Nigeria ignores mass killings, HRW says

Human Rights Watch said yesterday that the Nigerian government “has largely ignored years of murder in Plateau and Kaduna states.”The report released yesterday detailed “horrific sectarian violence in these two states, which has left more than 3,000 people dead since 2010.” Many victims of the violence including women and children “were hacked to death, burned […]

Human Rights Watch said yesterday that the Nigerian government “has largely ignored years of murder in Plateau and Kaduna states.”
The report released yesterday detailed “horrific sectarian violence in these two states, which has left more than 3,000 people dead since 2010.”
Many victims of the violence including women and children “were hacked to death, burned alive, or shot simply based on their ethnic or religious identity,” it said.
It said the government has failed to hold perpetrators accountable,  communities.
“Witnesses came forward to tell their stories, compiled lists of the dead, and identified the attackers, but in most cases nothing was done,” the report released by Africa director  Daniel Bekele.
“The authorities may have forgotten these killings, but communities haven’t. In the absence of justice, residents have resorted to violence to avenge their losses.”
The 146-page report, “‘Leave Everything to God’: Accountability for Inter-Communal Violence in Plateau and Kaduna States, Nigeria,” which includes a photo essay, is based on interviews with more than 180 witnesses and victims of violence in Plateau and Kaduna states, as well as police investigators, prosecutors, Researcher visited scenes of major violence, sometimes just days after a massacre.
It said Plateau state has suffered more than a decade of recurring bloody episodes of communal violence, which have left thousands of Christians and Muslims dead but that the authorities had taken no meaningful steps to address underlying grievances.
“Sectarian clashes in Jos in 2010, for example, sparked the massacre of Muslims, including rural Fulani, and counter massacres of Christians, mostly from the Berom ethnic group. The violence that year left more than 1,000 people dead,’ it said.
In a rural community in Plateau State, a man who witnessed the murder of his father in January 2010 told Human Rights Watch he went to the police and reported the crime, but he still sees the people who killed his father moving freely about the community. “If this happens again, I wouldn’t go to the police – it is a waste of time,” he said. “They will take no action.”
“The federal attorney general did step in for the first time later that year and prosecute some of the suspects from the 2010. But in many of the largest massacres of 2010, no one has been arrested or prosecuted, even though people witnessed these crimes and reported them to the police.
In Kaduna state, the report said, “deadly episodes of communal violence over the past two decades have similarly left thousands dead. With the exception of some prosecutions while Nigeria was under military rule, no one has been prosecuted for these killings.”
“In April 2011, post-presidential-election violence in northern Nigeria swiftly degenerated into sectarian violence. In northern Kaduna State rioters attacked Christians and their properties. The violence then spread to the southern part of Kaduna State, where Christians killed hundreds of Muslims, including rural Fulani.
“Many witnesses filed complaints with the police. A man in a rural community in Kaduna State told Human Rights Watch that he provided police with the identities of the people he saw murder two of his neighbors in April 2011, but the police have taken no action against them. “I see them almost daily going about their normal business,” he said. “There have been no arrests.”
This man is not alone. According to federal and state prosecutors, not a single person has been prosecuted for the April 2011 killings in Kaduna State.
The response of the Nigerian authorities to communal violence has been surprisingly similar throughout the years, Human Rights Watch found. Police or soldiers often round up hundreds of people found at the scenes of the crimes and then dump them together at the police station, without any statement from the arresting officer, making it nearly impossible for prosecutors to link the suspects to any specific crimes. In the vast majority of cases, the authorities will quietly drop the charges, Human Rights Watch said.
The most common reason cited for not reporting the crimes was summarised by a resident in rural Kaduna State: “The police won’t do anything.”
According to the report, Systemic problems in the police are further exacerbated in cases of violence that are communal or sectarian in nature. Community and religious leaders often rally behind members of their own groups suspected or implicated in crimes and put pressure on the authorities to drop the cases.
Again, it said, Nigerian authorities have often treated mass killings as a political problem rather than address them as a criminal matter. “They have set up commissions of inquiry, which are good in theory, but in practice have become a way to reinforce impunity, as authorities then abdicate their responsibility for investigating and prosecuting the crimes. Once the commissions have completed their work, their reports are shelved, the recommendations are rarely implemented, and the perpetrators are not brought to book.