Ledum Mitee spent 18 months in a Nigerian prison with the Ogoni leader and human rights campaigner, Ken Saro Wiwa.
"The last time I saw him he was in chains, with manacles on his feet," Mr Mitee said here yesterday. "I was crying. He told me I shouldn't, that he was happy I would carry on the struggle." Three days later, on November 10th, 1995, the military regime hanged Mr Saro Wiwa.
When Amnesty International and the Body Shop began their "Make Your Mark" campaign earlier this year, they chose Mr Mitee's thumbprint as their symbol. In outlets around the world - including 12 in Ireland - the Body Shop collected three million thumbprints, which were used by artists to create 34 portraits of 12 human rights defenders.
Ms Anita Roddick, the founder of the Body Shop, said shopping malls across the US asked them to take their campaign signs down.
"They said `It's not your job', but we stood our ground," she said. Hers is a rare example of big business with political commitment. "I think businesses see human rights as a nuisance, as a threat to their bottom line," she said. "If big business is more powerful than governments and does not care about human rights, then God help us all."
In Nigeria only Shell Oil, which buys the oil taken without payment from Ogoni lands, might have saved Mr Saro Wiwa, Mr Pierre Sane, the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, said. But they were silent.
In Algeria the US, British and French oil companies which keep the military-backed regime in money could do more to improve human rights than anyone else. But they are silent.
One of the 12 people sponsored by the campaign, Mr Aktham Nu'aysa, was released from a Syrian prison because of publicity, but he was not allowed to travel to Paris for the exhibition. The Ven Ngawang Sangdrol, the Tibetan nun most portrayed by the thumbprint artists, was badly tortured recently, Ms Roddick said.
Ms Mirjana Galo, a Croatian who helps refugees return to their homes in former Yugoslavia, asked me to thank the many Irish people who have written to her through the campaign.
Ms Asma Jahangir, a lawyer and one of the three human rights defenders who were able to travel to Paris to see their portraits, has been jailed repeatedly, received death threats and had her family taken hostage in Pakistan because she represents "blasphemers" and women who try to escape from forced marriages.
Two Irish artists, Kate O'Connor and Lucy Bradell, attended yesterday's ceremony. Ms O'Connor used thumb-printed paper to make papiermache masks of two Burmese comedians who were imprisoned for telling a political joke on stage.
Ms Bradell hand-printed 37 posters summarising the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Because she teaches English to refugees from former Zaire, she feels strongly about Article 14, which guarantees the right to asylum. "It's ironic that European immigration officials take refugees' thumbprints when they cross frontiers," she said, "and the symbol of our campaign was a thumbprint."
