Introduction

In 1995, a Nigerian military tribunal, in what most observers decried as a sham trial, ordered the execution of noted author and playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. The Ogoni are a 500,000-member ethnic group of farmers and fishermen that live in Nige¬ria's coastal plain. For several years, the Ogoni had been waging a vigorous political campaign against Nigeria's military rulers and the giant oil company Royal Dutch/Shell. They had been seeking greater self-determination, rights to the revenue stemming from oil exploration on traditional Ogoni lands, and compensa¬tion for the environmental degradation to their land caused by frequent oil spills from fractured pipelines. Shell had been pumping oil from Ogoni lands since the late 1950s. In 1994, four Ogoni chiefs who advocated cooperation rather than confrontation with Nigeria's mil¬itary government were lynched by a mob of Ogoni youth. Though he was......

Join Now to view the rest of this term paper!
Members: Login to view this research paper.

Title: Shell: Human Rights In Nigeria
Approximate Word Count: 2323
Approximate Pages: 10 (250 words per double-spaced page)

With the Term Papers Lab Membership Pass, you get instant access to every essay on this site, including this essay on Shell: Human Rights In Nigeria, for as long as you remain a member.

Other essays sites charge almost $100 for a single term paper. At Term Papers Lab, you can get instant access to over 100,000 research papers for as little as $29.95!