Nairobi : At least 2,000 women and girls have been abducted by Nigerian jihadi group Boko Haram since the start of 2014, Amnesty International denounced in an article published on Tuesday.
Amnesty’s “Boko Haram’s reign of terror” was released on the one-year anniversary of the infamous abduction of 200 school girls from the Nigerian town of Chibok, and documents war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Boko Haram since 2014, including the killing of at least 5,550 civilians.
The Chibok school girls gained global attention through the “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign, yet they represent a small proportion of the women, girls, young men and boys abducted by Boko Haram, according to Amnesty International.
The NGO explained that men and boys are regularly conscripted or systematically executed, while young women and girls are abducted, imprisoned and in some cases raped, forcibly married and made to participate in armed attacks, sometimes on their own towns and villages.
“Recent military successes might spell the beginning of the end for Boko Haram, but there is a huge amount to be done to protect civilians, resolve the humanitarian crisis and begin the healing process,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s secretary general.
Boko Haram would take the women and girls and indoctrinate them with their radical version of Islam in preparation for marriage.
In that context, Aisha, 19, spoke to Amnesty about how she was abducted from a friend’s wedding in September 2014, along with her sister, the bride and the bride’s sister.
After one week in a Boko Haram camp, the bride and the bride’s sister were forced to marry militants from the group, while Aisha was taught how to fight and sent to attack her own village.
Aisha added that she was raped repeatedly during the three months that she was held captive, and she also saw more than 50 people, including her own sister, killed by Boko Haram for refusing to convert to Islam or refusing to kill others; and were all buried in mass graves.
Through satellite images, Amnesty International found that Boko Haram had destroyed nearly 70 percent of Bama, a major city in northern Nigeria that was retaken by the Nigerian military in March.
After taking control of a town, Boko Haram would gather the population and announce new rules, and would enforce them with harsh punishments, such as flogging for failure to attend daily prayers, and execution for adultery.
Amnesty’s article also highlighted growing tensions between Muslims and Christians as many Christians interviewed believed that Muslims had informed Boko Haram of their whereabouts or failed to share information about impending attacks.
Amnesty International called on the International Criminal Court to consider the information documented on Boko Haram as part of its ongoing preliminary examination of the situation in northeast Nigeria.