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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 10 Hansard (6 December) . . Page.. 2697 ..

MS FOLLETT (continuing):

Capital punishment is in force in too many countries around the world. This is a situation made worse by the fact that, all too often, it follows legal processes of questionable fairness. So you may well ask why I should single out these particular executions, Nigeria and the Shell oil company in this motion. The execution of Mr Saro-Wiwa and his companions by the Nigerian military regime on trumped-up murder charges - in fact, what British Prime Minister John Major has aptly described as judicial murder - represents much more than an attempt to snuff out the lives of these nine individuals. It was a calculated and deliberate attempt to silence the movement they had led, a movement that was seeking a better deal, financially and in other ways, for the Ogoni people, one of the smallest ethnic minorities in Nigeria.

The Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People was seeking an end to and restitution for the exploitative and environmentally devastating impact of the Nigerian oil industry, which Shell dominates, on the Ogoni farming and fishing communities of the Niger River delta. Ken Saro-Wiwa, one of Africa's best-known writers, a prolific novelist and playwright, who had returned home from England five years ago to lead the Ogoni movement, was feared and hated by Nigeria's military Government precisely because of his skills as a writer and a communicator of ideas. They knew exactly what they were trying to achieve by executing him, and it is up to all of us, if we care about democracy and freedom of expression, whatever our other differences, to do whatever we can to ensure that he and his companions have not died in vain.

Repressive governments, such as the one that came to power in Nigeria two years ago, fear the free expression of ideas as much as they dislike democratic institutions and processes. It is no accident that the Nazis inaugurated their regime with pyres of burning books ripped from the shelves of Germany's libraries. Unfortunately, the twentieth century is littered with similar examples of the repression of writers, artists and other thinkers by repressive regimes in what have been ultimately futile attempts to crush their spirits and silence their voices and ideas. The Russian gulag, Pinochet's Chile, apartheid South Africa, and the fatwah on Salman Rushdie come to mind, to name just a few. I could go on, but I am sure that members can add to that list for themselves.

Mr Speaker, democratic institutions have not had an easy time in Nigeria since the country achieved independence in 1960. Members who, like me, grew up in the 1960s will recall the civil war over Biafra that followed Nigeria's first military coup in 1966. Who could possibly forget the horrific scenes of brutal and senseless massacres and starving children that followed that coup? Since then, Nigeria has had a succession of brutal and authoritarian military governments, interspersed by the occasional democratic experiment. The present ruler, General Sani Abacha, was the strongman behind a succession of military governments during the 1980s and early 1990s. It is characteristic that his first action on seizing power for himself two years ago was to gaol the winner of an abortive presidential election held earlier in the year.

I can understand why many people might be tempted simply to shrug their shoulders and to react by saying that the peoples of Africa are culturally unsuited or unready for democracy. However, they are wrong, as South Africa's experience under President Nelson Mandela is proving. This sort of fatalistic reaction also ignores a history

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