Leaders of the Commonwealth-Britain and 51 former colonies-voted Saturday to suspend Nigeria from the organization as punishment for its execution of nine minority rights activists.
The move, effective immediately, followed a day of crisis talks at the group’s biennial summit.
Suspension of a member is unprecedented in the history of the club, whose leaders expressed revulsion that Nigeria carried out the executions Friday despite worldwide appeals for clemency.
Rejecting the criticism, Nigeria’s military rulers said they were right to execute award-winning playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other anti-government activists.
Saro-Wiwa, was convicted by a military tribunal in the murders of four political rivals at a 1994 rally. He insisted he was framed because of his opposition to the military regime and Nigeria’s oil industry.
But Nigeria’s foreign minister defended the trial and sentence at the Commonwealth summit in Auckland, New Zealand.
A nominee for a Nobel Peace Prize, Saro-Wiwa received Sweden’s $250,000 Right Livelihood Award last year and the Goldman Prize from a San Francisco foundation this year, recognizing him as one of Africa’s leading environmentalists.
He wrote plays, children’s books and two novels critical of the military government.
