49 



enforcement and immigration officials." This is one of the few times, reported Hammer, 

 that the U.S. goverimient has embargoed a foreign airport for reasons that are linked 

 purely to crime. State Department officials increasingly note Nigeria's involvement in 

 heroin trafficking. 



In June of 1993, General Ibrahim Babangida annulled Nigeria's democratic 

 presidential election. Five months later General Sani Abacha seized power, abolished 

 all democratic institutions, shut down newspapers, and jailed most of the opposition, 

 including the winner of the 1993 presidential election, Moshood Abiola, Mrs. Kudirat 

 Abiola, her husband's most vocal supporter, was assassinated last month, many believe in 

 yet another attempt to silence an outspoken military critic. 



The tragedy that occurred on November 10, 1995, however, stunned the world. In 

 the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt, writer and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa was 

 hanged by the Nigerian military. A military tribimal found Saro-Wiwa guilty of inciting a 

 riot in which four people were killed, even though he was miles away in another town. 

 Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Sierra Club and many other human 

 rights and environmental organizations declared the trial a sham, responding that Saro- 

 Wiwa had been convicted on trumped up charges. Of the nineteen prosecution witnesses 

 called, two of the most damaging would later admit to having been bribed by the military 

 junta. 



Within hours of the execution, the Nigerian military had deployed some 4,000 

 troops throughout Ogoniland, beating anyone caught mourning in public. School 

 headmasters were arrested as a warning not to discuss Saro-Wiwa in the classroom. 

 Pastors were arrested because they prayed for Ken Saro-Wiwa. 



Ken Saro-Wiwa was the President of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni 

 People, or MOSOP, a volimteer-based democratic organization governed not unlike the 

 Sierra Club. MOSOP was organized as a response to the environmental devastation 

 which has occurred in Ogoni as a result of 38 years of oil exploitation. Ogoni demands 

 include an end to the pollution caused primarily by the oil spills and gas flares of Royal- 

 Dutch Shell. The Ogoni are also demanding a share of the oil revenues from their land. 



The Sierra Qub has come to believe that a boycott of Shell OU and an embargo 

 of Nigerian oil exports are the best way to stop the environmental and human rights 

 abuses in Nigeria. The participation in, and endorsement of, boycotts is a rarity for the 

 Sierra Qub. But despite repeated meetings, letters and pleas. Shell International 

 continues to deny any complicity in the persecution of the Ogoni people. Though their 

 pollution and poisoning of Ogoni is well documented, Shell continues to refuse to accept 

 responsibility. 



OgOEdland has a population of approximately 500,000, in an area of just some 400 

 square miles. It contains 96 oil wells, four oil fields, one petrochemical plant, one 

 fertilizer plant, and two refineries. By some estimates the region has produced about 



