“Lord, take my soul, but the struggle continues…”
–Ken Saro-Wiwa
Tomorrow, on May 27, in courtroom 15B at 500 Pearl Street, in the courts of the US District Court of the Southern District of New York, one of the six “supermajor” oil companies of the world will be made to answer for a record of environmental and human rights abuse.
Royal Dutch Petroleum, better known as Shell Oil, will be on trial for a charge brought under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789, which allows non-United States citizens to sue for international human rights violations in US courts. They also face civil charges under the Torture Victim Protection Act, which empowers victims to seek damages in US courts for torture and extrajudicial killings, regardless of where those acts occurred. The Center for Constitutional Rights and EarthRights International, along with several noted human rights attorneys, have been pressing this case since 1996. Lest this all slip quickly into a legal brief, here’s the quick backstory: Shell is being made to answer for the pollution of the Niger River delta and for the extrajudicial death of Ken Saro-Wiwa. So, why should churches care?
Ken Saro-Wiwa was a peaceful man. He was a poet and an environmental activist. He came from Ogoni—the name of both the area and its indigenous people—in the Niger River delta. Unable to let environmental and political injustice stand as “just the way it is,” he organized a movement called MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People) to combat the pollution of his homeland and to redress the subjugation of his people. He stood in the way of a cozy arrangement between Shell and the Nigerian military dictatorship. He became, in short, exactly the kind of troublemaker we “progressive Christians” say we honor: someone like Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, even a particular first-century Jewish carpenter we like to talk about so much. For opposing corruption in the state and the devastation of the land, he shared their fate.
In 1994, there was a gathering that Saro-Wiwa and eight other MOSOP leaders were to attend. They were to meet with Ogoni tribal elders, but were prevented—by the military—from reaching that gathering. Four Ogoni elders were murdered at the gathering the “Ogoni Nine” were unable to reach, yet the government held these same activists responsible for these four deaths. They were brought before a three-man military tribunal, where they were to have no right of appeal. Unsurprisingly, they were found guilty of these four murders and sentenced to execution by hanging. On November 10, 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa, John Kpuinen, Dr. Barinem Kiobel, Saturday Doobee, Daniel Gbokoo, Baribor Bera, Nordu Eawo, Paul Levera, and Felix Nuate were murdered by the Nigerian government.
The Niger River delta now looks like Hell on Earth. Gas flares that look like flamethrowers abut farmlands. Areas where oil has been spilled were “cleaned up” by burning off the crude. Those areas are now charred meters deep and unusable for any productive purpose. Ruins of villages dot the countryside where terrified families fled from the military into the jungle. This is all the cost of doing business, isn’t it?
Make no mistake: this was not simply an example of a dictatorship run amok. Shell sent monetary aid to the regime. Shell requested “security operations” of the Nigerian military and police forces. Shell told the Nigerian regime to deal with Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other leaders of MOSOP. Shell’s lawyer attended their military tribunal. Brian Anderson, Managing Director of the Nigerian subsidiary of Shell at the time, met with Saro-Wiwa’s brother and offered to have him freed if MOSOP would cease their protests. Shell offered jobs for perjured testimony against Saro-Wiwa at his trial. Shell began a new $4 billion LNG pipeline project within a month of the execution of the Ogoni Nine.
Dangerous Memories
So, again, why should Christians care? How can we not care? The late German theologian and political activist Dorothee Söelle once wrote, “politics is understood as the comprehensive and decisive sphere in which Christian truth should become praxis.” In other words, the truth of the equal love of God for all of us, the truth of mercy and love, must be enacted within the earthly political sphere. This is not a call to simply vote in school board elections; the political sphere is much larger than that. We must take a decisive stand against these injustices when they appear. We have not stayed silent some two thousand years after the state-sponsored murder of Jesus, and we must not forget any others slain for seeking their God-given right to human dignity.
We must not forget what has happened in the Niger River delta. Memory is a key theme in Christian scripture. We think of it every time we celebrate or participate in the Eucharist: “do this in memory of me.” The act of remembering and memorializing innocent suffering is central to Christian theological beliefs and ritual practices. It forms what Johannes Baptist Metz refers to as a “dangerous memory.” These dangerous memories forbid the status quo from claiming and calming us all, from lulling us into a placid acceptance of violence and injustice as simply the cost of doing business. Dangerous memories are dangerous precisely to the Shell Oils of the world: they are our most powerful allies in a nonviolent struggle for justice, and we too often ignore them for their very incendiary power.
We cannot continue to forget Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine. We cannot afford to allow the injustice of their deaths to slip into the murky fog of half-remembered history. Those of us with pulpits can bring this to our congregations. Let us remember the Ogoni Nine’s dry bones as we read from Ezekiel in the lectionary. Let those bones be raised up and knit over with flesh, and let that flesh be our action around these dangerous memories.
The trial is tomorrow. Those of us in and around New York City can and should attend: 500 Pearl Street, Courtroom 15B on May 27.
