New report says murders of Christians in Nigeria is paving the way for genocide
The report Nigeria: "Unfolding Genocide?" focuses on the mass murders at the hands of terror group Boko Haram and armed groups of Muslim Fulani herdsmen. The UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief (APPG FoRB) launched its report in parliament on Monday urging the UK government to pay attention and take action to stop the violence.
A new report has highlighted the large scale of atrocities happening to Christians in Nigeria.
Boko Haram is the militant group which frequently abduct and kill those in northern states in Nigeria who refuse to conform to their extremist brand of Islam. Teenage schoolgirl Leah Sharibu is one of many examples.
Meanwhile “attacks by armed groups of Fulani herdsmen have resulted in the killing, maiming, dispossession and eviction of thousands of Christians” in Middle Belt states the report says.
Baroness Caroline Cox, co-chair of APPG FoRB told Premier there have been at least 1,000 deaths this year due to such violence and at least 6,000 deaths since 2015. More than 2.5 million Nigerians have been driven from their homes.
“Every statistic is a family, is a horror. Last year I was there. I had the poignant privilege of meeting a young mum, and she’d been with a little six year old daughter, then Fulani attacked a village,” she said.
“She tried to escape. She was surrounded by them, they slashed her with a machete. I saw the scars. Now, I’m afraid there are a huge number of examples.”
Baroness Cox said the UK government has tended to “downplay” the ideological and religious factors that are involved in the murders and attribute it other factors such as climate change, as the herdsman look to take better unaffected land.
While she doesn’t deny climate change plays a roll, she said it doesn’t explain the “scale of horror of the atrocities being perpetrated to predominantly against Christians”.
You can read the full article and also listen to the interview here.
