state-backed corporate violence. Shell later paid a $15.5 million settlement in 2009 for complicity in human rights abuses, long after Saro-Wiwa's death. So, yes, Saro-Wiwa's fight lives on, but so does the corporate impunity and
state complicity that silenced him. One wonders how much 'justice' DW seeks when the powerful interests are Western-aligned multinational giants. The mainstream can acknowledge the injustice, as long as it doesn't implicate the system that profited from it.