ken saro wiwa

To mark the 25th year of the deaths of the Ogoni Nine - nine men who were executed by a brutal military regime in Nigeria in response to their activism against oil extraction in Ogoniland - IHRB presents a series of conversations about the significance of their struggle and impact of their leader Ken Saro Wiwa.  In this episode - The View from a Corporate - Salil Tripathi talks with Richard Boele, now at KPMG in Sydney, who worked at Body Shop during the 1990s and lead a spirited corporate campaign for the Ogoni people prior to Ken's murder.

To mark the 25th year of the deaths of the Ogoni Nine - nine men who were executed by a brutal military regime in Nigeria in response to their activism against oil extraction in Ogoniland - IHRB presents a series of conversations about the significance of their struggle and impact of their leader Ken Saro Wiwa.  In this episode - The View from the Ground - Salil Tripathi talks with Ledum Mitee, who was Saro-Wiwa’s lawyer, detained with him, and mobilised international opinion for the Ogoni people, Noo Saro-Wiwa, Ken’s daughter and distinguished writer based in London, and Austin Onuoha, a peace activist who works towards reconciliation in the Niger Delta. They examine what Ken Saro Wiwa meant to people in the Niger Delta and within the country. They focus on the struggle he built, the challenges he faced, the impact on his family, the family's view on the struggle, and how it impacted the movement for corporate accountability in the Niger Delta.

To mark the 25th year of the deaths of the Ogoni Nine - nine men who were executed by a brutal military regime in Nigeria in response to their activism against oil extraction in Ogoniland - IHRB presents a series of conversations about the significance of their struggle and impact of their leader Ken Saro Wiwa. In this episode - The View from Beyond - Salil Tripathi speaks with Nnimmo Bassey, Rafto Laureate, human rights defender, poet, and environmental activist; Bronwen Manby who co-authored The Price of Oil, Human Rights Watch’s path-breaking research report on the violence in the Niger Delta; Paul Hoffman, who argued the Wiwa case before the US Supreme Court under the Alien Tort Statute; and Bennett Freeman, who was a senior US State Department official who brought together oil and mining companies, governments, and international human rights groups to prepare the Voluntary Principles for Security and Human Rights. They discuss how the Ogoni struggle in Nigeria shaped the modern business and human rights movement; the litigations that followed; the lack of political and corporate accountability in an oil-rich nation where the military was a major factor, and; the state of human rights.

In this episode we meet multidisciplinary performer, poet and writer Zena Edwards, who has been involved in performance for over 20 years – as a writer/poet performer, educator and creative project developer. As a lecturer, Zena is interested in demystifying and emboldening grassroots embodied knowledge fusing song, film and poetry. She is the Creative and Education Director for Verse In Dialogue (©ViD) producing projects focusing on live literature, creative community engagement, wellbeing and transformational learning. Zena chose to walk around the Old Tidemill  Gardens in South London, which has now been demolished as part of a regeneration project. She discusses how the starting point of looking at mental health and wellbeing using art brought her to the issue of climate justice, along with state violence against marginalised groups, reclaiming land as an act of resistance and community gardens.

Thank you to Zena and Lola for their time and generosity.

Follow Zena on Twitter: @ZenaEdwards
Learn more about Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine: https://platformlondon.org/background/the-life-of-ken-saro-wiwa/
Check out Voices That Shake!: https://www.voicesthatshake.org/

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