Eyes on Nigeria: Human Rights Supplement to Transwonderland

This month we are travelling to Nigeria via Noo Saro-Wiwa's Looking for Transwonderland. While we are on tour, one stop definitely needs to be Amnesty International's Eyes on Nigeria website, particularly the interactive map which documents the location of oil spills, forced evictions, police brutality incidents and more. Also worth checking out are Amnesty's 2011 report The True 'Tragedy': Delays and Failures in Tackling Oil Spills in the Niger Delta and a press release from this month: Shell’s false claims on Niger Delta oil spills exposed,

A new report published today uncovers specific cases in which Shell has wrongly reported the cause of oil spills, the volume of oil spilled, or the extent and adequacy of clean up measures.

"Shell is being disingenuous about the devastation caused by its Niger Delta operations. This new evidence shows that Shell's claims about the oil spills cannot be trusted," said Audrey Gaughran, Director of Global Issues at Amnesty International.

New analysis from an independent expert found that so-called official investigation reports into the cause of oil spills in the Niger Delta can be "very subjective, misleading and downright false."

The report highlights systemic weaknesses in the way the cause of a spill and the volume are determined - with some significant errors in the volumes that are recorded as spilled.

The consequences for the affected communities are devastating and can result in them receiving little or no compensation.

Another important report regarding forced evictions was released this past August: If You Love You Life, Move Out! NIGERIA: Forced Eviction in Badia East, Lagos State,

By the end of the demolition, the Oke Ilu-Eri community, which forms part of Badia East, was razed to the ground and a part of the nearby Ajeromi community was also destroyed. At least 266 structures that served as homes and businesses were completely wiped out, affecting an estimated 2,237 households. Ataminimum, close to 9,000 people were affected. No alternative housing was provided by the Lagos state government and people were left homeless after the demolitions.

Finally, here is a short documentary about the oil spill issue. It contains a brief appearance by Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jr., Noo's brother.

For November: Looking for Transwonderland by Noo Saro-Wiwa

Several years ago, we read Ken Wiwa's memoir, In the Shadow of a Saint, a memoir about his relationship with his father, the writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa who was executed by the Nigeria government in November 1995. The book was one of our favorites. Now our Pasadena group has chosen a book for this coming November by his daughter Noo: Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria. I'm really looking forward to Noo as our guide to life in contemporary Nigeria.

Noo Saro-Wiwa was brought up in England, but every summer she was dragged back to visit her father in Nigeria — a country she viewed as an annoying parallel universe where she had to relinquish all her creature comforts and sense of individuality. After her father, activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was killed there, she didn’t return for several years. Recently, she decided to come to terms with the country her father given his life for. 

Saro-Wiwa travels from the exuberant chaos of Lagos to the calm beauty of the eastern mountains; from the eccentricity of a Nigerian dog show to the decrepit kitsch of the Transwonderland Amusement Park. She explores Nigerian Christianity, delves into the country’s history of slavery, examines the corrupting effect of oil, and ponders the huge success of Nollywood. 

She finds the country as exasperating as ever, and frequently despairs at the corruption and inefficiency she encounters. But she also discovers that it si far more beautiful and varied than she had ever imagined, with its captivating thick tropical rainforest and ancient palaces and monuments. Most engagingly of all, she introduces us to the many people she meets, and gives us hilarious insights into the African character, its passion, wit and ingenuity. 

Round-Up: Familiar Authors in Unfamiliar Places

In our latest round-up, we find many of our authors stretching their wings in new genres and finding new audiences:

• Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is to be a movie directed by Wayne Wang.

• Film critic Roger Ebert is a fan of W.G. Sebald and shares some video tributes on his blog. Check out the one from the architecture students for an Austerlitz flashback.

• John Conroy (Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People) has converted his investigation of allegations of the use of torture by Chicago police officers into a play.  He described it for the NYT, “I wanted to indict the whole city of Chicago.”

• Meanwhile, Lone Star Opera (Fort Worth) has made Reinaldo Arenas' Before Night Falls into an opera.

• Louise Erdrich (Tracks) will participate in the PBS series Faces of America which explores the genealogical histories of a dozen prominent Americans.

• Helene Cooper (The House at Sugar Beach) takes time off from the White House beat to report on surfing in Liberia.
  

• Will Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children) pen a graphic novel?

• Ann Cummins (Yellowcake) reviews books for the Arizona NPR affiliate and she's got some interesting regional picks!

• Walter Mosley (Little Scarlet) and Roberto Bolaño (Amulet) show up on LA Laker coach Phil Jackson's gift list to players.

• At the New Yorker, you can hear Junot Diaz read and discuss Edwidge Danticat's story "Water Child" and Danticat discuss Diaz' "The Dating Game."
  

• The photographer Pieter Hugo has published a collection of photographs, Nollywood, about the Nigerian film industry.  Chris Abani (Graceland) and Zina Saro-Wiwa, daughter of Ken Saro-Wiwa supply the text.  Preview this striking collection here.
  

• Orhan Pamuk (Snow) explains how his latest book, The Museum of Innocence, lead him to curate an actual museum and the NYT provides a slideshow of some of its holdings.  Want more Pamuk? How about a stroll with him through downtown LA?: "I like it when there is history, when there is decay. I'm very much impressed that this city has a decaying face. I identify it with my own." And then compare that to Istanbul.  Not juicy enough?  How about this literary match: ‘No secret, Kiran’s my girlfriend’. 

• Finally, remember our exploration of afropop legend Fela Kuti when we discussed Uzondinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation?  Kevin Mambo, star of the Broadway musical "Fela!" and Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA's Executive Director discuss the musician's commitment to human rights (and Obama's Nobel speech) on WNYC. More from NPR here.

Rights Readers Round-up

Prize winners corner:

• Edwidge Danticat (Brother, I'm Dying) won a MacArthur "genius" grant. Her reaction and plans here.

• Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) writes about the connections between the Iranian recipients of this years Anna Politkovskaya Award and the award's namesake and previous winner Natalya Estemirova.

• Memorial wins the Sakharov prize.

• Muhammad Yunus (Banker To The Poor) and Wangari Maathai (Unbowed) defend President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. Nick Kristof suggests Greg Mortenson and Paul Farmer as alternative winners. Foreign Policy runs down a list of Nobel losers including Rights Readers faves Eleanor Roosevelt and Ken Saro-Wiwa.

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is the most read book on the New York City subway.

Forthcoming:

• Greg Mortenson has a new book coming out for your holiday gift list.

• Ha Jin's novel Waiting is to be made into a movie and Mira Nair's next project is the film version of Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

• Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International (and Nicolas Kristof) talk about the current state of the human rights movement at NPR's On Point. A very interesting discussion, though we don't learn much about Khan's new book, (The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights).

• John Conroy (Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture) has written a play about the Chicago police torture scandal. Also, check out this provocative article about his personal experience as a crime victim.

• Dinaw Mengestu (The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears) chats about the cities he's lived in and his next book:
  
  Interview with Dinaw Mengestu from Granta magazine on Vimeo.
  
  

On the issues:

• Bill Moyers interviews Dr. Jim Yong Kim (see Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains) about the connections between our current national healthcare debate and global health issues.

• Ted Conover (Newjack)is interviewed by On the Media about the ethics of his undercover reporting at Sing Sing prison.

• Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) discusses poverty and the recession on NPR's On Point and then stands up for the grumpy among us on the The Daily Show.

• Meanwhile looking ahead to Copenhagen and the climate change talks, Orville Schell (Mandate Of Heaven) writes for the NYT- The Thaw at the Roof of the World- and Mark Hertsgaard (Earth Odyssey) in the Nation- Climate Roulette. Wangari Maathai leaves us with this PSA:

Rights Readers Round-up: Climate Change Edition

Another in our periodic updates on Rights Readers authors, this time with an environmental twist:

Orville Schell (Mandate Of Heaven) previews the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen highlighting the U.S.-China divide on climate change solutions. Nation subscribers might want to check out Mark Hertsgaard's (Earth Odyssey) article on the same subject, 'Shades of Green'. I also highly recommend exploring the Asia Society's excellent multimedia web resources on China and climate change which feature interviews with Schell. Check out the air quality in Beijing and watch time lapse view of the melting of the Tibetan plateau and learn how drought is affecting nomadic herding cultures of the area.

Edward Humes (No Matter How Loud I Shout), now on the environmental beat, profiles the Center for Biological Diversity and their fight against development at Tejon Ranch,

The organization’s goal is to augment its usual battle over specific endangered species issues—in Tejon’s case, the California condor—with a broader campaign to show that projects such as Tejon are precisely the sort of development, built far from existing cities and requiring residents to “leapfrog” through the outlying area to get to work, that must stop if we are to get serious about slowing climate change. It argues that state and federal laws should force developers at Tejon—and elsewhere—to quantify their contribution to global warming and then do everything feasible to eliminate that impact, from installing solar roofs to mandating zero-emission vehicles for residents.

A little follow-up on Wiwa v Shell: Transcript of Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr. (In the Shadow of a Saint)interview at CNN and here's a Reuters report on the impact of the case on Big Oil. Meanwhile Zina Saro-Wiwa, taking on a cultural ambassador role for African positivity premiers a film, This is My Africa.

More than one of our Esteemed Readers have praised the film, The Linguists (view online here). I'm going to recommend this fascinating article about the nexus between climate change and language diversity from Seed, 'In Defense of Difference,'

Epicenters of global biodiversity, it turns out, tend to be situated in exactly the same places as the epicenters of high cultural, linguistic, and food-crop diversity.

...

Homogeneous landscapes — whether linguistic, cultural, biological, or genetic — are brittle and prone to failure. The evidence peppers human history, as Jared Diamond so meticulously catalogued in his aptly named book, Collapse. Whether it was due to a shifting climate that devastated a too-narrow agricultural base, a lack of cultural imagination in how to deal with the problem, or a devastating combination of the two, societies insufficiently resilient enough to cope with the demands of a changing environment invariably crumbled.

Hey! Poets and scientists unite! You should also Check out this UN Tribute to Poetry in Endangered Languages with handy world poetry map!

Rights Readers Round-up

Another of our periodic round-ups of what's happening with Rights Readers authors:

For a while there I thought the Wiwa v. Shell trial had been eclipsed by the Sotomayor nomination and Prop 8 ruling. But no, it was just delayed again. In the meantime here is Ken Wiwa's statement about the case from the Guardian,

I am not interested in retributive justice but a justice that is creative, a justice that enables all stakeholders in this affair to account for and learn lessons from the past so that we can all move forward within a constructive and sustainable framework

Breaking: Settlement Reached in Human Rights Cases Against Royal Dutch. Ken Wiwa reacts: Some release from the torments of the past

Paul Farmer, the subject of Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains is under consideration for head of USAID.

Sister Helen tweets!

• Things are changing with death penalty in the US. Even in TX & LA juries aren’t handing down death sentences much any more. #
• In LA, nary a death sentence for 12 years! In the buckle of the death penalty belt, Harris County, TX, no d.p. from juries in a whole year. #

If you're not a twitterer, you might find want to follow the author of Dead Man Walking at her blog.

Walter Mosley (Little Scarlet) explains why he needed to create a new character to reflect the age of Obama at Slate V.

Martha Minow didn't make the Supreme Court cut, but she was on the frontlines promoting her Yale law school classmate.

Finally, Lisa See, promoting her new book Shanghai Girls, on her family's history in Chinatown and Pasadena,

After the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, my family's store and many other buildings along Spring Street were condemned. What had once been China City was officially wiped off the map. My family moved the F. Suie One Co. to Pasadena, where it's celebrating its 112th year in business.

Wiwa V. Shell

In the run up to the Wiwa v. Shell trial set to begin next week in New York, PEN American Center sponsored a panel discussion featuring Ken Wiwa (In the Shadow of a Saint: A Son's Journey to Understand His Father's Legacy). The proceedings are also summarized at Guernica and the NYT,

Among the accusations are that Shell employees were present when two witnesses were offered bribes to testify against Mr. Saro-Wiwa, said Jennie Green, a senior lawyer at the nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing the family. She said Mr. Saro-Wiwa’s brother Owens has also stated that Shell’s managing director, Brian Anderson (now retired), told him, “If you call off the campaign, maybe we can do something for your brother.”

The article also mentions that Ken Wiwa is working on a novel. The NYT explores the implications for other corporations with questionable human rights practices here and the history of oil exploitation in Nigeria here.

In addition to the Center for Constitutional Rights, Earthrights International is involved in the lawsuit. Loyal Readers may remember Earthrights founder Ka Hsaw Wa's visits to Caltech. He weighs in here.

Finally, Democracy Now reports on the latest violence in the Niger delta.

Senate Resolution introduced for Ken Saro-Wiwa

Senators Leahy, Kennedy, Feingold, Obama, Dodd and Durbin have introduced Senate Resolution 303, calling on the Nigerian government to conduct a thorough judicial review of the Ken Saro-Wiwa case. Visit the Amnesty website for more info and to get your Senators on board.

Niger Delta in the News

The Los Angeles Times reports on the "combustible" situation in the Niger Delta:

Ten years after Nigerian authorities executed Niger Delta writer and community activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, popular anger and unrest continue to grow, while warnings of a calamitous slide into violence abound. Saro-Wiwa campaigned for a greater share of oil wealth for the population and protested environmental damage, but little progress has been made since his death...

"Unless something drastic is done, there will not be peace around here. There's going to be trouble," prominent human rights activist Anyakwee Nsirimovu said.

With the decline in traditional occupations like fishing and farming because of environmental degradation, many young people are easily recruited into militias or crime cartels, which get their funding from oil "bunkering," or theft...

Ledum Mitee, spokesman for the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, the group Saro-Wiwa founded, accused the company and its contractors of "divide and rule" tactics, bribing certain people or offering contracts to circumvent community opposition and get its work done in the region, which has half a million people and massive oil reserves. Mitee faced trial with Saro-Wiwa and is often seen as his successor.

One community chief in the Ogoni village of Kegbara Dere, Clement Goni Badom, said people were still so opposed to the company that calling someone an agent of Shell was like using a swear word.

The company said in e-mailed answers to questions from The Times that it would only return to the area if welcomed by the community. Despite the anger, the company argued, communities have turned to Shell to address poverty in the region instead of looking to the government. Shell said it had adopted a new approach across the delta region, abolishing ad hoc payments to communities or individuals to get access to sites.

Activist Nsirimovu said Shell's policies were "beautiful on paper. But those standards don't apply here."

Baakpa Birabil, 60, a farmer in Kegbara Dere, is angry that his small plot of land was destroyed in a spill two years ago. "My anger is toward Shell, who just came to my land and exploited it without leaving anything for me. You can see we are very poor people." He said people had expected good things when the oil companies first arrived, decades ago. "We never expected it would bring bad things," he said.

Memorializing Ken Saro-Wiwa

Today is the tenth anniversary of the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa. How to commemorate this date? Revisit the other posts on this site about the on-going struggle of Nigerian activists to protect their environment in the face of degradation caused by the oil industry and take the recommended actions. Read Ken Wiwa's piece on his father in the Guardian (also linked on this blog), and let's let Saro-Wiwa the writer speak for himself: Sydney PEN Center has a tribute which includes a couple of his poems plus tribute poems by Ben Okri and Jack Mapanje. I used to read "The True Prison" at the end of every talk I gave for Amnesty/Sierra Club's Just Earth Network. A creation of a memorial poetry collection, Dance the Guns to Silence is part of the international effort to recognize this date, but alas the book appears to have no US publisher at this point.

Finally, how about some thoughts from a Nigerian blogger: Nigerian Times reminds us of the other martyrs to the Ogoni cause.

Ken Saro-Wiwa for Children

Well, not quite, but Beverly Naidoo has written a book aimed at middle school children which is at least inspired by the Ken Saro-Wiwa story and deals as well with the plight of political refugees. The Other Side of Truth has won numerous awards including a Carnegie Medal (the UK's version of the Newberry). I've read it, and although I was not completely convinced of its prize-worthiness, it did remind me of a series of books I read as a child about children caught up in WWII that I think fed my early sympathies for victims of human rights violations. Naidoo has also written several other children's books about the struggle to end South African apartheid. The idealistic middle schooler in your life, might really enjoy this. I'd be interested to know if there are other books for children or youth about Ken Saro-Wiwa or the Ogoni struggle...

Ken Wiwa: "In the Name of My Father"

For anyone feeling a little frustrated after clicking on the Toronto Globe and Mail link below and finding that Ken Wiwa's Saturday column was about his father's legacy but hidden behind a subscription wall, the Guardian rides the to rescue: "In the Name of My Father".

Our November Author, Ken Wiwa

Some links featuring Ken Wiwa, the author of In the Shadow of a Saint:

Ken Saro-Wiwa Foundation. Note in the Board Members section that it offers a glimpse into what Ken Wiwa is doing now. I know I was impressed enough with the quality of his writing in Shadow that I'd be interested in the book he is now writing. Now if we could just get a US edition published in paperback!

Following up on the lead above, I did indeed find commentaries on the NPR site. Here's one on Belgium's apology for their part in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.

Here's a recent interview from Democracy Now, also featuring Kenyan Nobel winner Wangari Maathai.

His Toronto Globe and Mail page (even is you don't venture past the registration wall) gives you a sense of his current concerns.

Follow-up on the "Denounce Torture" Event

For those unable to attend our recent event supporting Amnesty International's Denounce Torture campaign and for those who want to pursue some of the issues presented further, here are some literary connections of note from the event:

One of the speakers, Jennifer Harbury, known in human rights circles for taking on the Guatemalan army and CIA in seeking answers for her husband's death, (documented in Searching for Everardo,) has written a new book, Truth, Torture and the American Way, connecting the dots with regards to torture and United States foreign policy from Vietnam to Central America to Iraq and the War on Terror.

The other non-Amnesty speaker, Maria LaHood, presented the legal actions her organization, The Center for Constitutional Rights, is using to seek justice for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Poking around their website, I found that one of their non-legal projects is to promote public awareness of the plight of Guantanamo prisoners through public readings of a play, Guantánamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom. The play is by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo and is derived from spoken evidence and letters from British detainees to their families. More information on staging a reading and the script can be found here. Also very much worth noting is CCR's Wiwa Initiative, a legal action against Royal Dutch Shell for their part in the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Nigeria, Oil and Ken Saro-Wiwa

In November we commemorate the ten year anniversary of the execution of Nigerian author and environmentalist, Ken Saro-Wiwa by reading Ken Wiwa's moving memoir of his father, In the Shadow of a Saint. Here are a few background links:

RememberSaroWiwa is the UK-centric 10-year memorial site for KSW:

Price of Oil is a joint project of Amnesty-USA, PEN, Earthrights Intl and Sierra Club, among others. (I tried to get our discussion listed on the site, but its not showing up, at least not yet.) Be sure to check out the slideshow.

Recent NPR series on oil in Nigeria

Recent National Geographic Articles (check out the related links on these too)
Singing Songs for Freedom
African Oil: Whose Bonanza?