This is the story of a man who has championed the rights of his people, the Ogoni. His speeches, the extraordinary ability to mobilize the masses, the reputation among the people made him a prime target of the Nigerian military government, which reacted by decreeing his assassination. On the tenth anniversary of his execution, on November 10, 1995 by hanging along with eight other militants of the Mosop (Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People), was published a new edition This book - with a preface by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka - which contains his diary of the month and one day detention in 1993 - genuine political autobiography - his harrowing testament, addressed to the judge of the military court that sentenced him to death, some letters of correspondence with friends, those of condolence sent to the family of famous people like Nelson Mandela, Ethel Kennedy, Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri, Harold Pinter, Salman Rushdie, Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, Alice Walker, Fay Weldon, Nadine Gordimer, and the moving letters written by his son to his father after his death. A harsh indictment of the Nigerian regime and the multinational Shell, which until 2009 was ordered to pay family for the loss of Ken Wiwa and the Ogoni people for damage caused to the area and continuous violation of fundamental human rights.
The author
Ken Saro-Wiwa (real name Kenul Benson Tsar-Wiwa ) ( Bori, 10 October 1941 - Port Harcourt, November 10 1995) was a writer and activist Nigerian . It was one of the most significant intellectuals of the ' postcolonial Africa. Writer An eclectic debut as a playwright in the years university to devote himself to the then narrative ( Sozaboy , 1985) and television , the sign of this literary production and television can be found in the happy balance between trying to give a form of "academic" to a English rarely considered worthy of investigation (the so-called Pidgin ) and popular entertainment. At work artistic Saro-Wiwa immediately alongside a commitment to public life that saw him play first institutional roles in the seventies ( in authority and port Education of Rivers State ) and then ask themselves in direct conflict with state authorities and the Federal Government of Nigeria. Since the eighties Saro-Wiwa in fact echoes the claims of the peoples of the Niger Delta , especially its ethnic Ogoni majority in the region, against the corporations responsible for continuing losses of oil that damage the crops of subsistence el ' ecosystem of the area. In 1990 is the organizer of MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People ), the movement obtained resonance International with a demonstration of 300,000 people that Saro-Wiwa driving his release from detention a few months imposed without process. Arrested a second and a third time in 1994, on charges of inciting the murder of some alleged opponents of MOSOP, Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged in Port Harcourt with 8 other MOSOP activists at the end a process that has drawn strong protests from most of ' public opinion and international organizations for human rights . In 1996 Jenny Green, lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights of New York filed a lawsuit against Shell to demonstrate the involvement of multinational oil in the execution of Saro-Wiwa. The process then began in May 2009, and Shell has been bargained by agreeing to pay compensation of 15 and a half million dollars (11.1 million euro). Shell has however stated that he agreed to pay compensation not guilty because of the fact but to help the "process of reconciliation." According to environmentalists, however, confidential documents to demonstrate the involvement of the Shell oil company in human rights abuses in Nigeria.
| " " ... we are all in the face of history. I am a man of peace, of ideas. I feel appalled by the shameful poverty of my people who live on a very generous land resources; try anger at the devastation of this land I feel in a hurry to get my people to regain their right to life and a decent life. So I devoted all my intellectual and material resources to a cause in which I believe totally, on which I can not be silenced. I have no doubt that in the end, my cause will win no matter how many processes, how many trials I and those who believe with me in this case we encounter in the course of our journey. Neither imprisonment nor death can stop our ultimate victory .... " " | |
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Title: A months and one day
Subtitle: Story of my murder
Author: Ken Saro-Wiwa
Publisher: BC Dalai Editore
Series: Essays
Publication: 2010
ISBN: 8860737389
Pages: 277
Price: € 17.50 
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