A cell phone with 26 phone numbers, including contacts in the army and police, was found following a village massacre on Sunday in Nigeria’s Kaduna State, just north of the nation’s capital Abuja. Witnesses said more than 100 attackers rampaged through the village, shouting “Allahu akbar” as they shot people and burned homes. The phone was left behind after more than 100 jihadists terrorized a predominantly Christian village in Angwan Magaji, located in the center of Nigeria’s badlands. “My house was one of the first to be reached by the Fulani terrorists Sunday around 6 p.m. when about 160 of them charged from all sides of the village firing their rifles,” said Ezekiel Isa, a 27-year old farmer, who leads a group of young men loosely called vigilantes. “They came to my community mainly to kill us and burn our houses.” “The attackers were all Muslims. They were shouting ‘Allahu Akbar,’” Isa said. “They were speaking Fulani language, which we don’t know, but we could understand their words in our Hausa language, and they were saying ‘kill 150, kill 150, they are infidels, kill them!’ This is not the first time we faced attacks by the Fulani terrorists. They had killed many of our village last year.” The Fulani, who practice Islam, are one of Nigeria’s major ethnic groups. While many are nomads, a number of prominent Nigerians—including President Muhammadu Buhari—are Fulani. Isa said he rushed through the village telling women and children to run into the bush as fast as they could. He then retrieved his hidden shotgun and rallied the vigilante youth to return fire. The Fulani attackers used rifles and machetes while the handful of vigilantes fired mostly primitive shotguns. “Our youth hid behind houses and stayed close to the ground to avoid being hit,” Isa said. Although calls were made to the Nigerian army, no soldiers arrived to help, according to the villagers. “The district police officer of Kamaru came on Monday around 5 p.m. together with the Honorable Shuaibu Goma, chairman of the local government, to consult with us over the killings,” Isa said. “The chairman said to us that he will bring relief materials for us but due to the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic, it may take some time before he will come back again.” The Fulani terrorists went from house to house, setting each on fire, until they had torched more than 50 houses in the hamlet holding approximately 600 residents. Vigilantes and terrorists exchanged shots for approximately 2 hours. Talatu Joseph cries while being interviewed after a village massacre April 19, 2020 in Nigeria’s Kaduna state that left her mother dead. (Zenger) “Last year my father was killed, now they killed my mother” said Talatu Joseph, 35 as she broke into tears in front of her torched house. “My mother was telling me to go and hide, so I didn’t see their faces, I just ran save my life, and as I did my mother was killed.” “The Fulani terrorists killed four people from my community,” Isa said. “Three were killed as a result of gun shots while one elderly man died of shock. Three older women were killed running to escape. They were the first to fall, but my vigilante group with vigilantes from neighboring communities killed one of the Fulani and injured some with shot.” Jerry Adi, a 15-year-old vigilante, said he is the youngest on the defense team. “I am the youngest vigilante in my village, I am not afraid of Fulani herdsmen, I am ready to fight them, I have never killed any Fulani terrorists, but I will defend my community when there is no police support from the government.” The cell phone found after the Fulani raid was not unique. A cell phone was recovered at an Irigwe village massacre in Plateau State in 2018 and was turned over to police. No arrests or prosecution followed, according to barrister Yakubu Bawa. A series of terrorist attacks have been launched against several villages in the rural area in far western Plateau State since 2002, according to Kyle Abts, director of the International Committee on Nigeria, which tracks terrorist incidents. “This is the fourth straight week of attacks in the area,” said Abts. “It is not a fight between ethnic groups, nor a pastoralist versus herder conflict. It is a coordinated and premeditated onslaught that has implications for government ineptitude, cover-up or involvement.” Yet none of these attacks, taking hundreds of lives, were followed by prosecutions by Nigerian authorities, Bawa said. Word of the killings in Kaduna State drew comment from Nigerian clergy of churches with majority expatriate members. “It is hard not to believe that the Nigerian government isn’t colluding with these attacks,” said the Rev. Sunday Bwanhot, a pastor of the Evangelical Church, Winning All. “We are pleading that the U.S. government will step into this situation to bring this colossal human abuse situation to control.” Human rights observers called the attack evidence of an ongoing genocide. “The size of this attack by an organized, heavily armed Fulani militia numbering over 100 attackers is proof that these attacks are not “isolated incidents,” said Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, founding president of Genocide Watch, a human rights watchdog. “The attacks are not simply due to “traditional” herder-farmer ‘conflict.’ They are one-sided genocidal massacres.” Tina Ramirez, president of Hardwired, a human rights organization with offices in Jos, agreed. “The recent attack on Christians in Bassa, Plateau State and the newly reported massacre in Ungwan Magaji in Kaduna State expose the grave failure of Nigeria’s government to protect its citizens—and the urgent need for officials to ease gun laws and allow communities to protect themselves and their families,” she said. “The glaring trend of violent attacks on Christian communities in the north cannot be ignored, and the government must be held accountable for failing to protect its citizens and leaving them defenseless against attacks.” Link to eyewitness interview: https://youtu.be/Kffxr_dbj0M Copyright 2020 Zenger News

Syrian defendant Anwar Raslan arrives at court in Germany for an unprecedented trial on state-sponsored torture. (Thomas Lohnes/AFP/Getty Images) BERLIN — The German town of Koblenz, which straddles a confluence of the Rhine and Moselle rivers, lies some 2,000 miles from Syria. But on Thursday, its regional court began to hear a landmark case against two alleged former Syrian regime officials. German prosecutors used the principle of “universal jurisdiction” — which allows the prosecution of serious international crimes committed in another country — to bring charges against the two Syrian nationals who had claimed asylum in Germany. Anwar Raslan, 57, alleged to have been head of investigations at a branch of Syria’s General Intelligence Directorate, has been charged with crimes against humanity, 58 murders, rape and sexual assault. Another defendant, Eyad al-Gharib, 43, is charged with aiding a crime against humanity. Indictments were read Thursday, but neither defendant made statements or entered pleas. But for those who have been fighting to hold the Syrian regime to account, the significance of this case extends far beyond the crimes of two individuals. It marks the first time an independent court will issue findings on President Bashar al-Assad’s tools of suppression during the mass demonstrations of 2011 and the civil war that followed. After nine years of conflict, monitoring groups estimate that the death toll is more than 380,000 people, not including 88,000 they say have died in regime jails. Thousands more remain missing. “It’s a big moment,” said Anwar al-Bunni, a prominent Syrian human rights lawyer who is due to testify. “It’s a real court, and no one can question its independence. Its decision will be seen by the whole world.” The trial against two Syrian defendants opens in Germany. (Thomas Lohnes/AFP/Getty Images) It was a chance encounter in 2014 that set the trial in motion. Bunni, who had claimed asylum in Berlin, says he recognized a man at his refugee center but at first could not place him. It was only after a friend told him a former regime official had arrived that he made the connection. Raslan, he says, is the man who arrested him outside his home in the Damascus neighborhood of Kafr Souseh in 2006, leading to the five years he spent in prison. They saw each other around the center several times, says Bunni, who now runs the Syrian Center for Legal Studies and Research from Berlin. “He recognized me for sure,” he said. “I don’t feel anger. My enemy is not a person. My enemy is the regime, the whole structure.” Syrian human rights lawyer Anwar al-Bunni will testify in the Germany case. (John MacDougall/AFP via Getty Images) Bunni says at the time he was not aware of the possibility to pursue people such as Raslan in Germany. The principle of international jurisdiction is one of the few avenues available for prosecuting serious international crimes committed in Syria, and rights groups and advocates say it is increasingly important in ensuring perpetrators cannot escape justice. Syria is not a party to the treaty that established the International Criminal Court at The Hague, and China and Russia have vetoed setting up a special tribunal for the Syrian regime. Raslan is accused of crimes that took place between April 29, 2011, and Sept. 7, 2012, when Syria was gripped by revolution. Prosecutors say his crimes happened “in the context of an extensive and systematic attack on the civilian population.” They argue that the unit Raslan headed at Branch 251 tortured at least 4,000 detainees during that period, using methods including beatings and electric shocks. At least 58 people also died under his command during that time, they say, adding that inmates were denied food and medical care. Prosecutors argue that Raslan, as head of the investigative unit, knew of the extent of torture at the facility. ‘I still have nightmares’: Voices from inside Assad’s torture network in Syria Gharib is accused of being a subordinate who also was aware of the systematic torture in Branch 251. Prosecutors say that in 2011, he searched the streets of Damascus for people fleeing a demonstration that had been violently dispersed. Eventually, 30 people were arrested, they say, with the defendant accompanying them on a bus to where they would be detained. “The detainees had already been beaten on the way to the prison and upon arrival in prison,” the prosecution said in a release. “In prison, they were brutally abused and tortured systematically.” In court Thursday, Gharib’s attorneys argued against the use of evidence he gave under questioning to German authorities, as he was informed he was a witness at the time rather than a suspect. Assad was asked about the case during an interview with the RT news broadcaster in November. “We don’t have torture units,” he said. “We don’t have a torture policy in Syria.” He said the Syrian government has “all the information,” so it has no need to extract it through torture, but that “individual incidents” may happen. The trial, expected to stretch for months, will be the first time Syrian victims have faced an alleged perpetrator in court. “That’s a really significant milestone for the rule of law in the conflict in Syria,” said Steve Kostas, a senior legal officer with the Open Society Justice Initiative, which is representing six former prisoners of the branch. The trial also will be a test for evidence gathered by justice groups. The nonprofit Commission for International Justice and Accountability has collected more than 800,000 Syrian government documents it hopes can be used in these prosecutions and others. “To show that the evidence that they have been collecting in Syria can be used in a court of law and lead to a conviction would be an extremely significant accomplishment,” Kostas said. He said several of the individuals who were detained in Branch 251 at the relevant time appear within a trove of more than 50,000 photographs smuggled out of Syria by a military defector code-named “Ceasar.” That evidence was passed on to German law enforcement, Kostas said. Raslan announced his defection in 2012, which has made his prosecution a subject of debate in some circles. “There were many arguments among the Syrians,” Bunni said. “But justice is justice,” he said. “Crimes against humanity and war crimes are not small crimes. It can’t mean he has immunity.” While accountability for more-senior regime figures remains out of reach, Bunni expects there will be more trials such as the one in Koblenz. He and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights have submitted complaints to German prosecutors against six other people they accuse of being high-level Syrian intelligence officials. “It’s the first time,” Bunni said of the case. “It will not be the last time.” Sarah Dadouch in Beirut contributed to this report. Copyright 2020 The Washington Post

The historic Jama Masjid of Delhi, one of the largest mosques in India, remained closed ahead of the start of the holy month of Ramadan. (Pallava Bagla/Corbis/Getty Images) NEW DELHI — On a bright morning earlier this month, a former army officer was riding his motorcycle down a rural road south of India’s capital when he reached an improvised barricade. He had no idea the villagers were looking for a scapegoat. He slowed his bike to a stop. The men at the barricade quickly identified him as a Muslim from the neighboring area in the state of Haryana. “These people are spreading the coronavirus,” said one of the villagers, according to a police complaint filed by the man’s family. “Grab him.” Sahimuddin, 49, who goes by only one name, felt a rope thrown around his neck. The attackers tightened the noose until he fell unconscious, the complaint said. He was later rushed to a hospital coughing blood, where doctors performed emergency surgery on his ruptured vocal cords and damaged trachea. He will require two more operations in the weeks ahead. The assault reflected one of the oldest — and ugliest — human impulses: the desire to blame calamity on those who are different. In India, the search for scapegoats during the coronavirus pandemic has focused squarely on the country’s sizable Muslim minority, a community of 200 million that felt under threat even before the advent of covid-19. India closes headquarters of Muslim group linked to coronavirus clusters India closed the headquarters of a Muslim missionary group March 30 to investigate claims that dozens were infected by the coronavirus at the group's meetings. (Reuters) To view video click here. News channels and some ruling-party officials rushed to blame Muslims for the rising number of coronavirus cases in the country after an Islamic missionary group in New Delhi emerged as a super-spreader. In recent weeks, Muslims have been assaulted, denied medical care and subjected to boycotts — all in the name of fear of the virus. While India stands out for the wave of vitriol directed toward its Muslim community, it is by no means alone. In the United States and Europe, there have been reports of discrimination and attacks on people of Asian descent. In China, Africans have been evicted and refused entry to restaurants amid fears that foreigners could spark a new round of infections. In Pakistan, activists say that the Hazara ethnic minority has been unfairly blamed as the source of the virus. The United States has expressed concern about the scapegoating of religious minorities during the pandemic. Sam Brownback, who holds the title of U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom, recently urged governments to “step up and pushback on these false narratives.” He declined to comment on India’s treatment of Muslims. This type of crisis can bring out new expressions of old prejudices, said Charlie Campbell, the author of a history of scapegoating. For governments, meanwhile, channeling public anger toward internal or external enemies is a way of diverting attention from their own failures, he said. “It’s just a lot easier if you can whip up hatred against someone else,” Campbell said. “It’s the idea of the bad apple rather than the rotten barrel.” Scapegoating during pandemics has a long history. Jews were blamed for the outbreak of the Black Death in medieval Europe. Irish immigrants were accused of spreading cholera in the 19th-century United States. Haitians were stigmatized during the AIDS epidemic. Yet such reactions are not inevitable, historians say. Responses to pandemics have included scapegoating, racism, xenophobia, the spreading of false rumors and price gouging, said Nukhet Varlik, a historian at the University of South Carolina who studies diseases, in a recent interview. But they also have included “empathy, altruism, caring and helping others.” In India, a Hindu-majority nation of more than 1.3 billion people, the malice directed toward Muslims during the pandemic has intensified an already difficult situation. The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pursued an agenda of Hindu primacy, moving India away from its secular founding ideals and raising fears that Muslims will be treated as second-class citizens. In February, the Indian capital witnessed its worst violence between Hindus and Muslims in decades. More than 50 people, most of them Muslims, were killed. In late March, the Delhi headquarters of an international Islamic missionary group called Tablighi Jamaat emerged as a major source of coronavirus infections. More than 4,000 confirmed cases have been linked to people who passed through the center. Its leader is facing criminal charges including negligently spreading disease, which he denies. Television anchors accused the group of engaging in a deliberate conspiracy to spread the virus, without citing any evidence. “We have identified the corona villains,” thundered Arnab Goswami of Republic TV. Meanwhile, slurs against Muslims spread on social media. Videos shared on Facebook and Twitter have falsely accused Muslims of spreading the virus by purposely spitting, licking or sneezing on food. The hashtag #CoronaJihad circulated widely. A member of Parliament from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party took up the phrase, while another party official likened members of the Tablighi Jamaat to “human bombs.” On Sunday, nearly a month after the Tablighi Jamaat cluster emerged, Modi issued an appeal for unity. “Covid-19 does not see race, religion, colour, caste, creed, language or borders,” he wrote on Twitter. “. . . We are in this together.” India has reported about 20,000 confirmed cases and more than 600 deaths from coronavirus. Zafarul-Islam Khan, the chairman of the Delhi Minorities Commission, said the Tablighi Jamaat leadership failed to anticipate the impending danger, but noted that many other religious and political groups continued their activities in the same period. The subsequent vilification of Muslims — propelled by media coverage and largely unchecked by the government — could have far-reaching consequences, Khan said. He fears it will “take much longer” for discriminatory behavior to subside. In the eastern Indian city of Jamshedpur, a pregnant Muslim woman alleged that when she went to a hospital last week for help with sudden bleeding, she was accused of spreading the virus and told to clean up her own blood, according to a letter she sent to the top politician in the state. Later that day, her baby was found stillborn. An investigation is underway and any required action will be taken against the hospital, said Anoop Birtharay, the city’s superintendent of police. Rukhsar Parveen, 15, a Muslim student living in a slum in Bhatpara in the state of West Bengal, said her family used to get drinking water from a community tap. But now her Hindu neighbors have prevented them from accessing it, saying they will spread infection. So Muslim families are drinking water from the pipes that supply non-potable water for bathing instead. A local activist confirmed Parveen’s account. “We feel bad,” Parveen said. “Why are they behaving like this with us?” Fake news has also circulated among Muslims, including WhatsApp messages alleging that the authorities are taking Muslims away and forcibly injecting them with the coronavirus. Such falsehoods helped spur an assault on health workers in the central Indian city of Indore when they visited a Muslim neighborhood, said Suraj Verma, a senior police official in the city. In some cases, the scapegoating has spilled over into violence. Zareen Taj, a 39-year-old Muslim activist, was distributing food to the poor earlier this month in the southern city of Bangalore. A group of men arrived and began shouting at her and her team, Taj said, accusing them of spitting on the food and spreading the coronavirus. When she returned two days later, she said, members of the same group battered her team members with sticks on the hands and head, drawing blood. Bheemashankar S. Guled, a deputy police commissioner, said that three people were arrested, and they denied their actions were religiously motivated. The incident has left Taj brokenhearted. “We can save our country from this disease if we join hands,” she said. “This is the time for solidarity, not for division and hatred.” Sahimuddin, the retired army officer attacked in Haryana, was discharged from the hospital and is recovering at home. For now, he has lost his ability to speak. Police are investigating the assault. His family is still reeling. Sahimuddin’s son Akib Hussain, a software engineer, said the attack was especially bitter given his father’s long career in the Indian army. “You spend 26 years serving the country,” he said, “and then you get treated like this just for being a Muslim.” Tania Dutta in New Delhi and Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report. Copyright 2020 The Washington Post Related article: In India, the world’s biggest lockdown has forced migrants to walk hundreds of miles home.

Asylum Policy Changes Threaten Eritreans’ Rights (Nairobi) – The Ethiopian government’s changes to asylum procedures for Eritreans undermines their access to asylum and denies unaccompanied children necessary protection. The Ethiopian authorities should ensure that all Eritreans have the right to apply for asylum and publicly announce changes to its asylum and camp management policies. In late January 2020, the Ethiopian government unofficially changed its asylum policy, which for years granted all Eritrean asylum seekers refugee status as a group. Staff from Ethiopia’s Agency for Refugees and Returnees Affairs (ARRA) have only registered some categories of new arrivals at the Eritrea border, excluding others, notably unaccompanied children, the United Nations and aid groups say. Ethiopia’s refusal to register these asylum seekers could force them to return to abusive situations in violation of international refugee law. “Ethiopia has long welcomed tens of thousands of Eritreans fleeing persecution each year,” said Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “With no letup in repression in Eritrea, the Ethiopian government shouldn’t be denying protection to Eritrean nationals, particularly unaccompanied children.” Each year, thousands of Eritrean secondary school students, some still under 18, are conscripted into the country’s abusive indefinite national service program. National service is supposed to last 18 months, but the government often extends it to well over a decade. National service hampers children’s access to education and family life. To apply for asylum and gain official refugee status, Eritreans need to register with Ethiopia’s refugee agency at “collection centers” when they cross the border. After registration, many then move into 1 of 6 refugee camps, 4 in the Tigray region. A smaller number live as urban refugees. With official refugee status, Eritreans are eligible for services and protection. In July 2018, Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a peace agreement, ending two decades of armed conflict and hostility, but it has not led to improvements in the human rights situation in Eritrea. In 2019, about 6,000 Eritreans arrived in Ethiopia every month. Ethiopia currently hosts 171,876 Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers, over a third of Eritrea’s global refugee population. According to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, as of December, 44 percent of Eritrean refugees in the Tigray refugee camps were children. In January 2019, Ethiopia’s parliament adopted progressive revisions to its refugee law that allow refugees and asylum seekers to obtain work permits and access primary education, receiving significant international acclaim. However, in January 2020, for reasons not made public, the government began to exclude certain categories of new arrivals from Eritrea from registering, including unaccompanied children. Denying people access to asylum is inhumane and unlawful, Human Rights Watch said. It may violate the fundamental principle of non-refoulement, which bars returning refugees or asylum seekers to a country where they face threats to their lives or freedom or the risk of torture. This principle also applies to indirect acts that have the effect of returning people to harm – for example, when uncertainty leads people to believe that they cannot apply for asylum and have no practical option but to return. The refusal to register unaccompanied children may compel them to return to abusive situations, Human Rights Watch said. Under international standards, governments should prioritize children’s access to asylum and offer children, particularly those who are unaccompanied, special care and protection. As of December, UNHCR said 27 percent of the Eritrean children arriving in the Tigray refugee camps were unaccompanied. About 30 unaccompanied or separated children arrived every day. Previously, Ethiopia had granted unaccompanied Eritrean children immediate care arrangements, access to emergency education, and individual counseling, although those services were reportedly under significant strain. However, the authorities have not been registering unaccompanied children since late January, and these children are not entitled to protection services or refugee camp accommodations, leaving them to fend for themselves. An aid worker in the Tigray region said “If children are undocumented [i.e. unregistered], they don’t have access to food, shelter, protection, or any psychosocial support. That exposes them to many external risks, including exploitation.” Under Ethiopia’s 2019 Refugees Proclamation, the government recognizes refugees as people who meet both the 1951 Refugee Convention definition and the definition of the 1969 African Union Refugee Convention, which includes people fleeing “events seriously disturbing public order.” The proclamation states that the government can revoke group refugee determination, in consultation with UNHCR, by giving due consideration to the country of origin situation and publishing a directive. The Ethiopian government does not appear to have followed these guidelines. It has not published a directive to inform new arrivals, refugees, and humanitarian partners, including the UNHCR, of the new criteria for registration, appeal procedures if their claims are denied, alternative legal routes for new arrivals, and reasons for the changes. This uncertainty risks creating significant confusion and fear for Eritrean asylum seekers, Human Rights Watch said. On March 27, Human Rights Watch sent a letter with questions to Ethiopia’s refugee agency requesting a response on any changes to its policies or practice towards Eritrean refugees. No response has been received. UNHCR maintains its 2011 eligibility guidelines on Eritrea. The guidelines offer countries advice on how to assess protection needs of Eritrean asylum seekers, and the agency recently said at an immigration hearing in the United Kingdom that “until there is concrete evidence that fundamental, durable, and sustainable changes have occurred, these guidelines should be maintained.” The human rights situation in Eritrea remains dire and has not fundamentally changed since the 2018 peace agreement, making any shift in policy premature, Human Rights Watch said. The Ethiopian authorities announced in early March that it would close the Hitsats refugee camp in the Tigray region, where 26,652 Eritreans live, as of mid-April, according to UNHCR. That includes about 1,600 unaccompanied children who are receiving care, UNHCR said. Refugees and aid workers told Human Rights Watch that the timeline and procedures for the camp to close remain unclear. The deputy director general of Ethiopia’s refugee agency recently told the media that the relocations, reportedly on hold because of Covid-19, could begin by late April. The lack of clarity and the asylum policy change make it difficult to assess the impact of the camp’s closure and plan for viable, safe alternatives, including for unaccompanied children, Human Rights Watch said. An Eritrean man who was unlawfully imprisoned for seven years in Eritrea and now is in Hitsats camp said, “No one explains clearly our rights, where we go, what is the time frame, all these details. We are very worried – we already have our own problems. In addition to our everyday stresses and difficulties, this is adding more.” “Unaccompanied Eritrean children who seek asylum in Ethiopia face an impossible choice between lack of legal protection and services and uncertainty inside Ethiopia, or the risk of serious abuse if they return home,” Bader said. “Ethiopia should continue to show leadership in its treatment of Eritreans, with international support, and ensure that even during the Covid-19 crisis, it continues to protect asylum seekers from needless harm.” © Human Rights Watch 2020

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar flee across the Naf River, which separates Myanmar and Bangladesh. Villages in Myanmar burned in the background. (2017) Credit...Adam Dean for The New York Times • WHEREAS, Myanmar has a long history of discrimination against the Rohingya People based on their identity and religious beliefs, which has resulted in the government denying them citizenship in the 1982 Citizenship Act, as well as birth certificates and full political participation, and thus restricting their rights to freedom of movement; of access to food, health care, livelihood, and education; • WHEREAS, discriminatory policies against this specific group have also included population control such as household registration, marriage permissions, and birth restrictions; forced labor; arbitrary arrest; extortion and confiscation; and sexual and gender-based violence; • WHEREAS, these oppressive policies had the purpose of systematically “othering” the Rohingya People in the Myanmar nation with a clear exclusionary intent; • WHEREAS, since 2012 attacks by Buddhist extremist groups on Rohingya villages in the Rakhine State have been reported, reaching a peak in October 2016, when thousands of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh due to violence and military operations; • WHEREAS, following attacks in August 2017 by a small extremist group—known as ARSA or the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army—claiming to defend the rights of the Rohingya community, on several police check post in the North Rakhine State, the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military force, launched disproportionate widespread attacks— called by authorities “clearance operations” —on the civilian Rohingya population, causing large-scale death, displacement, and other atrocities; • WHEREAS, since 25 August 2017 more than 800,000 Rohingya people have fled their homeland in Rakhine State to the southern part of Bangladesh, due to general violence and persecution by the State; • WHEREAS, in September 2017 the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the persecution against Rohingya is a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”; • WHEREAS, the Permanent People’s Tribunal on “State Crimes Allegedly Committed in Myanmar against the Rohingya, Kachins and Other Groups,” held in 2017, found that the mass killing, rape, and other atrocities taking place in the Rakhine State constitute genocide and crimes against humanity; • WHEREAS, according to the findings and recommendations of the 15-month Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar—established by UN Human Rights Council Resolution 34/22—presented in a September 2018 report that the Tatmadaw “[d]uring their operations […] has systematically targeted civilians, including women and children, committed sexual violence, voiced and promoted exclusionary and discriminatory rhetoric against minorities, and established a climate of impunity for its soldiers”; • WHEREAS, the abovementioned report concluded that “the nature, scale and organization of the operations suggests a level of preplanning and design on the part of the Tatmadaw leadership” consistent with the vision of hierarchical authorities; • WHEREAS, testimonies of survivors in the refugee camps established in Bangladesh provide accounts of long-term and recent persecution, discrimination, and widespread violence and atrocities committed by the State of Myanmar against the Rohingya People as both an ethnic and a religious minority, amongst which sexual violence (in the forms of rape, gang rape, and forced nudity), mass killings, enforced disappearances, destruction of property, and persecution have been found; • WHEREAS, the abovementioned crimes analyzed in the overall historical context of violence against the Rohingya population, the public use of hate speech and derogatory language followed by physical violence by governmental authorities, the plans and policies to change the demographic composition of the Rakhine State, and the extreme levels of brutality and general violence applied during the planned and organized “clearance operations” indicate the level of intent required to constitute the crime of genocide; • WHEREAS, evidence shows the crimes against the Rohingya committed during “clearance operations” were widespread and systematic and carried out by the Tatmadaw, other security forces and groups of civilians, according to the findings of the aforementioned Fact-Finding Mission; • WHEREAS, in September 2018 the International Criminal Court Pre-Trial Chamber I ruled that the Court has jurisdiction over the alleged crime against humanity of deportation of the Rohingya population to Bangladesh as requested by the Prosecutor; THEREFORE, the International Association of Genocide Scholars: · Recognizes the crimes committed against the Rohingya in 2017 in Myanmar as Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity; · Urges the international community to provide humanitarian assistance to the refugees located in Bangladesh, including but not limited to proper shelter, clean water, food, medicine and vaccines, and psychological support; · Calls upon the International Criminal Court to provide effective and rapid justice to the victims, clarification of the facts, and punishment of the perpetrators; · Calls upon the International Court of Justice to issue a finding in favor of Gambia’s allegations against Myanmar of violations of the UN Genocide Convention; and · Calls upon the international community to impose and extend the arms embargo and to freeze the assets of those who are responsible.

Turkish-backed Syrian proxy fighters loot businesses in Afrin, March 24, 2020. File photo: AFP ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Since the Turkish invasion of January 2018, the Kurdish population of Afrin, northwest Syria, has fallen by more than 60 percent, according to a local rights group. Thousands of indigenous Kurds were forced to flee the area when Turkish forces and their Syrian militia proxies launched Operation Olive Branch on January 20, 2018. By the time Ankara had seized control of Afrin city from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) on March 24, tens of thousands of Kurds had fled, many of them to Kurdish-controlled areas in northeast Syria. Families displaced by regime offensives to the south were resettled in their place. “According to the latest statistics that we received, the size of the indigenous population of Kurds in the Afrin region reached 34.8 percent in January, while they previously made up 97 percent of the population,” the Afrin-based Human Rights Organization said in a report Sunday. “The number of arrivals from various other regions makes up 65.2 percent of the population.” The organization, which is run by local activists, failed to elaborate on the ethnicity of the settlers, but said they are from Idlib, Ghouta, Homs, and Deir ez-Zor – Arab majority areas. It estimates Afrin is now home to 298,700 Kurds and 458,000 people displaced from elsewhere in Syria, while Afrin city is home to 53,300 Kurds and 110,000 people displaced from elsewhere in Syria. International aid organizations were barred from entered Afrin following the offensive, making data difficult to verify. The Human Rights Organization did not explain its methodology. According to UN estimates, upwards of 150,000 Kurds have been displaced, most of them displaced to Shahba camp in Tel Rifaat, north of Aleppo. Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch with the stated aim of pushing the YPG back from its southern border. Ankara believes the YPG is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group which has fought a decades-long war with the Turkish state for greater political and cultural rights for Kurds. The YPG, which makes up the backbone of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), denies any organic ties with the PKK. Monitors accused Turkey’s Syrian militia proxies of committing abuses against Afrin civilians, especially Kurds, during and after the offensive. Photographs quickly emerged of militiamen looting Kurdish homes and businesses and pulling down a statue of Kawa the Blacksmith – a core figure in Kurdish national culture. Observers accused the militias of ethnic cleansing after homes were commandeered by fighters, residents intimidated or kidnapped for ransom, and displaced families blocked from returning. Judicial structures in occupied Afrin are managed by Turkish-backed armed groups. “Security chaos still prevails in the Afrin region, as a result of the spread of armed elements under the Syrian National Army in a chaotic manner, carrying weapons without distinguishing them from thieves and bandits,” the Afrin-based Human Rights Organization said. Turkey and its Syrian proxies launched another offensive against Kurdish forces in October 2019, this time in the northeast, after US troops withdrew from the Syria-Turkey border region. UN observers accused these Turkish proxies of potential war crimes and allowing an Islamic State (ISIS) revival in areas liberated by the Kurdish-led SDF. The Russian-backed Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has demanded Turkey withdraw from its territory. Earlier this year, Syrian troops and other regime loyalists clashed with Turkish soldiers in Idlib, where Ankara has established military observation posts and supports the armed opposition. A ceasefire deal brokered by Moscow and Ankara appeared to halt the regime offensive to retake the province. Efforts to contain the COVID-19 outbreak also seem to have reigned in the fighting. Copyright 2020 RUDAW

Houses in a village that were burnt out in a Fulani attack. Credit: BarnabasFund JOS, Nigeria: Six children and a pregnant woman were among nine people that Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed in north-central Nigeria Tuesday night (April 14), sources said. About a dozen herdsmen armed with rifles and machetes raided Hura-Maiyanga village, in the Miango area of Kwall District in Plateau state’s Bassa County, shouting the jihadist slogan “Allahu Akbar [God is greater],” sources said. “They were armed with machetes and AK-47 rifles as they attacked us,” Hanatu John, a woman who survived the attack, told Morning Star News. “They attacked our village at about 8 p.m., and they were shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ as they shot into our houses.” The assailants were speaking Fulfulde, the Fulani language, as they shot into homes, she said. “Most families had already retired into houses to sleep when these Fulani gunmen came into the village and were shooting into houses,” John told Morning Star News in Miango town, where she took refuge. “As the herdsmen shot at us, we all ran out from our houses into the surrounding bushes. Some of the herdsmen chased after us and shot at us, while others were burning down our houses.” Dalyop Solomon Mwantiri, director of the Emancipation Centre for Crisis Victims in Nigeria (ECCVN), confirmed the attack. “Hura hamlet of Maiyanga village in Kwall District, Miango Chiefdom in Bassa Local Government Area, Plateau state was invaded last night on April 14th by suspected armed Fulani herdsmen, who surrounded the entire area and unleashed mayhem on the unsuspecting natives,” Mwantiri told Morning Star News by text message. “As a result, nine persons were gruesomely killed and two injured while 33 houses were completely torched by fire. Most of the persons killed were children.” He identified those killed as Angela Daniel, 3; David Yakubu, 15; Luka Magwa, 5; Ishaya Yakubu, 7; Aba Ibrahim, 6; Stephen Ngwe, 7; the pregnant Talatu Daniel, 32, and her unborn child; Sunday Biri, 45; and Izhe Nkama, 43. Those killed were buried in two separate mass graves, he said. Mwantiri identified the two people wounded as Esther James, 55, and 51-year-old Lami Ibrahim. “Additionally, over 250 persons, mostly women and children, have been displaced with no means of livelihood,” Mwantiri said. Miango resident Grace Gye sent a message to the Plateau state government on Wednesday (April 15) decrying the Fulani terrorist onslaught on area Christians and calling on state and federal governments “to protect the people and their property.” She questioned why Fulani herdsmen were moving about freely in spite of a lockdown in the face of the novel coronavirus. The Rev. Ronku Aka, a former Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) pastor and now community leader of the Irigwe ethnic group, lamented incessant attacks on predominantly Christian communities. “So many of my people have been killed over the years, including the attack of last night,” he told Morning Star News on Wednesday (April 15). “In spite of promises from the government to my people, the herdsmen have continuously been attacking our communities.” The attack on Maiyanga comes on the heels of attacks by herdsmen in the area last month. On March 31, Christians were killed at Ancha village; the next day three more Christians were slain in the predominantly Christian community of Nkiedow-hro village, and seven others were killed in Hukke village. On Jan. 14, 2018, armed herdsmen killed one Christian and wounded two others in an attack on Maiyanga village. Killing, Kidnapping in Niger State Niger state, Nigeria. (Profoss, from original by Uwe Dedering) In northwestern Nigeria, Muslim Fulani herdsmen in Niger state on March 24 killed at least 20 people in two predominantly Christian villages and on March 2 kidnapped eight Christians in raids on a mission station, sources said. The attacks on the villages of Galkogo and Zumba, killing more than 20 people, displaced 3,000 people, area residents told Morning Star News. In Niger state’s Shiroro County, Fulani herdsmen raided a school in Maruba run by Calvary Ministries (CAPRO), kidnapping four missionaries, two volunteer staff members, another staff member and one student, according to Niyi Gbade, the ministry’s national director. “Ask God to release them unharmed now,” Gbade told Morning Star News in a text message. The school’s head teacher was shot and received hospital treatment, he said. “Pray for the remaining missionaries on the base, that they will not be kidnapped, and that those being held should be released from any form of captivity,” Gbade said. Herdsmen also raided Global Glorious Mission in Gofa, Shiroro County, on March 22, forcing missionaries and students to flee into bushes, according to a mission press statement last month. “The Fulani herdsmen entered, ransacked and looted our Gofa field of Shiroro LGA, Niger and environs,” the statement read. “Some of the brethren have gone back in the night, and some returning this morning. Please stand with us in prayer for God’s intervention over this menace.” In the past year, armed Fulani herdsmen have carried out a series of raids on Christian communities in the northwest, sending people fleeing to camps for the displaced. On Jan. 30, Christian Solidarity International (CSI) issued a genocide warning for Nigeria, calling on the Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council to take action. CSI issued the call in response to “a rising tide of violence directed against Nigerian Christians and others classified as ‘infidels’ by Islamist militants in the country’s north and middle belt regions.’” Nigeria ranked 12th on Open Doors’ 2020 World Watch List of countries where Christians suffer the most persecution but second in the number of Christians killed for their faith, behind Pakistan. © 2020 Morning Star News. Articles/photos may be reprinted with credit to Morning Star News. https://morningstarnews.org If you would like to help persecuted Christians, visit http://morningstarnews.org/resources/aid-agencies/ for a list of organizations that can orient you on how to get involved. If you or your organization would like to help enable Morning Star News to continue raising awareness of persecuted Christians worldwide with original-content reporting, please consider collaborating at https://morningstarnews.org/donate/? Tweet: https://twitter.com/morningstarnewz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MorningStarNews Morning Star News is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that relies solely on contributions to offer original news reports of persecuted Christians. By providing reliable news on the suffering church, Morning Star News’ mission is to empower those in the free world to help and to encourage persecuted Christians that they are not forgotten or alone. For free subscription, contact editor@morningstarnews.org; to make tax-deductible donations, visit https://morningstarnews.org/donate/? or send check to Morning Star News, 1570 S. Pilar Way, Nampa, ID 83651, USA. follow on Twitter | like us on Facebook | forward to a friend Copyright © 2020 Morning Star News, All rights reserved. For donations to Morning Star News and correspondence, our mailing address is: Morning Star News 1570 S. Pilar Way Nampa, ID 83651, USA

Muslim Fulani herdsmen decapitate two Christians in Benue state. Mourners at a funeral for Christians murdered by Islamic militants in Nigeria (AFP or licensors) JOS, Nigeria, April 14, 2020 (Morning Star News) – Muslim Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria decapitated two Christians in Benue state on Monday (April 13), and another group of herdsmen in Plateau state on Saturday (April 11) shot a Christian farmer dead, sources said. In Benue state, residents of Ologba village, Agatu County told Morning Star News that herdsmen ambushed two members of a Catholic church in the village at about 8 a.m. on Monday. “Oche Alaade and his friend who had visited the village were traveling out of the village on their way back to Obagaji town where they reside when they were ambushed by the Fulani herdsmen and their heads cut off,” area resident Louis Oguche told Morning Star News in a text message. Oyaje Sule, uncle of Oche Alaade, confirmed the killings in a statement issued to local press on Monday evening. “My nephew, Oche Alaade, and his friend had come to the village for a visit and were returning to Obagaji town today in the morning where they reside, when they were ambushed by armed Fulani herdsmen, who killed them by cutting off their heads,” Sule said. “And because of the nature of their death, the two of them have been buried without their heads.” The murders follow a herdsmen attack on two Christians the previous week who are receiving hospital treatment for their wounds, Sule said. Agatu, a predominantly Christian area in the north-central state of Benue, has been under siege by herdsmen in the past four years, with many Christians killed and displaced. Plateau State, Nigeria Farmer Killed In Plateau state, Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed 30-year-old Christian farmer Mabur Mallo Gwang on Saturday (April 11) in Maiduna village, Daffo District of Bokkos County, area residents said. Four armed herdsmen attacked him at his house while he was resting that evening, they said. “Mabur Mallo Gwang was attacked in his house at about 8 p.m. and was shot dead by the Fulani herdsmen,” John Machief told Morning Star News by text message from Bokkos town, where he had fled. “The herdsmen were armed with guns and machetes. They forced their way into the victim’s house by shooting and breaking doors into his house.” Hearing the sounds of gunshots as they broke into his house, Machief and other neighbors fled into the nearby bushes, he said. “As the herdsmen were retreating after the attack, we heard them communicating in Fulfulde, which is the Fulani language,” Machief said. He said Gwang was a member of the local Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN) congregation. Yusuf Machen, chairman of the Bokkos Local Government Council, confirmed the attack when contacted by Morning Star News. “We are deeply saddened about such incessant attacks on the communities in Bokkos Local Government Area,” Machen said. The body of one of the alleged assailants, Musa Audi, a herdsmen from Tunduk village in Daffo District, was found dead at the site according to one local report, but authorities were uncertain how he died. Herdsmen have attacked Christian communities in Bokkos County over the past three years, as well as Christians in the counties of Barkin Ladi, Bassa, Jos South, Mangu and Riyom, residents told Morning Star News. In the Daffo area in the past two years, more than 40 Christians have been killed, 11 communities destroyed and more than 7,000 people displaced, they said. Benue State, Nigeria 16 Christians Killed in Benue Last month in Benue state, Muslim Fulani herdsmen also killed 16 Christians and kidnapped several others, sources said. The attacks by the herdsmen occurred in the Christian communities of Div-Nzaav, Chongu, Abaji and Mbanyiar in Kwande and Guma counties. Herdsmen attacked Div-Nzaav village in Kwande County on March 22 as Christians were about to begin worship in the village church, said area resident Solomon Amande. “The Fulanis attacked us on Sunday, March 22; they shot and killed Tarfa Simon, while Ngusonon Kighir, a woman and member of our community, was cut with a machete,” Amande said in a text message to Morning Star News. The attacked members of the Universal Reformed Christian Church (Nongu u Kristu u i Ser u sha Tar, or NKST) who escaped fled to Jato-Aka village, he added. “The herdsmen also kidnapped two Christian women from the village who were rescued a few days after the attack,” Amande said. “These attacks against us by the herdsmen have become incessant for several years.” In Abaji village three weeks earlier, also in Kwande County, armed herdsmen stormed the area in droves, residents said. They attacked at about 10 a.m on March 3, according to area resident Aloysius Yaga. “Eight of our people were killed, and six others were kidnapped by the herdsmen during the attack,” Yaga told Morning Star News by text message. “The herdsmen shot indiscriminately at us and injured many others through machete cuts. I narrowly escaped being killed.” The names of those kidnapped are Mnena Athanisius, Lydia Tange, Pius Kwanh, Tyavkase Zaki, Aondoaver Achin and Raphael Tarvihi, Yaga said. In Guma County, seven NKST members were killed when Muslim Fulani herdsmen attacked villagers at a funeral wake in Chongu village on March 6, sources said. Chongu resident Zaki Usuah he and others were holding a wake at about 11 p.m. when the Fulani herdsmen attacked. “The wake was for one of our deceased elders in our church, NKST church, who was to be buried the following morning at Chongu,” Usuah said. “Suddenly we heard sounds of gun shots all around us. Those killed in the attack include Chikwa, Taza Abuur, Tarnum Yanum and four others.” Herdsmen also attacked Mbanyiar village in Guma County at about 2 a.m. on March 5, residents said. Oliver Tyoor Chado of Mbanyiar said the herdsmen kidnapped his wife and destroyed houses, food and animals belonging to Christians. “The herdsmen, who were about a dozen, were armed with AK-47 rifles,” Chado told Morning Star News. “My wife and two other members of our village were kidnapped and taken away by the herdsmen; but they were eventually rescued by security agents after they were tortured by the herdsmen.” He said displaced Christians have fled to Daudu town. On Jan. 30, Christian Solidarity International (CSI) issued a genocide warning for Nigeria, calling on the Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council to take action. CSI issued the call in response to “a rising tide of violence directed against Nigerian Christians and others classified as ‘infidels’ by Islamist militants in the country’s north and middle belt regions.’” Nigeria ranked 12th on Open Doors’ 2020 World Watch List of countries where Christians suffer the most persecution but second in the number of Christians killed for their faith, behind Pakistan. © 2020 Morning Star News. Articles/photos may be reprinted with credit to Morning Star News. https://morningstarnews.org Photos: Benue state, Nigeria. (Profoss, from original by Uwe Dedering); Plateau state, Nigeria. (Uwe Dedering, Wikipedia) If you would like to help persecuted Christians, visit http://morningstarnews.org/resources/aid-agencies/ for a list of organizations that can orient you on how to get involved. If you or your organization would like to help enable Morning Star News to continue raising awareness of persecuted Christians worldwide with original-content reporting, please consider collaborating at https://morningstarnews.org/donate/? Tweet: https://twitter.com/morningstarnewz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MorningStarNews Morning Star News is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that relies solely on contributions to offer original news reports of persecuted Christians. By providing reliable news on the suffering church, Morning Star News’ mission is to empower those in the free world to help and to encourage persecuted Christians that they are not forgotten or alone. For free subscription, contact editor@morningstarnews.org; to make tax-deductible donations, visit https://morningstarnews.org/donate/? or send check to Morning Star News, 1570 S. Pilar Way, Nampa, ID 83651, USA. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]

A Nigerian Christian describes the Fulani jihadist attack that destroyed his village, Ninka, Kaduna State and killed many Christian villagers. Credit: Open Doors Click here to view video. 350 Nigerian Christians were massacred in the first two months of 2020. Over 11,500 Christians have been murdered since June 2015. Four to five million Christians are displaced. 2000 churches were destroyed. Nigeria has become a killing field of defenseless Christians. Reliable sources show that between 11,500 and 12,000 Christians have been massacred since June 2015 when the Buhari Government of Nigeria came to power. These statistics are based on careful records kept by church groups that include the names of victims and dates of their murders. Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen accounted for 7,400 murders of Christians. Boko Haram committed 4000 killings of Christians. ‘Highway Bandits’ who separated Christians from Muslims on buses and then killed the Christians committed over 200 murders. Fulani Jihadists are now the world’s deadliest terrorist group. Five Nigerian Christians are massacred every day by Fulani and Boko Haram Jihadists. One hundred percent of the 7,400 murders by Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen since June 2015 were Christians. Fulani militias wipe out whole Christian villages, but they leave Muslim villages unharmed. 4000 Christians were killed by Boko Haram, a majority of the 6000 civilians massacred by Boko Haram/Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP) since June 2015. Most of the roadside victims of ‘Bandits/Highway Kidnappers’ in northern Nigeria are Christians traveling to Northern or Southern parts of the country using the Birnin-Gwari Federal Road, near Kaduna. Boko Haram also murders Muslims who work with the Nigerian government, teach or attend schools, and anyone else who does not submit to Boko Haram’s deadly domination. From 2009 to 2020, Boko Haram murdered at least 27,000 civilians, even more than ISIS in Syria and Iraq, making Boko Haram the world’s deadliest terrorist group. That “distinction” has now been claimed by Jihadist Fulani militias. In January and February 2020, 350 murders of Christians were recorded. Between 100 and 150 Christian travelers were abducted on highways. Out of the 350 Christian deaths, Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen accounted for 250 murders, and Boko Haram and ‘Highway Bandits’ accounted for the remaining 100 deaths. The killings of Christians in Nigeria continued in March and April 2020. Fifty defenseless Christians were murdered by Jihadist Fulani militias in Nigeria in March 2020. Jihadist Fulani militants killed ten Christians in first two days of April 2020. Since then, a massacre of Christians has occurred almost daily. Among the worst hit states in the latest round of Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen attacks are Plateau State with 70-80 deaths, Kaduna 50 deaths, Kogi 30 deaths, Benue 15-20, Delta 16 and Taraba 10. Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen also carried out attacks in Nasarawa, Adamawa, Edo and other parts of the country, leading to the deaths of dozens of Christians. The anti-Christian attacks by Boko Haram since Jan 2020 have also intensified in Borno, Adamawa and Taraba States. They claimed between 50 and 70 Christian lives and destroyed scores of churches and other buildings belonging to Christians. “Highway Bandits/Kidnappers” raided and looted Christian villages and ambushed and kidnapped Christian travelers. By the account of the Vanguard Newspaper, “320 persons were killed in Nigeria in the month of January 2020” and according to Sahara Reporters, “223 persons died in Nigeria in the month of February 2020”. The 2019 Global Terrorism Index also stated that “In 2018, Fulani extremists were responsible for the majority of terror-related deaths in Nigeria at 1,158 fatalities....In 2018, Boko Haram caused 589 deaths from terrorism” The Nigerian Human Rights NGO Intersociety stated in March 2019 that ‘no fewer than 2400 defenseless Christians were murdered by Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen in 2018. In 2019, there were between 1000 and 1,200 Christian deaths.’ In all, no fewer than 10,475 Christians were murdered by Jihadists since June 2015. Fulani Jihadists accounted for about 62% or 7,400 deaths. Nigeria’s security forces (Army, Air Force and Police) were responsible for 1,050 Christian deaths. All the deaths occurred outside the law and were perpetrated in gross violation of international human rights and humanitarian laws. To date, the perpetrators of these heinous crimes against humanity have remained on the prowl. 20 Clergymen Killed and 50 Abducted Since June 2015 No fewer than 20 clergymen including at least eight Catholic Priests or Seminarians were murdered since June 2015 and at least 50 were abducted or kidnapped. Among the slain Priests are Rev. Father Clement Ugwu, abducted and killed on 14 March 2019; Rev. Father Paul Offu abducted and killed on 1 August 2019; and Rev. Fathers Joseph Gor and Felix Tyolaha killed by Jihadist Herdsmen at St. Ignatius Quasi Parish Ukpor-Mbalom (Benue) on 24 April 2018. Among the newest victims of killings targeted at Nigerian Christian leaders are Reverend Pastor Lawan Andimi and Reverend Pastor Denis Bagauri, all top officials of the Christian Association of Nigeria in Adamawa State. The abducted priests or clergymen included Catholic priests (Fathers Dim, Ezeokana and Chukwuemeka) abducted while returning from Nsukka to Onitsha and Nnewi when they were attacked by Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen in Sept 2016 along Nkpologwu-Nimbo Road in Enugu State. One of them later died. On the same Monday 26 September, 2016, a Vincentian Igbo Priest was also kidnapped with his brother along Abuja-Lokoja express way. Five pastors of the Reverend Enoch Adeboye led Redeemed Christian Church of God, all Igbo citizens, were abducted on Friday, 2 August 2019, but later freed. The five Igbo-pastors are: Deaconess Ibelegbo Chidinma, Chidozie Eluwa, Chiemela Iroha, Okoro Ohowukwe and Ndubuisi Owuabueze. In December 2018, two Catholic Priests were abducted by suspected Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen. The two Priests were of St Teresa’s Catholic Church Umueze Anam in Anambra West Local Government Area of Anambra State. The priests were abducted at Umuleri while returning from an official function. Hundreds of Christian Travelers Abducted Targeting and abducting Christian travelers who are mainly citizens of Igbo extraction on highways particularly in Northern Nigeria have also intensified and taken a dangerous dimension in recent months. The victims are separated at gunpoint according to their tribe and religion. This same religious targeting is applicable to victims of house to house raiding and looting during which Christians are separated from others at gunpoint and taken away or killed on the spot. Christians, particularly those of Igbo extraction, are waylaid on highways and abducted into the bush and forced to pay ransom or face death including beheading or forceful conversion to Islam. Women among them are routinely subjected to sexual violence including rape and other forms of sexual assault. On 14th Jan 2020, no fewer than 58 Igbo Christian travelers on an Ezenwata Transport Luxury Bus were ambushed, forced to stop, and abducted. The Boko Haram, Jihadist Herdsmen and “Highway Bandits” have been abducting travelers on major Nigerian highways including Abuja-Okene, Birnin-Gwari-Kaduna and Benin-Ore Federal Roads, etc. The abductees are held and tortured in captivity until they pay ransoms running into millions of naira each. Those who are unable to pay run the high risk of being killed or raped to death in captivity, if they are young women. Jihadists have forced 4 to 5 million Christians to flee and have destroyed 2000 churches since June 2015. Ceaseless killing of Christians in Nigeria since June 2015 and burning or destruction of their churches and other worship centers have followed incessant attacks against them by Boko Haram/Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP), Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen and a branch of Boko Haram, called “Bandits/Highway Kidnappers” engage in roadway abductions and armed robberies and house to house lootings, all for the purpose of radical propagation of Islam and raising of ‘blood funds’ for themselves and advancement of their terror activities. The number of Nigerian Northern Christians forced to flee their ancestral homes, farmlands and sacred places of worship in order to escape being murdered or raped has sharply risen from “over 1.3 million in 2014” (Open Doors Report 2015) to between 4 million and 5 million. The affected population has fled the countryside or relocated to less risky capital cities in Northern Nigeria or cities and communities in the Southeast, South, and Southwest parts of the country. They have become “urban refugees”. The number of people fleeing Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen and Boko Haram are presently estimated at 3 million, rising from 2.6 million in 2017. They have become internally displaced persons and refugees in Northern Nigeria. Most are Christians. Among the refugees are some 90,000 Christian Nigerian refugees from Borno’s Gwoza alone, presently in Cameroon. Also fleeing the Islamic jihad in the North are sizeable numbers of the Igbo Christian population resident in the North. They have now resettled in the Southeast and the South of the country. The number of churches and other Christian worship centers destroyed or burnt since June 2015 in the North has also risen to over 2000. Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen account for over 1500 of the church burnings. Boko Haram accounts for 500 others. Churches destroyed or burnt by Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen have been concentrated in Benue, Plateau and Southern Kaduna states. In eight years, between 2011 and 2019, Benue State has lost over 600 churches and other Christian worship centers to Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen. By the account of Open Doors International, “over 13,000 churches and 1,500 Christian schools were destroyed or burnt; with 11,500-12,500 Christians killed and over 1.3 million forced to flee their homes to escape being murdered by Boko Haram Jihadists between 2009 and 2014”. Concise Background of the Christian Population in Nigeria and Their Settlement in The North Nigeria is home to between 95 million and 100 million Christians, out of which an estimated 30 million Nigerian Christians are found in the North. Nigeria’s total population is estimated at 200 million citizens. Eleven to twelve million Christians live in the North, dominated by Christian citizens of Igbo extraction. The Southeast and South regions of Nigeria are home to the largest Christian populations in Nigeria, followed by the Southwest and the old Middle Belt Region in Northern Nigeria. An estimated 6 million Christians live in the Southwest, dominated by Christian citizens of Igbo extraction largely found in Lagos. In the Northeast, Nigerian Christians are found in large numbers in Taraba State (about 60%), Adamawa (about 40%), Borno (about 40%), Gombe (sizeable) and Yobe and Bauchi (small numbers). Many are Christians of Igbo extraction, particularly in Taraba and Gombe States. Borno and Adamawa States have been the hardest hit in the raging, ongoing anti-Christian persecution and killing of Christians and burning and destruction of their churches. Before the 1961 plebiscite in Cameroon, the old Gongola (now Adamawa and Taraba States of Nigeria) was part of the Republic of Cameroon with moderate religious practices including a substantial Christian population. Borno State, the area formerly Kanem-Bornu (Kanuri) Empire, is one of the oldest moderate Islamic settlements in now Northern Nigeria and was then (8th-11th century AD) under the Duguwa Dynasty that lasted from 700 AD to 1086 AD. The area specifically embraced moderate Islam around 1090 AD, when its King (Sef Mai Umme) became a Muslim and changed his name to Ibn ‘Abd al-Jalil. That was about 458 years after the death of Prophet Muhammed in 632 AD. The area later found itself under the Kanem-Bornu Empire formed in 1380 AD. It embraced Islamic civilization then. The area now called ‘Borno and Adamawa regions’ were the only areas in Northern Nigeria that resisted the Fulani Jihadist invasion of Usman Dan Fodio in 1804. Christian missionaries went to the areas in the 1800s and 1900s. Many people embraced Christianity. Today Christianity in Borno and Adamawa have been almost uprooted by the terrorist activities of Boko Haram and Fulani jihadists. By the account of Dr. Bitrus Pogu, the Adamawa State’s senior member of Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN: translated as Church of the Brethren in Nigeria): ”In many communities in Northeast Nigeria, the killers (Fulani and Boko Haram jihadists) take over ancestral lands and communities that for generations belonged to Christians. The majority of Christian-dominated areas in southern Borno have been taken over by terrorists. In the area, only southeastern Damboa presently has large Christian settlements… “Many of the Christians living there have been killed. The remnant who attempted to go to their farms were shot and killed, so the place is empty now. The area of Askira Uba, where Christians were dominant has all been deserted. In Gwoza, you will hardly find one Christian in all the settlements. Any Christian who goes home would see what happened there and run away. “The Cameroon refugee camp alone has more than 90,000 persons from Gwoza, who are predominantly Christians. Many of them have moved out to Abuja and other cities. The villages are deserted; they have left even local government headquarters. A place like Chibok is predominantly Christian but people have left the villages around Chibok town as a result of series of attacks. Where Rev. Andimi hails from is about six kilometres from where the last settlement is. …. there is nobody living there, apart from those who settled along the main road. Askia Uba is the last area north where Christians are. “In Adamawa State, there is Madagali, where you have Gulak. Right south you find Christians, but north there are no people. The terrorists are approaching Adamawa proper, because Adamawa and Borno intersect from Uba…” Boko Haram, Fulani Herdsmen and ‘Bandits’: Three Groups with One Mission There are two major armed Islamic jihadist groups terrorizing Nigeria and its defenseless citizens, particularly members of the Christian faith. They are the Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen and the Boko Haram jihadists. The international offshoot of Boko Haram is called the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP). Boko Haram was formed in 2002 as a ragtag violent group protesting local inequality, socio-economic downturn and failed political leadership in Borno. It was later hijacked and radicalized religiously by some Northern radical Islamists and criminals. The terrorist Fulani Herdsmen, on their part, are the armed terrorist and Islamic jihadist department of Fulani Herdsmen in Nigeria, the country’s primitive cattle herders. The terrorist and jihadist department of Herdsmen were created and are funded by extremist Northern politicians and security chiefs. The Fulani jihadists became devastatingly active immediately after the return to civil rule in late May 1999. Jihadist Fulani militias are now the world’s deadliest terror group. They were formed and funded using the cover of existing Fulani rural cattle grazing in Nigeria. Initially formed and funded to wrestle the country’s seat of presidency power from the South, their terror campaign aimed to make Nigeria ungovernable. The mission of the terror group and its sponsors changed to jihadist Islamism in 2015. The change in its mission followed from the victory and emergence of Mr. Muhammadu Buhari, himself a Fulani (Daji) and a member of a conservative branch of the Muslim faith. Buhari was a brutal dictator when Nigeria was under military rule. He was elected as the sixth civilian president of Nigeria in late May 2015. Mr. Buhari remains the life patron of the mother body of the Association of Nigeria’s Cattle Herders, called ‘the Miyatti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria’ or MACBAN. According to Steven Kefas, a fiery Southern Kaduna rights activist, ‘what is called “Bandits” or “Ansaru” or “northern kidnappers” or “cattle rustlers” is nothing but a product of Government ‘labeling’. These groups are just ‘cells’ or ‘departments of Boko Haram’ charged with responsibility of raising funds for its jihadist and terror activities through various forms of roadway and street criminality including kidnapping-for-ransom, armed robbery and house-to-house raiding and looting’. “At times, their criminality includes ‘pleasure crime’ such as rape and sexual harassment or ‘religious crime’ including abduction and forceful conversion to Islam or death in captivity such as public beheading for refusing to be converted”. Kefas recently interviewed some survivors of the highway abductions on Northern highways and they narrated their sad experiences while they were held captive by their abductors. In all, there are ‘three names’ associated with Nigeria’s Islamic terror groups, but they have one mission: to terrorize, pillage, plunder and kill others in the name of propagation of Islamic religion or Islamism. Both Boko Haram and its international offshoot, Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP), kill and destroy in the name of religion. They despise ‘Christianity, Christians and western culture or education’ and seek to Islamize the entire country by ‘deepening Koran in the Sea’. Many of their victims from 2009 to date have been Christians and it is only in rare circumstances that Moslems are targeted for ‘collateral killings’; usually in ‘revenge’ against Government attacks. But for Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen, 100% of their victims are Christians, their churches, homes and lands. Muslim farmers and their Mosques or homes are [never] attacked. Jihadist Herdsmen appear to be armed with “communal and forest maps” that indicate which villages are Christian and which are Muslim. This is important because a majority of farmers in Northern Nigeria are Muslims. Apart from attacking Christian settlements in the North-Central, Northeast and some parts of the Northwest, Jihadist Herdsmen have also launched incessant attacks in the Southeast and South-south leading to death of no fewer than 200 Christians since June 2015. The killings were mostly recorded in Enugu, Anambra, Delta and Edo States. Religious Terrorists Operate Under State Cover and Complicity In Nigeria The greatest challenge facing the Nigerian security forces or Armed Forces and the Police is the ‘secularity question.’ Because of the lack of national cohesion and acceptance of pluralism, and due to the multi-ethnic and multi-religious composition of Nigeria, its present Armed Forces and Police should be composed with a 50-50 Muslim-Christian ratio. That is sadly not the case. The present leadership of the country’s security establishments has an 80/20 Muslim-Christian ratio. This lack of religious and ethnic security balance has fueled the untamed butcheries of Christians in Nigeria. Due to their incompetence and corruption, and the near total collapse of intelligence and Information and Communication Technology to assist the police and military in Nigeria, the country’s security forces are now widely perceived as ‘a state terrorist organization’. This is because it is difficult to differentiate between the security forces and Boko Haram or Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen and their genocidal activities. It is also no longer hidden that Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen are allowed by the Nigerian Government to bear and possess modern assault rifles like AK-47s, while the same Government police and army arrests and prosecutes farmers found in possession of ancient ‘hunters’ guns. By the Firearms Act of 2004, assault rifles like AK-47s are prohibited from being borne by Nigerian citizens except members of the Armed Forces, including Police and paramilitaries such as personnel of the Nigerian Customs, Prisons and Immigration Services as well as the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, etc. But in practice presently, Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen have earned the status of ‘untouchable Janjaweed’; operating from left, right and center across the country with ‘prohibited firearms’; killing and plundering at will and with impunity. Recently in Umuawulu Community, near Awka in Anambra State, some ‘Fulani Herdsmen’ were openly caught bearing and brandishing AK-47s and to date, the Government has kept mute, in spite of petitions by the Ohanaeze Ndigbo to the Inspector General of Police. A recent study conducted by a research group published by the Cable alleged that “weapons used in farmer/herder conflicts (Jihadist Fulani terrorism) in the country are linked to Nigerian security agencies”. The Government of Nigeria and its security agencies have also come out boldly to defend the terrorist activities of Fulani Jihadists. The Government also functions as their mouthpiece. ‘Figure spinning’ and ‘mangling’ have also become part of the Federal Government’s conspiracy and complicity. The Government denies outright the casualty figures associated with Jihadist Herdsmen killings. Or it mangles and minimizes the statistics. Censorship, false denials and falsehoods also characterize the Government’s response to Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen’s butcheries. The Nigerian government has released thousands of arrested Boko Haram terrorists, classified as “low risk Boko Haram combatants” back into society. The Nigerian Government is also ‘jihadist RUGA friendly’. The Government is bent on moving with full speed at establishing throughout Nigeria its ‘Fulani friendly’ “RUGA” and ‘National Livestock Transformation Plan’. “RUGA” in Fulani means “rural grazing area and rural human settlement.” RUGA is designed to “resolve the Herder-Farmer conflict” but is actually a plan to reward the one-sided Fulani jihadist campaign of genocidal violence. This is despite the fact that in the country’s landmass distribution, out of total of 923,000 square kilometers, the North is already allocated 72% or 730,000 square kilometers of the arable farm and grazing land, while the entire South shares only 22% or 192,000 square kilometers. The Southeast is allocated a mere 29,525 square kilometers. The Nigerian Army has recently announced the floating of “Nigerian Army (Cattle) Ranching Limited” to be established throughout the country’s Army and military formations. The Army now has a strong economic interest in owning cattle, having Fulani herdsmen tend them, and expanding Fulani cattle grazing lands. Apart from deceitfully christening the massacre of Christians as a “herders-farmers clash”, the Nigerian Government also censors the media and some researchers, compelling them to describe the killings as “killings by unknown gunmen” or arising from “herders-farmers clash”. This is a false narrative. “Visa weavers” were also announced recently by the Nigerian Government, allowing illegal aliens including violent African nationals to enter the country and live anywhere particularly in the Southern part. There has been a steady influx of largely uneducated and religiously radicalized Northern Muslim youths into communities and cities in the Southeast and the South. As at Dec 2019, forests and bushlands of over 139 Igbo communities, towns and hamlets have been forceably penetrated and occupied by violent Fulani Herdsmen. Some rural communities in the Igbo Delta, Anambra, Enugu, Abia and Ebonyi have already become unsafe ‘no-go areas”. Strong accusations are also rife against the Buhari/Osinbajo Government about the open complicity of the Nigerian security forces in the massacres of Christians across Nigeria. The Governor of Delta State, Mr. Ifeanyi Okowa, openly accused soldiers of ‘accompanying the Herdsmen to massacre 14 rural Christians in Ughelli North LGA of the State”. The killings took place on 16 Feb 2020. Several other instances point accusing fingers at Army or Police aiding the massacre of defenseless Christians or refusing to come to their rescue when they are under attack, only to emerge hours after such killings to arrest, detain and torture the same victim populations. Summary Statistics: 11,500-12,000 Christian Deaths since June 2015 Credible statistics show that from June 2015 to February 2020, between 11,500 and 12,000 Christians were murdered by Boko Haram, Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen, and ‘Bandits/Highway Kidnappers’. Since June 2015 Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen accounted for over 7,400 deaths of Christians. Boko Haram killed 4000 Christians. ‘Bandits/Highway Kidnappers’ killed 150-200 Christians. Since 2009, Boko Haram has murdered 27,000 people, more murders than ISIS in Syria and Iraq, making Boko Haram the deadliest terrorist group in the world. Between June 2015 and December 2018, the Boko Haram/Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP) terror group was responsible for about 2,800 Christian deaths, over half of the estimated 5000 Nigerians killed by Boko Haram/ISWAP since June 2015. In 2019, Boko Haram/ISWAP killed close to 1000 Nigerian citizens. A majority were Christians. Jihadist Fulani militias killed 525 Christians between June and December 2015. Jihadist Fulani militias murdered 1,300 Christians in 2016, 1,700 in 2017 and 2,400 in 2018. In 2019, Jihadist Fulani militias killed between 1000 and 1200 Christians. The Nigerian military and police have also accounted for 1,050 Christian deaths since June 2015. These included the killing of 480 Christian Igbo citizens, 236 Christian IDPs, over 50 Adamawa rural Christians, an estimated 70 Northeast Christian children and some 120 Christian detainees who Amnesty International says were among the 240 detainees starved to death at the Giwa Military Barracks in Borno State in 2016. Since June 2015, Jihadist Fulani militias have killed even more Christians in Nigeria than Boko Haram. The total Christian deaths at the hands of Fulani Jihadist militias since June 2015 is more than 7,400. Fulani Jihadists have replaced Boko Haram as the deadliest terrorists in the world. This report is dedicated to victims of Islamic jihad in Nigeria. Researched & Compiled By: Emeka Umeagbalasi Criminologist & Graduate of Security Studies Master of Science, Peace Studies & Conflict Resolution Board Chair, INTERSOCIETY With Members of the INTERSOCIETY Board of Directors: Lawyer Obianuju Igboeli, Head, Civil Liberties & Rule of Law Lawyer Ndidiamaka Bernard, Head, Int’l Justice & Human Rights Lawyer Chidimma Udegbunam, Head, Campaign & Publicity Lawyer Chinwe Umeche, Head, Democracy & Good Governance ICT Contacts: www.intersociety-ng.org, +2348174090052, info@intersociety-ng.org The Int’l Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law-INTERSOCIETY; formed and registered in Nigeria since 2008, is a leading investigative and research rights advocacy group in the country. Led by criminologists, lawyers, journalists, security, peace and conflict studies’ graduates; Intersociety opposes inter-faith violence or killing in the name of radical Islamism including persecution of Christians and destruction or burning of churches and other Christian worship centers. We Have Monitored Violence Against Christians In Nigeria Since 2010 Intersociety had monitored and documented killing of Christians in Nigeria since 2010 and spoken out against same using several dependable mainstream and online media platforms of local and international credibility. In its monitoring and documentation, Intersociety relies on credible local and foreign media reports, eyewitnesses’ accounts and reports from Christian bodies and church media. Also relied upon are reports from local and international rights and research organizations and credible Government accounts (if any). Addenda: Massacres of Christians in Nigeria March 1 – April 2, 2020. The 50 Christian deaths in March 2020 included the 13th and 14th March 2020 killing by the Jihadist Herdsmen of seven Christian mourners in coordinated attacks in Tyohembe and Tse Ayev communities located in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State. The attacks took place between 11pm of Friday, 13th March and early hours of Saturday, 14th March 2020. Among the slain Christians were one Chikwa, Taza Abuur and Tarnum Yanum. Another set of Christians, numbering three were also hacked to death on 31st March 2020 in Ancha area of Bassa Local Government in Plateau State. In Southern Kaduna, a total of eleven Christians including a District Head and his brother were hacked to death by Jihadist Fulani militants. The killings took place between Thursday, 26th March and Tuesday, 31st March 2020. According to the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU), in its statement dated 31st March 2020, no fewer than six defenseless Christians were hacked to death in Komo Community, Guruku ward in Chikun LGA of Kaduna State. On Monday, 30th March, the District Head of Jagindi in Jema’a LGA of the State, HRH, Danlami Barde and his brother, Musa Barde were killed while the wife of the latter sustained several gunshot injuries. On Thursday, 27th March, three Christians-Hassana Bala, Jamilu Hassana and Halima Bala Nawela, all female-Christians; were hacked to death in Kuduru, a Gbagyi village in Chikun LGA of the State. In one of the Jihadist Fulani militants attacks in the first week of March, no fewer than four Christians were hacked to death and three women raped including wife of a traditional ruler (Tyoor Chado). The dastardly act was perpetrated in early hours of Thursday, 5th March 2020 in Mbanyiar Community, Guma LGA of Benue State. The killings by the jihadist Fulani militants have continued into the first and second day of April 2020 with burning to ashes and death on 1st April 2020 of at least seven senior citizens of Christian faith in Hulke and Nkiedoro communities located in Bassa Local Council Area of Plateau State. The killings were confirmed by the Zenger News.Com, the Stefanos Foundation, Jos and some local media including the Guardian Newspaper of 3rd April 2020. Those killed were all aged between 67 and 90. In the carnage, at least 23 houses were burnt to ashes or destroyed. The following are the names of the seven senior citizens burnt to death including two caregivers and their patients: Gado Muntu, 67, Mary Alhassan, 70, Izinpa Muntu, 72, Jummai Geye, 78, Madah Imeh, 80, Rigwe Muntu, 84 and Gado Ngulu, 90. The herdsmen also in the early days of this month, April 2020 invaded Arimogija community in the Ose Local Government Area of Ondo State and killed a rice farmer, Jacob Odushe and his son, Adura as well as a teenager, Victor Ejeh, declared missing one week earlier. It Is Not True That Some Boko Haram Members Are Christians. The coordinator of ‘Operation Safe Corridor’, Major Gen Bamidele Shafa, has claimed that “some Boko Haram insurgents are Christians”. The Major General made the claims (widely believed to be officially scripted) during his interview with the Sun Newspaper over the weekend. Mister Bamidele Shafa; who is the Nigerian Army’s ‘Coordinator of Operation Safe Corridor’, is saddled with responsibility of “de-radicalization and reintegration” of “repentant” Boko Haram members”. The latest claims by the Nigerian Government through the Nigerian Army that “some Boko Haram insurgents are Christians” is a diversionary “red herring” designed to mislead investigators about the Nigerian government’s complicity, conspiracy, censorship, falsehood and propaganda. The Government is busy propagating falsehoods, creating confusion and misleading itself and Nigerians, by attempting to ‘christianize’ the clear-cut Islamic jihadist insurgency. If for any reason, any of the insurgents bears a ‘Christian name’, then it is either that his or her name is officially faked or he or she is a captured defenseless Christian ordered or indoctrinated at gunpoint or under captivity to bomb or terrorize or kill Christian churches and their worshippers; or in some cases mosques and other Islamic centers. These crimes a captured Christian must do in order not to be executed or beheaded by his or her jihadist captors. One of the reasons why Islamic jihadism persists around the world is because many Christians still hold on to the principle of pacifism. These widely dismissed claims by the Nigerian Army come two months after the same Government of Nigeria through the Nigeria Police Force made failed attempts to ‘christianize’ the Boko Haram insurgency in the country and its deadly attacks, including killing of Christians and bombing of churches and other Christian facilities. Church members two months ago arrested a suspected suicide bomber inside their church located at Sabon Tasha in Chikun LGA of Kaduna State. The suspect was arrested with a bag containing Improvised Explosive Devices and was handed over to the Police after a preliminary investigation carried out by the church during which he identified himself as ‘Mohammed Sani’. The Nigeria Police Force twisted the preliminary findings of the church and its members and announced the suspect as “a Christian”, named “Nathaniel Samuel”. The Police twisted narrative immediately attracted supportive stance from the Presidency and some leftist Muslim bodies; thereby raising strong suspicion that the Government of Nigeria was behind the script. Despite pressure from government officials for the Kaduna State Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (Rev John Hayab) to retract, the Christian Reverend refused and has maintained his stance that the captured terrorist is a Muslim, and is definitely not a Christian.

Residents blamed a military withdrawal and government inaction for the recent spate of attacks, which has left 20 dead. Villagers gather at the church in Ngbra-Zongo, Plateau State, Nigeria on Wednesday. (Lawrence Zongo/Zenger) Radical Fulani Muslim militiamen killed four people on Tuesday including a Christian pastor, and burned down a town’s only school, during an attack in Central Nigeria. Abbah Yoki said he was the black-clad attackers’ first target as he left his room at about 7 a.m. Abbah said he saw 10 Fulani tribesmen split into three groups, and heard one give the order in the tribe’s dominant Hausa language for the rest to shoot. “I was about to run,” he told Zenger News, when “the person giving them commands shot me on the leg.” He narrowly escaped, he said. “My two children were killed, my neighbor and our pastor killed, too.” Pastor Matthew Tagwi was killed Wednesday in an attack by Fulani tribesmen. (Lawrence Zongo/Zenger) Pastor Matthew Tagwi had only been posted to the community of Ngbra-zongo last month, said Chayi Biri, who also witnessed the attack. The other victims were Dih Sunday, Duh Abbah and Ishaku Abbah. The incident is one of a string of attacks that have left more than 20 Nigerian civilians shot or hacked to death by Muslim militants near Jos, the capital of Nigeria’s Plateau State. “This issue of COVID-19, we don’t know anything about it, but our problem is Fulani who are killing us,” said Pastor Yakubu Kpasha, putting his hand on the wall of a burned out school in Nkiendowro, a growing hamlet of 645 inhabited by the Irigwe tribe in the far western reaches of Plateau State. Kpasha, like Tagwi, is a pastor of the Evangelical Church Winning All, a Christian denomination followed by hundreds of thousands of Nigerians. The Fulani tribe he was referring to is based just two miles away, and is notorious for its sometimes fanatic Islamism. Kpasha said Fulani killed three members of his church, Danjuma Madah, Daniel Wuara and Barri Musa, and burned the village’s only primary school. It wasn’t first time the school and church have been targeted. Three years ago, the Fulani killed 29 people at the school, he said. “This is the second time my church was burned,” he said. Ngbra-zongo, the site of Wednesday’s attack, is slightly more than four miles away from the police station in Miango, a 40-minute drive on the area’s roads. Gato Moses, a resident, blamed the military and the government for not doing enough to stop the attacks, and said withdrawal of soldiers from the community contributed to the series of attacks. “The military are not doing enough to see the attacks come to an end without arresting any of the Fulani attackers. The government is silent,” he said. “Security officials arrived after people had been killed; this is always our experience after attacks.” Police did not arrive in the village until the next day. [Genocide Watch note: Mr. Gato Moses was called to the Army base after this article was published and tortured for criticizing military response to the calls for help. Gato was forced to lie in a cell naked and get icy water poured over him for three hours. That's how Gato spent his Good Friday.] District police officer Kenneth Romans blamed a bad network connection for his delayed arrival. He told villagers police sympathized with the community. “We will do our best to arrest these criminals,” Romans said, urging the villagers to report problems to public officials. The church is a 20-minute drive from Forward Operating Base Jebbu, where soldiers are on duty to prevent violence. Village watchmen in the nearby village of Ancha called police and the military on March 31, when more than 200 men carrying AK-47 assault rifles stormed into the village at nightfall, killing three people and wounding several more. The same group struck two other Irigwe tribal villages the following night, burning the ECWA church and the Roman Catholic Church buildings in Nkiendowro. Terrorists also struck Nkiendowro two days later, killing three. The Third Division of the Nigerian Army’s base is an hour’s drive to the east in a suburb of Jos, 30-40 km away from the Irigwe villages, said Kyle Abts, a director of the International Committee on Nigeria and a former missionary. “The fact that the Nigerian army did not make an effort to defend citizens so close to their command center is outrageous,” he said. Sunday A. Abdu, President of Irigwe Development Association, pointed to the deliberate departure of soldiers manning checkpoints leading to the villages of the Irigwe Chiefdom. When it started March 21, “we thought was a routine military action and expected to see another set deployed,” Abdu said. The checkpoints remain unmanned, according to several local pastors interviewed by Zenger. The Rev. Akila Adamu, associate pastor of First Evangelical Church in suburban Maryland, a sister congregation of Kpasha’s church, said he believes the recent attacks are related, “the work of a single organized gang of terrorists,” Adamu told Zenger News. Seven senior citizens were burned to death in their group residence in the village of Hukke on April 1 by men carrying AK-47 rifles. “We want the U.S. government to contact the Nigerian government to demand that its law enforcement agencies intervene,” Adamu said to Zenger, calling for “a high-level public investigation of the Nigerian army commanders and police officials responsible for security in Bassa.” According to civil society watchdog Intersociety, between 11,500 and 12,000 Christians have been killed since June 2015, when the current Nigerian government took control. Of those, jihadist Fulani herdsman were responsible for 7,400 deaths; Boko Haram, 4,000; and highway bandits, 150-200 deaths. The March report calls Nigeria “a killing field of defenseless Christians.” Copyright 2020 Zenger News

The old quarter of Sana, Yemen, in August. The house in the foreground was destroyed by an airstrike. Credit...Khaled Abdullah/Reuters This article was first posted August 29, 2018. It was soon forgotten. Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, with support from the USA, have continued their war in Yemen. GENEVA — The military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes, tortured detainees, raped civilians and used child soldiers as young as 8 — actions that may amount to war crimes, United Nations investigators said in a report issued Tuesday. The report singled out Saudi and Emirati airstrikes for causing the most civilian casualties, saying they had hit residential areas, markets, funerals, weddings, jails, boats and medical facilities. “There is little evidence of any attempt by parties to the conflict to minimize civilian casualties,” said Kamel Jendoubi, the chairman of the panel of experts that produced the report. The report also said the Houthi rebels, who control northern Yemen and are fighting the Saudi-Emirati coalition, may have committed war crimes. They were accused of shelling civilians, torturing detainees, recruiting young children to fight and blocking access to humanitarian agencies. “None have clean hands,” one of the experts, Charles Garraway, a retired military officer who served for 30 years as a legal officer in the British Army, told reporters in Geneva. “Despite the severity of the situation, we continue to witness a total disregard of the suffering of the people of Yemen.” A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition said it would respond after its legal team had reviewed the report. The Emirati minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, said on Twitter that his government would need to study the report before responding, but he said the culpability of the Houthis for civilian suffering needed to be recognized. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis told reporters in Washington that the Trump administration had reviewed its support for the Saudi-Emirati coalition. “We determined it was the right thing to do in defense of their own countries, but also to restore the rightful government there,’’ he told reporters. “Our conduct there is to try to keep the human cost of innocents being killed accidentally to an absolute minimum.’’ The American goal, Mr. Mattis said, is to encourage the combatants to negotiate a settlement to the conflict. Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni human rights activist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, responded to Mr. Gargash, the Emirati foreign affairs minister on Twitter. She said the United Nations report would not be credible unless it cited the leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as well as the head of the Houthi movement, as responsible for the civilian massacres. Political factions and militias have been fighting for control of Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, since power-sharing talks collapsed in 2014 and the Houthis ousted the internationally backed government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Since then, fighting has devolved into proxy warfare, with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates arming and fighting alongside a disparate group of Islamist, tribal and regional militias against the Houthis, who control Sana, the capital, as well as the major port of Al Hudaydah and their ancestral territories along the Saudi border. The Saudis and their allies have accused Iran of aiding the Houthis. Iran has denied involvement, despite evidence that the rebels are using Iranian weaponry, including missiles. The report accused the Saudi-led coalition of routinely having failed to consult its own “no-strike list” of more than 30,000 sites in Yemen, including refugee camps and hospitals. It also said the Saudi Air Force had not cooperated with investigators about its targeting procedures. The conflict has resulted in at least 16,700 casualties, including 6,475 civilians killed, but the real figure is almost certainly significantly higher, according to the United Nations. The main cause of civilian casualties in the war, the report says, has been airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition. It estimates that there have been 18,000 such strikes in little more than three years, inflicting a level of damage on civilians that “certainly contributed to Yemen’s dire economic and humanitarian situation.” The report, to be delivered to the United Nations Human Rights Council next month, comes not long after a Saudi-coalition strike this month killed 40 children on a school bus. The experts who wrote the report said that the names of individuals suspected of abuses would be sent to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. They declined to provide details, but the report said offenses had been committed by individuals at all levels in the Saudi-led coalition’s member states and their governments, including civilian officials. Sixty coalition attacks on residential areas reviewed by the experts killed more than 500 civilians, including 233 children, they said. An attack on a funeral hall in Sana in October 2016 killed at least 137 civilians, according to the report. The experts said that the coalition had kept up the intensity of the airstrikes even after it had become clear that civilians were suffering dire consequences. Civilians were further harmed, they said, by the coalition’s arbitrary restrictions on shipping and air travel. The screening of ships coming into Al Hudaydah — ostensibly to prevent arms from entering the country — has had “a chilling effect on commercial shipping supplies of fuel and food needed to fend off starvation, even though United Nations searches of shipping had found no weapons,” the experts said. “No possible military advantage could justify such sustained and extreme suffering of millions of people,” they said. The report detailed allegations of rape and abuse by a proxy unit called the Security Belt Forces, which is under the control of the United Arab Emirates, that targeted not just detainees but also refugee and migrant women and children. The experts faulted in particular the coalition’s Joint Incidents Assessment Team, which is supposed to investigate claims of military abuse but which human rights groups say was set up to deflect pressure for an international inquiry into the war. The assessment team’s work lacked transparency, its investigations lacked legal analysis and its findings regularly ignored civilian casualties and were often substantially altered by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the experts said. A report released by Human Rights Watch last week warned Britain, France and the United States that they risked complicity in unlawful attacks in Yemen by continuing to supply arms to Saudi Arabia. Margaret Coker contributed reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Lara Jakes from Washington. A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 29, 2018, Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: U.N. Report on War Crimes Faults Saudi Arabia and U.A.E. in Yemen Copyright 2018 The New York Times Company

Christians in Nigeria take part in funeral festivities in April 2019. | Intersociety A Nigerian civil society organization is reporting that no less than 50 Christians were killed in March and 10 in the first two days of April by radical Fulani herdsmen. Since the start of 2020, estimates suggest that over 400 Christians were killed in the West African country. “In all, not less than 410 Christian lives have been lost in Nigeria to Jihadist Fulani terrorists in the past 93 days of 2020,” the Anambra-based International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) said in a statement. Ten Christians were killed in the first two days of April, it added. “This is on daily average of about five Christian deaths. On average, the Jihadist Fulani militants killed 125 Christians in January and February, respectively, and 50 in March.” Intersociety is a nongovernmental organization headed by Christian criminologist Emeka Umeagbalasi. Through a team of criminologists, lawyers, journalists as well as peace and conflict studies graduates, Intersociety has monitored violence against Christians in Nigeria since 2010. In addition to Umeagbalasi, the statement released Saturday was signed by lawyers Obianuju Igboeli, Ndidiamaka Bernard and Chinwe Umeche. Intersociety previously reported that 350 Christians were killed in the first two months of 2020 by Fulani militants, highway bandits and the Boko Haram terrorist group in the northeast. Since 2015, about 11,500 Christians have been killed in Nigeria, according to Intersociety. The killings are largely a result of increased terrorist attacks from Boko Haram splinter groups and overnight attacks carried out by radicalized Muslim nomadic Fulani herders against predominantly Christian farming communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. In 2019, between 1,000 to 1,200 Christians were killed by Fulani attackers, Intersociety estimated. The NGO relies on what it deems to be credible local and foreign media reports as well as government accounts, data from international rights groups, eyewitness testimony and reports from Christian bodies to compile its estimates. Intersociety argued in its latest statement, which only counts the killings committed by Fulani attackers, that the decline in reported killings in March could be a result of attacks being under-reported due to a shift in local and international media attention during the coronavirus pandemic. The decline is not a result of “change of heart” or “government counter successes," it said. The group’s statement comes as some international advocacy groups, including Christian Solidarity International and the Jubilee Campaign, are pressuring international actors to label the plight of Christians in Nigeria as a “genocide.” On March 5, at least four Christians were reportedly killed and three women raped by Fulani attackers in the Guma area of the Benue state, according to Intersociety. On March 13 and March 14, seven Christians were killed in coordinated attacks in Tyohembe and Tse Ayev communities of the Benue state believed to be carried out by radical Fulanis. The attacks were said to be carried out between 11 p.m. on March 13 and the early-morning hours of March 14. Between March 26 and March 31, in Southern Kaduna state, a total of 11 Christians, including a district head and his brother, were reportedly killed by Fulani militants. On March 27, three more Christians were said to have been killed in the Chikun local government area of Kaduna. On March 30, the district head of the Jema’a local government area of Kaduna Danlami Barde and his brother, Musa Barde, were reportedly killed while the wife of Musa Barde sustained several gunshot injuries. On the night of March 31-April 1, at least three Christians were killed in the Ancha area of the Plateau state. “According to the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU), in its statement dated 31st March 2020, no fewer than six defenseless Christians were hacked to death in Komo Community, Guruku ward in Chikun [local government area] of Kaduna State,” Intersociety stated. On April 1, seven elderly Christians in the Hukke and Nkiedoro communities in the Plateau state were reportedly burned to death during an attack in which at least 23 houses were burned or destroyed. Nigeria ranks as the 12th worst country in the world for Christian persecution on Open Doors USA’s 2020 World Watch List. It is one of the most deadly countries in the world for Christians. Because of the Nigerian government’s inability to halt societal and extremist violence and hold those accountable responsible, Nigeria was added to the U.S. State Department’s “special watch list” of countries that engage in or tolerate severe violations for religious freedom in December. “We are designating [Nigeria] special watch list for the first time because of all of the increasing violence and communal activity and the lack of effective government response and the lack of judicial cases being brought forward in that country,” U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback told reporters at the time. “It is a dangerous situation in too many parts of Nigeria. The government has either not been willing to or have been ineffective in their response and the violence continues to grow.” Follow Samuel Smith on Twitter: @IamSamSmith or Facebook: SamuelSmithCP Copyright 2020 The Christian Post