The following is reproduced from the fall 2000 edition of Amnesty
International's newsletter, amnesty now, pp.4-7.
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No Longer Afraid
For Nigerian activist Sowore Omoyele,
democracy is worth the risk
By RON LAJOIE
amnesty now Fall 2000
AP/WIDE WORLD
Nigerian police beat arrestee in Lagos
Before going to a demonstration, Sowore Omoyele always makes sure
he has adequate provisions with him. He wears two pairs of pants
and stashes an extra tube of toothpaste in one pocket, a bar of
soap in another. A battle-scarred veteran of Nigeria's
pro-democracy struggle and one of the country's most vociferous
student activists, Sowore, now 29, has been detained eight times.
Hard experience has taught him that these sundries and a change of
clothes will come in handy.
"My first and second time in jail were pretty difficult," says
Sowore, a quietly affable young man with a full round face, a
ready smile and almond eyes that only occasionally hint at the
intensity beneath.
"You never know when you will get out, and you don't know what the
state can do to you," he adds almost casually. "But after those
first two experiences, I just accepted it as a normal thing that
goes with my work. Being an activist in Nigeria, I train myself to
accept whatever comes, detention, even torture, as part of the
business."
Currently in the United States to undergo treatment for the
torture he endured in detention, Sowore is using his time here to
speak for Amnesty International on behalf of other torture
survivors and to inform Americans about the struggle for democracy
and justice in his homeland.
"The media don't talk to people like me, so you can't blame those
who don't have information," he asserts. "Quite honestly, I think
the situation in Africa is grossly underreported in the U.S.A. But
I think all of us who believe in pulling Africa out of the woods
have a duty to enlighten people in this part of the world. There
are well-intentioned people in the United States who, if they have
adequate information, can put pressure on policymakers to
encourage democracy in Nigeria."
MATTHEW DOYLE
Former student leader and torture survivor Sowore Omoyele
Of oil and democracy
President Clinton traveled to Nigeria in late August, bearing a
$10 million aid package to help "bolster," according to the White
House, the fledgling democracy there.
In advance of his trip, Amnesty wrote to the President,
specifically asking him to reaffirm U.S. diplomatic support for
Nigeria's judicial Commission of Inquiry into Human Rights
Violations -- and to remind Nigeria's new leaders of their
commitment to a civil society.
AI also urged Clinton to ensure that U.S. training of Nigeria's
military and police emphasizes respect for the rule of law and
human rights. The organization further called on the President to
support an independent investigation into the alleged involvement
of the U.S.-based oil giant, Chevron, in human rights violations
committed by Nigerian security forces.
During a 1998 African tour, Clinton had refused to visit Nigeria,
demonstrating his disapproval of the regime of then-military
dictator Sani Abacha, though the United States maintained an
arms-length relationship with Abacha's government. In June 1998,
retired General Olusegun Obasanjo -- a military dictator from 1976
to '79 and a prisoner of conscience from 1995 to '98 -- won the
presidency in an election that, though marked by irregularities,
was broadly accepted as fair.
AP/WIDE WORLD But Sowore
U.S. President Bill Clinton and Nigerian President suggests
Olusegun Obasanjo walk together during their Clinton's
August 26 meeting in Abuja state visit
this summer
may have been premature. "I would have told him not to go to
Nigeria yet," he affirms. "There is a misconception that Nigeria
has democratized. But the man who won the election was the military
president until 1979. In 1977, he promulgated the Land Use Decree,
which robbed the Niger Delta people of their lands. In 1978, he
ordered the military to kill student protesters.
"Besides," contends Sowore, "I'm not sure Clinton's visit didn't
have something to do with rising gas prices in the United States.
I don't know what kind of support he can show a government that's
not been able to give any form of dividend to Nigerians, a Senate
that is corrupt or an administration that is flatfooted and cannot
bring food to the table."
Just weeks before the Clinton trip, Nigerian Senate President
Chuba Okadigbo had been forced to resign after an investigation
uncovered evidence of widespread corruption. That scandal erupted
as social unrest continued to roil northern Nigeria, where
jurisdictions in the largely Muslim region moved to institute
Sharia or religious law, raising fears among the Christian
minority.
And in July, a gas pipeline explosion and fire had killed hundreds
near Oviri-Court in the oil producing Niger Delta, once again
highlighting environmental degradation and security concerns in
that impoverished area. The explosion was blamed on local poachers
attempting to siphon off, literally, a small share of the huge
profits generated by the multinational oil conglomerates that
dominate the Delta.
"We've had supposed democracy for one and a half years and people
still can't eat," argues Sowore. "So who has benefited? There's no
basic health care. We don't have running water. We don't have
electricity, no basic education. Right now, Nigeria is a leaking
basket. Shell and Chevron are among the biggest corporations in
the world and they have benefited only a few people, the clique
that runs the country."
A stubborn foe
Such blunt outspokenness has frequently landed Sowore in trouble
with Nigeria's rulers and has cost him his health. But he is
willing to accept that risk. His sense of right has deeply
personal roots.
As a 10-year-old boy, Sowore watched as a battalion of 300
military police attacked and ransacked his village. During the
raid the soldiers arrested his half-brothers and their mother, and
raped his 17-year-old cousin.
"I was in front of her and they did this. I saw it happen," he
recalls. "That night I silently promised myself that when I grew
up I was going to fight back." Nigeria's ruling clique had gained
a resourceful and stubborn young foe.
"Well, if stubbornness means standing against the authorities that
occupy the political space illegally, I think I can describe
myself as a stubborn person," Sowore acknowledges with a smile.
"It is just a matter of not allowing the threats, the
intimidation, the attempt on my life to stop me from carrying on
with what I think is desirable for the good of my people. I am no
longer afraid."
The activist's public career began in 1989 when, as a freshman, he
joined student demonstrations protesting an International Monetary
Fund loan Of $120 million for Nigeria. Though supposedly earmarked
for education, the loan nonetheless mandated a reduction in the
number of universities in the country from 28 to 5.
AP/WIDE WORLD
Scavengers pan for oil at Adeje, Nigeria, the site of a
July 9 pipeline fire that killed more than 250 people
"It was not difficult to differentiate what was wrong and what was
right in Nigeria," says Sowore. "It was a matter of taking sides."
In 1992, when students mobilized against the Babangida regime, one
of Africa's most notorious kleptocracies, Sowore led a column of
2,000 students in protest. The peaceful demonstrators had marched
about two miles when they ran into the police, who immediately
opened fire. Seven students were killed outright. The police
arrested and severely beat Sowore, herding him and 120 other
students into a tiny detention room. Then they tossed in a
tear-gas canister. Four hours later, when Sowore had regained
consciousness, he was dragged to another room for interrogation.
He later learned that the police had also visited his father's
home in Ondo State to intimidate his family -- and that he and 47
other student "ringleaders" had been expelled from school.
The university would subsequently relent and permit the expelled
students to return, but only after other students struck the
campus to protest the expulsions. Based on the leadership skills
Sowore displayed during the protest, he was elected Executive
President of the University Students Union.
"That was when I made my mark," he says with almost wistful pride.
"The government knew I was a threat."
Tortured in detention
The next year was to prove a time of particular upheaval even for
perpetually tormented Nigeria. In June 1993, the military
government, now under Babangida's successor and close ally Abacha,
nullified national presidential elections and imprisoned the
winner and President-elect, Moshood Abiola.
Immediately, the campuses ignited in protest. That July, Sowore
led large anti-military rallies through the streets of Lagos. He
was again arrested, beaten and warned not to engage in any further
agitation. But in November, the impenitent student led another
protest. This time the authorities aimed to show they meant
business. Sowore was arrested, held incommunicado in solitary
confinement for two weeks and tortured.
But worse lay in store. In March 1994, a goon squad of toughs and
student informers with links to the police attacked Sowore and 24
other student activists.
Beaten bloody, stabbed in the head, stripped and humiliated,
Sowore was injected deep into the buttocks with an unknown
substance. At the local hospital where he was taken, the staff was
too intimidated to treat him, so he had to be spirited to the
Lagos University Teaching Hospital. When the police came looking
for him there five days later, he managed to escape. Forced to
spend the next four months recuperating in hiding, Sowore learned
that he had been declared a wanted man and again expelled from the
university.
Meanwhile, the police went to work on his known associates,
hijacking a student union bus and torturing the occupants in order
to discover Sowore's whereabouts. The students wouldn't give their
leader up, and when the university reopened in July 1994, Sowore
was there to take his final exams. Though the university would
withhold his results for six months, eventually he was allowed to
graduate.
It wasn't long after Sowore graduated that the Nigerian
dictatorship, out of the sort of bureaucratic incompetence that
knows no ideology, handed the young agitator his biggest platform.
In Nigeria, all students are expected to complete a year of
national service upon graduation. Someone, somewhere decided that
one of the nation's most famous dissidents would look good on
television.
"I don't know who made the mistake but somehow I ended up doing my
service on TV," he laughs. "They said, `You are a little bit smart
and we have this program we'd love you to handle,' and I said that
was fine with me.
"Most of the time I went on the air live. It was like they forgot
who I was. The program [entitled Kaleidoscope] was becoming very
interesting. I was producing every week for six months when the
State Security Agency came looking for me. They said, `What are
you doing on TV? You are a security risk, your name is posted at
the airport!' But I was very calm. I said it's not as if I broke
into the studio. But after that I was not on TV anymore."
In the wake of the official blunder, Sowore was ordered to report
to the state security offices once a week.
Deadly serious business
While Sowore was completing his national service, the government
executed Nigeria's best known dissident, environmental activist
Ken Saro-Wiwa, causing an international outcry. Human rights
activism in Nigeria was indeed a deadly serious business.
Six months later, Sowore was approached by men who simply asked
him to accompany them to their office. "I knew exactly what it was
and I couldn't resist them," he says. Again, he endured six days
incommunicado detention shackled to the ground in a tiny cell.
Sowore was finally released after a journalist learned of his
abduction, but he was not permitted to work.
Instead, he concentrated on student organizing. He also had time
to put his broadcast experience to use, co-producing a documentary
on Nigeria's oil dictatorship with the U.S.-based Pacifica radio
network. He would be arrested again in 1996 and twice in 1998. One
day in captivity, Sowore was brought into the office of a military
official who told him to stay away from oil issues or, like his
hero Ken Saro-Wiwa, he would be killed.
Despite that threat, Sowore traveled to Brussels in January 1999
to attend a conference on alleviating poverty in Nigeria, then to
The Hague where he spoke to the Dutch Government about Royal Dutch
Shell's activities in his country. The next month, Sowore arrived
in the United States to attend a conference sponsored by the
Center for Global Peace at American University in Washington, DC.
He then checked into the Bellevue-NYU Program for Torture
Survivors, located in New York City, to receive treatment for the
lasting effects Of the unknown injection he received in 1994.
During his U.S. stay, Sowore has visited at least 20 cities,
helping to lay the groundwork for Amnesty's Campaign to Stop
Torture,[1] which is set for worldwide launch at press time. This
fall, he is working with AIUSA's Human Rights Education Program to
help teach students about the reality of torture in the world
today.
"Torture is the most potent force in the hands of those who wish
to maintain power," he offers. "It allows them to silence dissent.
I think I owe the public a duty to talk about my experience
because the more we expose them, the weaker they become."
Ultimately, vows Sowore, he will return to Nigeria.
"Change will not come to Nigeria on a platter of gold," he
insists. "If you want justice, you have to fight for it."
Footnotes
1. There are a number of processes one can join.
The following are available from Amnesty International USA:
o Fast Action Stops Torture (FAST) is a new rapid response
network dedicated to using the Internet to stop torture.
Join FAST and Take Action!.
o Take Action Against the Torture of Children - The
dependency and vulnerability of children should render
them immune from the atrocities adults inflict on one
another, yet violence against children is endemic.
And worldwide, there is Amnesty International's Campaign
Against Torture
Manifesto:
Torture is abhorrent. Torture is illegal. Yet Torture is
inflicted on men, women and children in well over half the
countries of the world. Despite the universal condemnation of
torture, it is still used to extract confessions, to
interrogate, to punish or to intimidate. In Police stations
and prison cells, on city streets and in remote villages,
torturers continue to inflict physical agony and mental
anguish. Their cruelty kills, or leaves scars on the body and
mind that last a lifetime.
The victims of torture are not just the people in the hands
of the torturers. Friends, families and the wider community
all suffer. Torture even damages and distorts the hopes of
future generations.
Amnesty International and other organisations have been
campaigning against torture for almost 40 years. Take a Step
to Stamp Out Torture and One Click To Stamp Out Torture are
boosts to the continuing work against torture. They are
global campaigns, launched simultaneously in more than 60
countries. They utilise Amnesty International's experience in
gaining media coverage, in publications and in lobbying, as
well as mobilising the million individual members Amnesty
International has worldwide.
torture - the big picture
In preparation for the campaign, AI conducted a survey of its
research files on 195 countries and territories covering the
period 1997 to mid-2000. It revealed that AI has received
reports of torture and ill-treatment inflicted by state
agents in over 150 countries since 1997. In more than 70
torture or ill-treatment by state officials was widespread
and in over 80 countries people reportedly died as a result.
The world has changed immeasurably since AI first began
denouncing torture at the height of the Cold War in the
1960s, but torture continues and is not confined to military
dictatorships or authoritarian regimes; torture is inflicted
in democratic states too. It is also clear that victims of
torture are criminal suspects as well as political prisoners,
the disadvantaged as well as the dissident, people targeted
because of their identity as well as their beliefs. They are
women as well as men, children as well as adults.
AI's survey strongly suggests that common criminals and
criminal suspects are the most frequent victims of torture by
state agents today. They have reportedly been subjected to
torture or ill-treatment in over 130 countries since 1997.
Torture and ill-treatment were reportedly used against
political prisoners in over 70 countries during the same
period, and against non-violent demonstrators in over 60
countries.
AI's campaign looks at torture by police, in the context of
criminal investigations or the maintenance of public order;
torture and ill-treatment in prisons; judicial punishments
amounting to torture; and torture in armed conflict. The
campaign also looks at other forms of violence in the home or
the community which may constitute torture under
international standards, even though they are not committed
by state officials.
Methods of Torture
The survey showed that beating is by far the most common
method of torture and ill-treatment by state agents today,
reported in over 150 countries. People are beaten with fists,
sticks, gun-butts, makeshift whips, iron pipes, baseball
bats, electric flex. Victims suffer bruises, internal
bleeding, broken bones, lost teeth, ruptured organs and some
die.
Rape and sexual abuse of prisoners is also widespread. Other
common methods of torture and ill-treatment include electric
shocks (reported in more than 40 countries), suspension of
the body (more than 40 countries), beating on the soles of
the feet (more than 30 countries), suffocation (more than 30
countries), mock execution or death threat (more than 50
countries) and prolonged solitary confinement (more than 50
countries).
Other methods include submersion in water, stubbing of
cigarettes on the body, being tied to the back of a car and
being dragged behind it, sleep deprivation and sensory
deprivation.
Cruel, inhuman or degrading instruments of restraint cited in
AI's report include leg irons and electro-shock stun belts.
Is torture illegal?
The prohibition of torture in international law is absolute.
"No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment", says Article 5 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights; similar phrases appear
in many other international human rights texts.
No government may use a state of war, a threat of war,
internal political instability or any other public emergency
to justify torture. Under the Geneva Conventions, torture is
illegal in both internal and international armed conflicts.
Torture and ill-treatment are also illegal under the laws of
virtually all countries, although many laws are inadequate.
One form of torture and ill-treatment which is permitted
under national law in some countries is judicial corporal
punishment. According to AI's survey, judicial corporal
punishments are provided by national law in at least 31
countries today.
The most common forms of judicial corporal punishment include
amputation and flogging. Some forms such as amputation and
branding are deliberately designed to permanently mutilate
the human body. However, all of these punishments can cause a
range of long-term or permanent injuries.
Since 1997 judicial amputations have been carried out in at
least seven countries (Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria,
Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Sudan) and judicial floggings in 14
countries.