Bodies of rights activists exhumed for reburial

Forensic experts from the US-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) have been exhuming for reburial the bodies of nine minority rights activists hanged in 1995 on the orders of late military ruler Gen Sani Abacha, PHR and relatives of the dead men reported on Tuesday. The nine were members of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) and included its leader, Ken Saro-Wiwa.

The experts - led by William Haglund, director of PHR's International Forensic Program - began their work on 15 July, PHR reported. A statement by Saro-Wiwa's brother, Owens Wiwa, said they had already dug up eight of the bodies from unmarked graves in the main cemetery in Port Harcourt, centre of the oil industry in southeastern Nigeria. The ninth grave was yet to be identified.

"These exhumations and subsequent identifications are the culmination of a two-year process of consultations with family members and local and national authorities in Nigeria," Haglund said. "The dignified return of the remains of these individuals, whose rights were so grossly violated, has been long overdue."

The nine had campaigned against environmental degradation caused by the operations of oil giant Royal/Dutch Shell on the land of the 500,000 Ogonis. They had also spearheaded demands by impoverished communities in the Niger Delta, an oil-producing region in southeastern Nigeria, for more access to the wealth produced on their land.

They were executed in November 1995 after being convicted of the murder of four rival Ogoni chiefs in a trial widely condemned as flawed. Their execution marked the defining moment of the Abacha regime. It brought widespread international condemnation leading to the imposition of sanctions on Nigeria, which were only lifted with his death in 1998.

"We thank President Olusegun Obasanjo who gave the executive order for the release of the remains of our loved ones to us," Wiwa's statement said. "It is our belief that this process indicates the beginning of the restoration of dignity to our loved ones and hope that the issues for which they lived and died will be resolved by the present administration."