Though considerably overshadowed by the Commonwealth’s official “Remembrance Day” on Friday 11 November, last week saw another significant Day to Remember.
Sixteen years after environmental justice campaigner Ken Saro Wiwa was judicially murdered by the Nigerian state on 10 November 1995, Friends of the Earth International groups commemorated “Heroes and Martyrs in the Struggle Against Mining, Oil and Gas”.
FOEI highlighted Saro Wiwa, along with fifteen others who have gone to their deaths in that struggle – the latest being Father Fausto Tenorio in the Philippines.
The group’s chairperson, Nnimmo Bassey, acknowledged that many others “have been murdered in Asia, Africa, and the Americas for defending life and their territories”, adding: “We demand an end to the repression against those who defend life and an end to the criminalization of the people who defend their territories. The work of our heroes shall not be in vain.”
See http://www.minesandcommunities.org/11301.